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JAKARTA, November 6. /TASS/. Two Gepard 3.9 class frigates that Russia is building for Vietnam will be delivered to the customer on schedule - in late 2016, a representative of the shipbuilding company told TASS on Thursday at the Indo Defence international exhibition.

“A couple of such frigates were built for Vietnam in earlier, now the second pair is being built that differs in the weapons and military equipment. The delivery deadline is late 2016,” chief engineer of the Zelenodolsk Design Bureau Yevgeny Matveyev said.

The designer said the new frigates for the foreign customer will have, in addition to the surface countermeasure systems, antisubmarine warfare equipment. “To date, there are no factors for non-fulfilment of the obligations, the shipbuilding is going on schedule,” Matveyev said.

The construction of the second pair of the Gepard 3.89 class frigates with antisubmarine weapons for the Vietnamese Navy continues the work of the JSC A.M. Gorky Zelenodolsk Plant within the framework of international military-technical co-operation. The contract on the construction of the first pair of the warships of project 11661 was concluded in 2005. The plant successfully fulfilled all the building stages - the warships were delivered in 2011.

The new pair of frigates differs from the previous ships by antisubmarine weapons and advanced high-performance propulsion system.

The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) Navy will equip its third and fourth Russian-built Gepard 3.9 (Project 11661) light frigates with the Palma close-in weapon system (CIWS), Nudelman Precision Engineering Design Bureau confirmed in a statement issued 22 April.

The PAVN is scheduled to take delivery of the vessels, reported to be anti-submarine warfare (ASW) variants, in 2017. The first two ships in class, Dinh Tien Hoang and Ly Thai Ho , were commissioned in March and August 2011 respectively and loaded with a similar CIWS.

The Palma CIWS consists of Sosna-R hypersonic surface-to-air missiles, two six-barrel AO-18KD 30 mm automatic cannons and the 3V-89 electro-optical multichannel electronic countermeasures resistant fire-control system. The principal control system is electro-optic with radar back-up.

According to company literature, the system can engage six targets at up to 8 km simultaneously depending on the number of firing modules installed. The manufacturer indicates a gun kill envelope of 0.2 to 4 km to an altitude of 3,000 m and a missile kill envelope of 1.6 to 10 km to an altitude of 5,000 m.