Spain building a warship for Morocco will broaden cooperation horizons, says expert

The military company “Navantia” in Spain has finally set the date for the start of “Avante 1400”’s manufacturing, a frigate intended for maritime surveillance and meant to be exported to Morocco.

According to the Spanish radio station Radio La Isla, “the company is nearing the date of delivering a frigate to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and next July has been decided to start building a similar warship for Morocco.”

“The company’s experts are currently working on the engineering of the frigate before officially starting its construction next month,” The same source added, noting that “the project will contribute to creating 250 jobs for the Spaniards,” and “it will take one million hours to work on it.”

Mohamed Al-Tayyar, a military and security expert, expressed his view on the military importance of this frigate: “This military ship will make for a great addition to the Moroccan military arsenal in the maritime field, given that Spain is a country known for its developed military industries, especially when it comes naval vessels.”

The pilot added, in an interview with Hespress, that “This frigate comes in light of the military cooperation agreed upon many years ago, even before the diplomatic crisis between the two parties that followed Madrid’s receiving the leader of the Polisario organization.”

“It can also be considered the fruit of the Moroccan Kingdom’s continuous effort to modernize its defensive and offensive arsenal,” the same analyst continues, stating that “this military deal would show the scale of the important military cooperation between the two countries, and how it remains unaffected by the sensitivity of the diplomatic tensions between them, most important of which is the situation in occupied Ceuta and Melilla,  and Madrid’s persistent air surveillance in the Moroccan Sahara.”

The same spokesman stated that “this deal will elevate the partnership between the two countries to new levels of cooperation, especially with a great Spanish awareness of the important role the Kingdom of Morocco plays in preserving regional security,” stressing that “cooperation in military trade deals between Rabat and Madrid dates back a long way, as the Kingdom of Morocco has previously received various weapons from its northern neighbor, but it remains behind compared to its American counterpart.”

The same spokesman concluded, in his statement to Hespress, that “this military deal will heighten the level of cooperation when it comes to immigration between the two parties, especially since Morocco is highly committed to stopping clandestine immigration in the region, which has strengthened the trust between Spain and its southern neighbor.”