Ukrainian defense minister to cheapen the corvette building program

17.11.2010 Ukrainian defense minister Mikhail Yezhel speaks for revision of the corvette building program for national navy. The minister said this in the interview to Golos Ukrainy newspaper, reports ugmk.info.

"This program needs to be revised", said Yezhel. According to him, that program was oriented on NATO standards and weapons available to Allied countries, so is very expensive. A NATO-type corvette costs over UAH 8.5 bln, but purchasing of constituent parts from Russia and other countries reduced the ship's price to UAH 3.5 bln, said the minister. In his opinion, cheapening of the corvette program became possible due to the vector change in defense industrial cooperation.

We recall that in Dec 2009 Ukrainian defense ministry and Chernomorsky Shipyard (Nikolayev) agreed to build 4 corvettes till 2018. The first corvette was laid down in Apr 2010 and is supposed to be completed till the end of 2012. The second ship is to be finished in 2014, third one – in 2016, and the forth one – in 2017. The ministry is about to have 10 corvettes till 2026.