The Hellenic Navy frigate, HS Psara, this week reported on station for her second tour of duty with the EU Naval Force, Somalia.
She will be part of the EU’s Operation Atalanta counter-piracy tasking for the next three months. Psara was previously in the seas off the Horn of Africa and the western Indian Ocean from December 2008 to April 2009.
Psara is a Meko 200HN Class vessel that was commissioned eight months before her first tour of duty in the EU Navfor fleet.
With a displacement of 3 350 tons, fully laden, Psara has a top speed of 31 knots and a range of 4 100 nautical miles. Her crew complement is 173, with a 22 strong officer corps.
She carries eight Harpoon missiles, 16 Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles as well as six torpedoes and an array of chaff launchers as well as torpedo decoys. A Sikorsky S-70B-6 Aegean Hawk helicopter is carried aboard.
Operation Atalanta started in December 2008 and is conducted in accordance with UN Security council resolutions. It will run until the end of this year and has as objectives the protection of World Food Programme (WFP) vessels delivering aid to displaced persons in Somalia and the protection of AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) shipping as well as deterring piracy and armed robbery at sea and protecting vulnerable shipping off the coast of Somalia.
The EU Navfor fleet has to date this year had to deal with two only attacks and has not been asked for assistance in a single suspicious event. Statistics show there is currently a single vessel held by Somali pirates and an estimated 50 hostages.
