German Navy’s K130 corvette test fires RBS 15 anti-ship missile

The German Navy’s K130 corvette Oldenburg (F263) has test-fired  RBS 15 anti-ship missile at a land-based target in Norway for the first time.

German Navy

The corvette has been in service with the German Navy since 2008. In previous missile shootings, the ship only fired the RBS15 missile at targets at sea.

Source: German Navy

The RBS15 Mk3 belongs to the class of heavy anti-ship missiles. It can thus destroy targets such as stationary military infrastructure on land, but can also be used, for example, against mobile missile launchers. Now, the corvette proved it can successfully perform test-firing at a land-based target.

The navy officials noted that the total flight distance demanded different, extremely demanding routes from the guided missiles, both at sea and over land.

“The route made good use of the RBS15’s range of more than 200 kilometers, the rockets hit several hooks on their route and changed their altitude again and again,” according to the statement.

Oldenburg belongs to the K130 Braunschweig class — Germany’s newest class of ocean-going corvettes. Two months ago, a christening ceremony was held at Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg for the first of five K130 Batch II corvettes, Köln.

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 In September 2017, a contract for the second batch of five units — Köln, Emden, Karlsruhe, Augsburg and Lübeck — was awarded. In the future, the navy will have a fleet of ten corvettes belonging to the 1st Corvette Squadron in Rostock-Warnemünde.

The first five units were commissioned between 2008 and 2013, replacing the Gepard-class fast attack craft of the German Navy.