Spanish shipbuilder Navantia has launched a new offshore patrol vessel for the Royal Moroccan Navy, with delivery scheduled
for 2026.
The Avante 1800 vessel was launched in mid-2025 at Navantia’s San Fernando shipyard in Cadiz, Spain. It was being built as part of a contract announced in January 2021 and financed under a $92 million loan from a Spanish financial group. The contract was years in the making, with Morocco expressing interest in early 2020 for two patrol vessels, but negotiations slowed due to diplomatic issues.
Navantia cut the first steel for the vessel in July 2023 and laid the keel in September 2024. Construction of the 87-meter patrol vessel has involved more than a million hours of work and about 1,100 jobs in three years.
At the launch, Royal Moroccan Navy representative Capt. Mohammed El Fadili called the project “an expression of the deep ties of friendship and cooperation that unite the Kingdoms of Morocco and Spain in general, the Royal Navy and the shipyard of Navantia in particular.”
He highlighted the vessel’s cutting-edge features, “which fully embody the Royal Navy’s ambition to acquire an effective, multipurpose and durable fleet as part of the modernisation of the entire Royal Armed Forces.”
The ships can conduct coastal surveillance and defense, protection of maritime traffic, health assistance to other ships, external firefighting, marine pollution control, transport, search and rescue operations, rapid intervention, frogmen support, surface defense, and passive electronic warfare.
The original design includes a 76 mm cannon, missile launch system, modern sensors and radars, and a helipad.