On a quiet June morning in Lorient, France and Greece quietly sealed a strategic deal in steel and electronics, reshaping the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean.
A new Greek warship with a message for Ankara
On 4 June 2025, a 122‑metre warship eased into the River Scorff at Lorient. The ship, named HS Formion after a 4th‑century BC Athenian strategist, is the third Defence and Intervention Frigate (FDI) ordered by Greece from France’s Naval Group.
The ceremony, almost theatrical in its choreography, featured Greek Defence Minister Nikolaos Dendias alongside his French counterpart’s representative, Alexandre Lahousse, plus senior officers from both navies. Flags crossed, speeches stayed polite, handshakes were firm. Yet the subtext was blunt: Greece is rearming at sea, and France is the one handing it the tools.
Greece’s new FDI frigates give Athens a modern naval spearhead able to shadow, deter or confront Turkish forces across the eastern Mediterranean.
Formion follows two sister ships: Kimon, already on sea trials, and Nearchos, now being fitted out. All three are due for delivery between 2025 and 2026. For a region already bristling with tension over gas exploration, maritime borders and exclusive economic zones, this new Greek capability raises the stakes.
France’s €800 million “tech jewel”
Each FDI frigate carries an estimated price tag of around €800 million. That figure includes a dense package of high-end sensors, missiles and digital systems designed to match or outclass Turkish surface combatants.
- Unit cost per frigate: about €800 million
- Number ordered by Greece: 3 FDI HN (Hellenic Navy variant)
- Expected delivery window: 2025–2026
On paper, the FDIs don’t look extravagant compared with larger destroyers fielded by other NATO navies. In practice, they pack a potent mix of air defence, anti-ship and anti-submarine capabilities in a compact, stealthy hull.
Partnership forged in steel and supply chains
This isn’t a simple off-the-shelf export. Paris has gone out of its way to brand the FDI deal as a genuine partnership with Athens. Key sections of the ships are built not only in Lorient but also at the Salamis shipyard near Athens. Around 70 Greek companies have joined the supply chain.
| French prime contractors | Greek industrial partners |
| Naval Group | Hellenic Aerospace Industry |
| Thales | INTRACOM Defense |
| MBDA | MEVACO |
That means the frigates are not just French-built assets sailing under a foreign flag. They embed Greek hardware and know-how: electronic modules, structural elements and specialised components. For Greece, this spreads jobs and skills across its defence sector, rather than sending all the money abroad.
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Stealthy silhouette, heavy punch
At first glance, Formion looks almost minimalist. The superstructure is angular, the mast is a single compact block, and surfaces are carefully shaped to scatter radar waves. This stealthy profile makes the frigate harder to detect at long range.
Below the minimalist exterior lies a dense array of sensors: the Sea Fire multifunction radar with active electronically scanned antennas, a hull sonar, advanced electronic warfare systems, and a fully digital communications suite. Two redundant onboard data centres manage combat information and cybersecurity, reflecting modern thinking about ships as “floating networks” as much as traditional steel hulls.
Weapons tailored for Mediterranean deterrence
Armed with Aster surface-to-air missiles and Exocet anti-ship weapons, the FDI gives Greece a flexible platform able to respond from the surface to the stratosphere.
The Greek FDI configuration is clearly tuned for multi-directional threats. Official figures show:
- 32 Aster surface-to-air missiles for area air defence
- 8 Exocet MM40 Block 3c anti-ship missiles
- RAM short-range defence system against incoming missiles or drones
- 76 mm naval gun for surface targets and air defence
- MU90 torpedoes launched from four tubes, backed by a towed CAPTAS-4 compact sonar
- CANTO decoy launchers to confuse enemy torpedoes
The ship can also operate a 10‑tonne helicopter such as the NH90 and a vertical take-off drone. This combination expands its reach far beyond the line of sight, vital in any confrontation with Turkish surface groups or submarines.
Context: Greek–Turkish rivalry moves offshore
The timing of Formion’s launch is anything but random. The eastern Mediterranean has become a contested energy and security zone, with Turkey and Greece clashing diplomatically over maritime boundaries, gas fields and drilling rights off Cyprus and near the Dodecanese islands.
Ankara has invested heavily in its own navy, commissioning locally built corvettes, frigates and the amphibious assault ship TCG Anadolu. It has also pushed for a more assertive posture at sea, frequently escorting research or drilling vessels into disputed waters.
Athens, long worried about being outpaced, has responded with a major shopping list: French Rafale fighters, upgraded submarines, new drones and now the FDI frigates. Spain, Italy and the US remain relevant suppliers, but France has moved into pole position in Greece’s high-end naval segment.
The signal to Ankara is clear: any move near Greek or Cypriot waters will now face modern, networked Greek ships backed by French technology and political support.
Formion is not designed as a first-strike weapon. Greek officers describe the FDIs as tools of “presence and control”. That means sitting silently on key sea lanes, tracking aircraft, ships and submarines, then responding—politically or militarily—if needed.
France, availability champion and quiet arms broker
Behind this contract lies another detail that interests naval planners: operational availability. French officials like to highlight that their surface fleet often spends more days at sea per year than comparable US or UK ships, thanks to maintenance policies and design choices aimed at reliability.
For a smaller navy like Greece’s, that metric matters. A handful of high-availability frigates can be worth more than a larger fleet that spends too much time in dry dock. If the FDIs achieve the same readiness rates in Greek service, they will effectively be present in contested waters far more often than older vessels.
What “multi-mission” really means at sea
The label “multi-mission frigate” can sound like marketing jargon. In practice, for a ship like Formion, it translates into several distinct roles:
- Air defence: protecting Greek islands, task groups or commercial traffic against aircraft and missiles
- Anti-submarine warfare: tracking quiet submarines in the deep basins of the Mediterranean
- Surface warfare: shadowing and, if ordered, engaging enemy frigates or corvettes
- Special forces support: landing commandos, monitoring coasts or sabotage operations
- Hybrid threat response: dealing with drones, small fast boats or coercive “grey zone” tactics
This flexibility fits a Mediterranean environment where crises can jump quickly from diplomatic standoffs to close-in naval brinkmanship.
Wider stakes: European defence and strategic autonomy
The FDI deal also feeds an ongoing debate inside Europe: can the continent build genuine strategic autonomy, or will it remain reliant on US firepower and technology? For Paris, the Greek frigates are evidence that Europe can design, build and export advanced warships without US input.
Yet the programme is still essentially a bilateral Franco‑Greek agreement, not an EU‑wide initiative. That raises questions about whether such deals strengthen a collective European posture or simply create a patchwork of national arrangements stitched together by NATO.
Possible scenarios in the eastern Mediterranean
Analysts sketch a few realistic scenarios where the new Greek FDIs would matter:
- Escalation around a drilling ship: A Turkish exploration vessel approaches a disputed area, escorted by warships. An FDI shadows the group, locks its radar on Turkish aircraft and broadcasts warnings, raising the cost of further escalation.
- Submarine chess game: Rumours of a foreign submarine close to a Greek island trigger a hunt. The FDI deploys its towed sonar and helicopter, forcing the intruder to withdraw or risk exposure.
- Airspace friction: Turkish jets fly near Greek airspace. The FDI’s long-range radar feeds data to Greek air defence centres and Rafale fighters, tightening coordination.
Each of these cases shows the ship functioning less as a trigger and more as a stabiliser with teeth: a platform that can see, signal and, if necessary, fight.
Key concepts and risks around high-tech frigates
Two notions sit at the heart of the FDI design: digitisation and integration. The ship is essentially a floating data hub that fuses information from radar, sonar, drones and satellites, then distributes it to other units. This creates a shared operational picture, where one ship’s sensors can guide another’s weapons.
Yet that connectivity brings risks. Cybersecurity becomes as critical as armour. A malware infection or spoofed data stream could degrade an entire task group. That is why the FDI’s twin data centres and “cyber by design” architecture attract so much attention among specialists.
The cost-benefit trade-off is just as sharp. For roughly €800 million per hull, Greece obtains a sharp technological edge but also commits to decades of maintenance, upgrades and crew training. These ships will shape Greek defence budgets well into the 2040s. If tensions with Turkey rise, they may look like a bargain. If the region calms, critics will question whether such expensive assets were the right bet.
For now, though, the Formion’s grey outline on the Scorff is a physical symbol of a region on edge. France has just handed Greece a high-tech tool designed not only to defend its coastline, but also to signal to Ankara that any miscalculation at sea will meet a response that is modern, networked and ready.