Vasco da Gama-class frigate
1991 Portuguese subclass of MEKO 200-class frigates
The Vasco da Gama class is a class of frigates of the Portuguese Navy. Named in honor of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, the ships are based on the German MEKO 200 design, and are Portugal's major surface ships. Portugal operates three ships of this class, which were built in Hamburg by Blohm + Voss (B&V) and by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) in Kiel, using modular construction techniques.
The project for the construction of three frigates of this class was authorized by the Portuguese Government in 1985, five years after the request of the Portuguese Navy for the acquisition of new surface ships. According to Conway's, 60% of the funding for these ships came from NATO military aid. Similar ships have been built for the navies of Greece, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand.
Modernization
In 2019, the new Military Programming Law was approved by the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic, which provided an amount of 125 million euros for the modernization of the three frigates of the Vasco da Gama class. In November 2022, the order authorizing the Ministry of National Defence to proceed with the modernization, was signed, in order to be able to use the ships in scenarios of high intensity combat. Among the improvements to be made to the frigates is the incorporation of RIM-162 ESSM Block-2 missiles to replace the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow. The frigate NRP Álvares Cabral, within the scope of this modernization process, received in 2023 a new platform command, control and management system, installed by the Portuguese company Edisoft.
“Vasco da Gama-class frigate” enters the record as 1991 Portuguese subclass of MEKO 200-class frigates. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Vasco, Gama-class and frigate can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2336772. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985, 2019, 2022 and 2023.
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