Meko 360

The MEKO 360 was developed as a larger member of the MEKO family, with ships built for Argentina and Nigeria. It offered greater endurance, armament, and command capacity than smaller MEKO corvettes, while keeping the modular construction logic associated with Blohm + Voss. The Argentine MEKO 360H2 ships became major fleet units, and the Nigerian MEKO 360H1 represented a separate export configuration tailored to local requirements.

Technically, the MEKO 360 occupies the upper end of early MEKO export designs. Typical configurations include a medium naval gun, anti-ship missiles such as Exocet, point air-defense weapons, torpedo tubes, sensors, and aviation facilities. Propulsion and combat-system arrangements differ by customer, but the common design intent is a general-purpose surface combatant able to escort, patrol, and operate as a principal fleet unit. Its modularity supported national customization without requiring a clean-sheet warship program.

Operationally, MEKO 360 ships matter because they give mid-sized navies an ocean-going combatant with credible anti-surface and escort capability. In Argentine service, they formed a core part of the surface fleet, while Nigeria used its ship as a high-profile naval asset. The class illustrates how modular export frigates allowed regional powers to acquire sophisticated surface combatants without building every subsystem domestically.