Swedish corvette returns to fleet after mid-life upgrade
Gävle-class corvette HSwMS Gävle. (Photo: Saab)
Both of the Swedish Navy’s Gävle-class corvettes are scheduled to have completed mid-life upgrades (MLUs) and returned to service this year.
On 5 May, Saab announced it had handed over Gävle-class corvette HSwMS Gävle to the Swedish Navy’s 4th Flotilla following an MLU.
The MLU was carried out at Saab’s Karlskrona shipyard and is billed as the most significant change the ship has undertaken since entering service.
Gävle’s sister ship, Sundsvall, is also going through the same MLU Process and will be delivered later this year.
Saab said the upgrades include new systems that strengthen the Swedish Navy’s underwater combat capability.
Swedish Defence Material Administration (FMV) Gävle MLU project manager Johan Edelsvärd said that while the ship has the same hull, ‘more or less all the systems on the inside are new’.
Shephard Defence Insight notes the Gävle-class corvettes have a displacement of 400t and measure 57m in length, with a beam of 8m and a draft of 2m.
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