VOX Senator for Murcia, José Manuel Marín, asked the Executive in the Senate the reasons why Navantia has lost the contract for the construction of 20 new generation frigates for the U.S. Navy, which has opted for the Italian FREMM-class frigate project.
The Spanish option went hand in hand with the American shipyard General Dynamics Bath Iron Works to carry out its final construction in Maine. The $ 795 million contract contemplated the design and construction of a ten initial series ship. In total, they are 5,580 million dollars to build in the US, so Navantia would never have opted for that total contract, only the proportional part of the design.
The Spanish offer, explains Marín in his letter, had the advantage that the design of his frigates was already successfully tested on the Spanish "F-100", currently in service in the Navy, and the future "F-110" . In addition, the United States demanded that the combat system for these new frigates "FFG (X)" be the "Aegis", jointly developed in the 1990s between Spain and the United States and today basic to the Pentagon's anti-missile defense strategy.
For this reason, the senator also wanted to ask the Government if the loss of contract was due to the bad relations between the Spanish Government and the United States, as a consequence of the withdrawal of the frigate Méndez Núñez, a decrease in the Spanish contribution to NATO.
