The first of the Royal Netherlands Navy’s new anti-submarine warfare frigates will not be delivered until 2033, three years later than planned. A Dutch government progress letter to parliament, dated Sept. 18, 2026, says the ship’s requirements could not be fitted into the original design without producing a ship that was not stable enough, so the design had to be reworked. The frigates are being developed and bought jointly by the Netherlands and Belgium.
The letter is a regular update on the Dutch defense ministry’s major equipment projects, filed in the parliamentary series on materiel projects. Its section on the anti-submarine frigate program, known in Dutch as the ASWF project, sets out the cause of the slip, the new date and the next steps for the two navies.
The delay is spelled out in Kamerstuk 27830 nr. 517, published through the Dutch Senate. “De opleverdatum van het eerste ASW-fregat is daarmee verschoven van 2030 naar 2033,” the letter states, which translates as “The delivery date of the first ASW frigate has thereby shifted from 2030 to 2033” (translation by Combat Rated).
A design that would not sit stable
According to the letter, the ministry first reported a delay of about three years in its Defence Projects Overview of May 20, 2026. The Sept. 18 update explains where that time went. It attributes the slip to a “langere doorlooptijd van de ontwerpfase door de technische complexiteit van het ontwerp,” or a longer design phase caused by the technical complexity of the design (translation by Combat Rated).
The core problem came as the design was worked out in detail. The letter says the technical implementation of the requirements “niet paste binnen het oorspronkelijke scheepsontwerp met een onvoldoende stabiel schip tot gevolg,” meaning it did not fit within the original ship design, with an insufficiently stable ship as the result (translation by Combat Rated).
The fix was a redesign. “Aanpassing van het ontwerp was daarom noodzakelijk om een stabiel schip op te kunnen leveren,” the letter says, translated by Combat Rated as “Adjustment of the design was therefore necessary in order to deliver a stable ship.” The letter ties those requirements to more than the ship’s present fit-out: they include keeping enough flexibility in space and weight to integrate future systems. The letter does not say which systems drove the redesign.
Four ships for two navies
The program’s shape was set out in an earlier letter to parliament. That letter, Kamerstuk 27830 nr. 393 of April 3, 2023, said the Netherlands would sign the contracts for four ASW frigates, two of them on Belgium’s account. It named Damen as shipbuilder and Thales Nederland as the other main manufacturer, and said the hulls would be built in Romania and fitted out in the Netherlands.
The 2023 letter also gave a much earlier timeline. At that point the first Dutch frigate was expected to be delivered in 2028 and enter service in 2029, with the second following in 2030 and entering service in 2031. The ships are replacements for the Royal Netherlands Navy’s two M-frigates, which the 2023 letter said had already reached the end of their originally planned service life.
The work split between the two countries is restated in the 2026 letter. “Nederland is verantwoordelijk voor de vervanging van de M-fregatten,” it says, and Belgium “voor de vervanging van de mijnenbestrijdingscapaciteit,” meaning the Netherlands is responsible for replacing the M-frigates and Belgium for replacing the mine countermeasures capability (translation by Combat Rated).
Mast under construction, engineering next
Despite the redesign, some hardware is already in work. The Sept. 18 letter says construction of the mast for the first frigate began at the end of June 2026, and that the detailed engineering phase was to start in September 2026.
The two governments are managing the program through a bilateral Joint Steering Committee. The letter says the committee’s latest meeting was on Sept. 1, 2026, where officials discussed the project’s progress, its current planning and cooperation within the project. It adds that no new decisions on the project have been taken since a technical briefing to the Dutch House of Representatives on June 25, 2026, part of which was confidential.
The next dated step is in the same letter: the ministry intends to inform parliament further about decision-making on the project in the fourth quarter of 2026. Until then, the official record stands at four frigates for two navies, a redesign to restore stability, and a first delivery date of 2033.
Top image: The Dutch frigate HNLMS Van Amstel (F831), one of the Royal Netherlands Navy’s M-frigates that the new ASW frigates are to replace, in the Gulf of Mexico on Sept. 7, 2005. Image Credit: Photographer’s Mate Airman Pedro A. Rodriguez, U.S. Navy — Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.