EDGE Launches Angola’s Second BR71 Corvette
EDGE Group has launched the second of three BR71 Mk II corvettes ordered by Angola, the first warship of its kind built in the United Arab Emirates rather than in France, where the class was designed.
The corvette, named NRA Nimi-ya-Lukeni (F301), was launched at the Abu Dhabi Ship Building (ADSB) yard in the last week of October, with EDGE announcing the milestone on 4 November 2026. Naval News had already reported a ceremony on 29 October, and Janes cited an EDGE representative placing it in the same week, though its own imagery showed the hull still on the shiplift rather than afloat. The launch puts the UAE on the delivery schedule for Angola’s new corvette fleet alongside French builder CMN, which built the first ship.
A three-ship programme split between two shipyards
Angola ordered three BR71 Mk II corvettes under a roughly €1 billion naval programme contracted with France’s CMN in February 2023. Under the deal, CMN builds the first and third vessels at its Cherbourg yard, while ADSB in Abu Dhabi — an EDGE Group subsidiary — builds the second under a technology-transfer arrangement. The first ship, NRA Ekuikui II (F300), was launched in Cherbourg in March 2026 and is undergoing fitting out and testing; it is due for delivery by the end of 2026. F301, the Abu Dhabi-built ship, will go through its own fitting out and sea trials before a planned 2027 handover, while CMN’s third hull is due in February 2027. Compared with the programme’s original 2026 schedule, which had the lead ship arriving in October 2026 and the second and third following in April and October 2027, the first delivery has slipped by around two months while the third has moved earlier.
Khaled Al Zaabi, President of Platforms and Systems at EDGE and Chairman of ADSB, said building the second corvette in Abu Dhabi “is what genuine technology transfer should deliver,” adding that the milestone was “a credit to the engineers, production teams, technicians and industry partners behind it.” Angola’s ambassador to the UAE, Júlio Belarmino Gomes Maiato, attended the ceremony along with Angolan Navy and government representatives.
What the BR71 Mk II brings to Angola’s navy
The BR71 Mk II is a 70.3-metre, roughly 900-tonne corvette with a 30-knot top speed and a stated range of 2,500 nautical miles at cruising speed, built to stay at sea for 15 days with a crew of around 50. Its weapons fit is substantial for a ship of its size: eight MBDA MM40 Exocet Block 3C anti-ship missiles, a Leonardo 76/62 Super Rapido main gun, an eight-cell VL MICA vertical-launch air-defence system, two SIMBAD-RC launchers for Mistral 3 short-range missiles, and two Leonardo Lionfish remote weapon stations. Sensors include a Leonardo KRONOS NAVAL C-band radar, a dedicated fire-control radar, an electro-optical/infrared system and an integrated electronic-support suite, tied together by an ATHENA combat management system. The design also has provision for a helicopter and carries two unmanned naval helicopters and two rigid-hull boats, giving Angola a genuine multi-role surface combatant rather than a lightly armed patrol hull.
That represents a significant jump for the Angolan Navy, which has historically relied on a mix of older Soviet-era vessels and smaller patrol craft. Angola has also been modernising its coastal fleet through other channels, including a Navantia contract to modernise two of its existing patrol vessels; the BR71 Mk II corvettes sit above that layer as the navy’s top-end surface combatants, built around the kind of long-range anti-ship and air-defence missiles that patrol boats do not carry.
Why it matters for Africa
Few African navies operate anything close to a modern, missile-armed corvette, and Angola’s decision to split production between a European and a Gulf shipyard reflects a broader pattern of African and Gulf states using defence contracts to secure technology transfer rather than simply buying finished hulls. For Angola, the corvettes extend a maritime build-up aimed at protecting its offshore oil infrastructure and exclusive economic zone in the South Atlantic, waters that have periodically seen piracy and illegal-fishing incidents even though they attract less attention than the Gulf of Guinea further north. For the UAE, delivering a European-designed warship from an Emirati yard is a marker of how far EDGE has pushed naval-industrial localisation, and a credential it can point to in pitching further shipbuilding work to other African and Gulf navies. Once all three corvettes are in service, Angola will field a surface combatant force with a missile punch well beyond that of most of its regional neighbours, reshaping the naval balance along Africa’s south-west coast.
Sources
- Military Africa, “EDGE launches Angola’s second BR71 Mk II corvette in Abu Dhabi”
- DefenceMENA, “Why Did Angola Buy Corvettes from the UAE?”
- DefenceMENA, “Navantia to Modernise Two Angolan Navy Patrol Vessels”
