Meko corvette steams home.

The Blohm + Voss-built SAS Spioenkop Meko A-200 corvette arrived in her home port of Simons Town (near Cape Town), South Africa, where she is to be outfitted with weapons and electronics systems. The third of a total of four corvettes for the South African Navy was met by her sister ship the SAS Amatola, which is the type ship of this building programme, and was handed over to the South where major portions of the aircraft will be built. The EA-18G will perform surveillance and electronic jamming of enemy threat radars and communications nets. It features a new, high-performance electronic attack suite based on the Increased Capability (Icap) III system that Northrop Grumman originally developed for the Prowler. However, instead of transmitting electronic signals over broad frequency ranges to 'blind' adversary radars operating within each range, the EA-18G will use software to rapidly focus its jamming energy on any frequency band being used by enemy surface-to-air missile system radars, making it particularly effective against frequency-agile radar threats. African Navy on 25 September 2003. The second corvette, the SAS Isandlwana, was, at the time of writing, being fitted-out in Simons Town, whereas the fourth vessel is scheduled to be christened and handed over on 15 June 2004. The latter two units are built by Germany's Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel. The contract for building the four corvettes was received by the European South African Corvette Consortium (Esacc) in December 1999.