Lumut Naval Shipyard, builders of the Royal Malaysian Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships, has completed the class’ detailed design work, handing the completed design over to the Royal Malaysian Navy.
The milestone was marked with a ceremony at the shipyard on September 23, attended by Lumut Naval Shipyard CEO Ir. Azhar Jumaat; Captain (Retired) Rosnizam Che Puteh, LUNAS LCS project director; and First Admiral Ir. Ts. Franklin Jayasekhar Joseph, Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) Director General of the LCS Project.
Also in attendance were Captain Ir. Malik Hj. Sulaiman, RMN Director of Engineering for the LCS Project; Mr. Denis Garnier, Naval Group’s LCS Programme Director, and other delegates from the Royal Malaysian Navy.
Naval Group was assisting Lumut Naval Shipyard with the detailed design work.
The completion of detailed design work comes as LCS 1 Maharaja Lela is being fitted out for builder’s trials scheduled to begin in November. The handover of the detailed design will facilitate the completion of the first-in-class frigate’s fitting out, which has been underway since it was “downslipped” in May and moved to a pier.
Under the new schedule for the program, harbor acceptance tests for LCS 1 Maharaja Lela will begin in November 2024. Should the trials go as planned, sea acceptance tests will then begin in October 2025, with delivery to the Royal Malaysian Navy scheduled for August 2026.
Also on October 11, the shipyard was visited by a delegation from the Perak state Territorial Army Support Committee. The delegation was briefed on the shipyard’s current activities before conducting a tour of the shipyard, with a group photograph in front of LCS 1 Maharaja Lela providing a view of progress on the frigate’s shipping out on that day.
The Malaysian Littoral Combat Ship Program
The Malaysian government awarded Boustead Naval Shipbuilding an RM9 billion (approximately US$2.09 billion) contract in 2014 for the construction of six Littoral Combat Ships based on an enlarged version of Naval Group’s Gowind-class corvette design. Under the original program plan, LCS 1 Maharaja Lela was supposed to have been delivered to the Royal Malaysian Navy in 2019,with all six ships delivered by 2023.
However, financial problems at Boustead resulted in work on the program stalling in 2019 with no ships completed. The Royal Malaysian Navy announced a new contract rebooting the program at the 2023 Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace exhibition, with LCS 1 Maharaja Lela scheduled to be delivered in 2026 after work on it was restarted, with the remaining four frigates to be delivered by 2029.
In addition to the cancellation of one frigate, the program restart also saw the nationalization of Boustead Naval Shipbuilding, with the shipyard now operating as Lumut Naval Shipyard following its purchase by the Ministry of Finance.
