The Alawi country has reached an agreement to purchase seven fast attack ships and a corvette in the second half of this year

Marruecos compra armamento a Turquía

photo_camera PHOTO/ARCHIVE - Avante vessel of the Moroccan Navy

The Kingdom of Morocco continues with the acquisition of new armaments. The country has been seeking agreements for some time now and continues to armour itself against any threat. Now, it is known that it has conducted negotiations with Turkey to acquire more military equipment. Specifically, the transcontinental nation will sell the Alawi country seven fast attack boats and a corvette.

According to the daily Le360, Morocco will acquire seven fast attack craft known as FAC and a corvette from the Turkish shipyard Gölcük. The former are new, upgraded and improved models of the Kilic II class ships. As far as is known, Morocco will have a new fleet that is equal in size and capacity to the ships owned by the Turkish Navy. 

The new corvette, on the other hand, is an Ada-class corvette. It will be equipped with a heliport for the deployment of drones and will also have a helicopter capable of carrying out reconnaissance and surveillance of the area in which it is located.

Negotiations for this sale began in October 2021 and, according to official sources, the naval weapons are scheduled to arrive in Morocco in the second half of this year. For its part, the Kingdom will have to pay Turkey the sum of 222 million dollars for this operation. 

The Royal Moroccan Navy is looking to upgrade its entire system. Far-Maroc, a website, has published that this sector of the army is starting a modernisation, and has a fleet of four Lazaga-class fast attack ships. On the other hand, Navantia is going to build a high-quality patrol boat that it has been looking for for a long time.

Fotografía de archivo de fragata de las Fuerzas Navales de Turquía

In line with this reform, Morocco also announced that it will soon receive several MPA - Maritime Patrol Aircraft - maritime patrol aircraft, although the Kingdom does not yet know which model it will choose, as several candidates have come forward to sell their models. Official media reports say that the aircraft of most interest to the Moroccan army are the Leonardo ATR 72MPA and the Airbus C295 MPAe. 

In addition to these facts, Morocco has a strong desire for political and economic expansion, and is therefore buying several systems that would explore the nation's oil and mineral wealth in its part of the Atlantic Ocean. 

With these acquisitions, the Royal Navy would reinforce its entire armament. It currently has seven frigates and corvettes, 22 patrol boats, three amphibious assault ships, defence aircraft and several aquatic vehicles to defend and attack both above and below water. Today, 12,000 personnel are employed in this sector, 3,000 of whom are marines. Its main bases are in Safi, Agadir, Kenitra, Tangier, Dakhla, Al Hoceima, Beni Ensar and Alcazarseguir, although the largest of all is in the city of Casablanca, where most naval operations are conducted. It was created in 1960 by the late king and father of the current monarch, Mohammed V, with the mission of protecting the Kingdom's maritime borders.

El buque de perforación turco Yavuz es escoltado por una fragata de la Armada turca en el este del mar Mediterráneo frente a Chipre

"It seems that the Royal Navy inspection is seeking to replace these ships whose technology is obsolete and increasingly costly to maintain," notes one of the Far-Maroc forum's publications. 

Morocco is in a huge phase of expansion of its entire arsenal. For some time now, Morocco has been investing in large defence systems that will expand its entire army. The last few months have been key to this new phase. The Maghreb kingdom has conducted several negotiations with different countries to obtain war materiel. These include France, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Turkey and the United States, among others. 

The Moroccan army is in a period of readjustment, and the new purchases of aircraft, fighters, long- and short-range missiles, defence systems, boats, ships, planes and the construction of new military bases, the resumption of compulsory military service, etc., will bring great benefits. All this cargo will equip Morocco with new technologies, much more sophisticated than those it already has, and which will be capable of protecting the territory's vital and sensitive installations in the event of any threat, as well as protecting its entire civilian population.

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