Qahir-class Corvettes - "Conquerors of the Sea"

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🇴🇲 Qahir-class Corvettes 🇴🇲

Qahir al Amwaj can be seen steaming through harbor in this excellent photograph. The design is rather striking, halfway between the fast attack craft of yesteryear and the ultra-angular stealth vessels of today. Both vessels of this class are well-balanced and capable in multiple roles.

Introduction

      Building a navy from nothing isn’t easy - just ask Oman. After having been a British protectorate for a century, the nation once known for its maritime endeavors would have to regrow its sea legs in order to ensure its safety and security. While Oman had previously procured patrol vessels and fast attack craft from various nations, force projection was still an issue as the 80’s gave way to the 90’s. To this end the RNO turned to a builder they could trust - Vosper Thornycroft. With British expertise Oman was able to break its way into the corvette weight class and gain some much needed confidence on the open waters around its coasts. While their design is beginning to show its age, the Qahir-class are still capable vessels in use to this day and will likely continue to serve for the foreseeable future.


TL;DR

  • Modern corvette from just after the end of the Cold War
  • First >1,000 ton pure warships of the RNO
  • Potent electronic systems and countermeasures
  • Limited stealth due to emerging technology
  • Extremely long range Exocet missiles for primary armament
  • Crotale-NG SAM system for anti-aircraft
  • 76mm Super Rapid cannon, 20mm KAA cannons and GPMGs
  • Guns rather mediocre for the ship’s size

Why it should be in the game: The Qahir-class would give British coastal an excellent anti-aircraft ship to defend teams from pesky fighters and bombers. (To be clear, I am willing to entertain arguments of the ship going to an independent/alliance tech tree of some kind but I personally view the chances of such a tree being implemented as low.) Unlike the South African Warrior-class vessels I do not feel that this ship should be added with its anti-ship missile capability as the Exocets have an absurd range and active radar homing. Instead the ship can be considered a “baby Bravy” but for the coastal lineup, with its strength being the Crotale installation and HE-VT shells for the main gun. While you would want to avoid engagements with other surface vessels the increased fire rate of the OTO-Melara Super Rapid cannon would at least provide better anti-surface capabilities than Peacock and Orla.


History

The Qahir-class can trace its origins all the way through the Vosper Thornycroft export corvette lineage but its most direct ancestor is considered to be the Mark 9 pictured above. It’s not hard to see the similarities yet there are obvious differences, not least of which is the Qahir-class being significantly longer at 83 meters. There is also a notable yet unsurprising lack of stealth features; at the time of the Mark 9’s creation the main concept for stealth ships was to just make them as small as possible.

      The Royal Navy of Oman as it is known today was established in 1960 as part of Oman’s army. At the time it was a few motley coastal vessels, but as part of Sultan Qaboos bin Said’s modernization efforts at the turn of the 70’s the Navy was officially established as a separate entity. As the rest of the country rapidly expanded and modernized, so did the Navy. Oman’s fleet rapidly ballooned with patrol vessels and fast attack craft from British shipbuilders. However by the end of the 1980’s Oman still had nothing above 1,000 tons displacement besides transports for amphibious warfare. The fast attack craft had proven to be a revolutionary instrument in Israel’s naval successes during the Yom Kippur war in 1973 but it was starting to fall out of favor. While they were capable ships it was thought that they could not effectively fulfill the role of a mainline ship for a small navy like a corvette or frigate could. This thought was proven correct in the 1991 Gulf War when Lynx helicopters deployed Sea Skua missiles against Iraq’s fleet with astounding success. This was a wake-up call for the world - while fast attack craft were less expensive, they could not be the backbone of a competent naval force that needed to patrol large areas. It was no coincidence that less than a year later the RNO contacted Vosper Thornycroft to secure an order for two corvettes of a new type.

The second and last ship of the Qahir-class, Al Mua’zzar is shown fitting out in 1996 at Woolston Shipyard. Note no Exocets had been fitted at this time. It is clear that while some efforts had been made to improve the craft’s stealthiness, it was not enough to be considered a “full stealth” vessel. It was still a very impressive design for the time.

      Oman’s military procurement generally leaned towards procuring vehicles from Britain and their next vessel would be no exception. Vosper Thornycroft were experts when it came to corvettes for export with a pedigree stretching back decades. Drawing on this experience they based the new corvette, ordered under Project Muheet, on the Mark 9 corvette designed 15 years prior, which itself traces its lineage back to the Mark 3. It was clear to Vosper and the RNO that a ship the size of the Mark 9 would not be able to perform all the roles required of it satisfactorily. As such the new corvette would be fifteen meters longer, which was almost a 25% increase, as well as nearly two meters wider. The armament selected was generally comparable to a fast attack craft for the most part, with one 76mm OTO-Melara cannon, two 20mm Oerlikon KAAs and eight MM40 Exocet anti-ship missiles. However the anti-aircraft capability of the ship was vastly improved compared to a fast attack craft due to the use of a Crotale-NG air defense system. Even with this capability it was clear that a traditional corvette design would still be unacceptably vulnerable to long range anti-ship missiles even with advanced electronic countermeasures. The final design for the Qahir-class would focus on reducing its radar cross section (RCS) by using radar absorbent materials along with slight inclines to avoid surfaces perpendicular to the waterline. While lacking a hangar it was also important that the corvette have a helipad to land or recover helicopters up to the size of a Super Puma. One feature in the design that was missing from the final product was ASW capability; the RNO originally had plans to massively expand their anti-submarine equipment across the fleet but ultimately decided against it.

Al Mua’zzar (foreground) conducting bilateral exercises with the JMSDF’s Akebono (background) in 2024. I assume that the space behind the helipad on the Qahir-class is for the planned towed ASW equipment. Oman can generally be considered neutral on the international stage so the RNO has not needed to fire a shot in anger since the early 70’s.

      After four years of construction the Qahir-class corvettes were ready to sail to Oman for induction into the RNO. I would love to tell an epic tale of heroism on the high seas involving these ships but their lives have fortunately been peaceful to date. They have not had to fire a shot in anger at anything and so spend their time on routine patrols in Oman’s waters. In July of 2005 Qahir Al Amwaj visited Malta. Come the 2010’s Oman’s corvette crews worked with the Royal Navy for additional training to better defend the Strait of Hormuz with the Qahir-class likely being present. The ships’ movements are generally not particularly publicized - it’s not that they’re secretive, but more so that Western sources have bigger fish to fry. The vessels are also involved in counter-piracy operations. In early 2024 Oman completed a bilateral exercise with the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force’s counter-piracy unit in the Gulf of Oman. The ships do not appear to have been modernized since their introduction though in 2013 the significantly larger and more modern Khareef-class corvettes were introduced to the RNO to supplement their existing forces. As of now there is no indication of any plans to retire the Qahir-class in the immediate future and they will hopefully have many more peaceful years on the open sea.

Qahir Al Amwaj at harbor in Oman, 2015. An aft view of these vessels is surprisingly hard to come by. It appears that a podium for a speech is being prepared on the helicopter deck.


Specifications

Qahir-class Corvettes

Dimensions:

  • Length: 83.7 m (274 ft 7 in)
  • Beam: 11.5 m (37 ft 8 in)
  • Draught: 3.5 m (11 ft 6 in)

Displacement:

  • 1,185 tons standard
  • 1,450 tons deep

Propulsion: 4 Crossley-Pielstick diesel engines powering 2 shafts (32,000 shaft horsepower)

Maximum speed: 57.4 km/h (31 kt)

Range: 7,408 km (4,000 nmi)

Armament:

  • 1 x 1 76 mm/62 OTO Melara Super Rapid cannon
  • 2 x 1 20 mm/90 Oerlikon KAA cannon
  • 2 x 1 12.7 mm machine gun (one source says 7.62 mm)
  • 2 x 4 MM40 Exocet Block II anti-ship missile
  • 1 x 8 Crotale-NG surface-to-air missile (8 ready to fire, 8 spare; 16 total)

Number built: 2

Materials:

  • Hull: steel
  • Superstructure: aluminum alloy

Crew: 76

Additional equipment:

  • Type 1007 navigational/surveillance radar
  • MW08 air/surface search/track fire control radar
  • Castor-IIJ surveillance/track fire control radar/infrared system
  • STING-EO fire control radar/electro-optical system
  • IRSCAN infrared search/track system
  • DR-3000S1 ESM
  • 2 x 12 SuperBarricade decoy rockets
  • Radar-absorbent material
  • Infrared signature reducing smokestack

Sources

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The Sultan of Oman lives in Zanzibar now