Royal Malaysian Navy KD Lekiu Upgrades

Royal Malaysian Navy KD Lekiu Upgrades

Malaysian Navy officials, repeatedly talked about the advantages of hewing to only a handful of basic hull designs and working to extract the maximum from each design's potential.

It is not clear, however, whether the Navy wants to sanction a redesign of the Lekiu Class to accommodate more missile launch tubes, a more powerful engineering plant or a much bigger radar. Several sources said the service was directing design studies to hold to the 51's existing dimensions, but others said those improvements would mean lengthening or otherwise enlarging the hull.

The Navy sees a need for a radar that can handle emerging threats such as a ballistic missile with independently targetable warheads, a weapon under development by China. The roughly 122,000-ton Lekiu X will have an integrated power plant that can drive the powerful radars needed to pick up the fast, small warheads. It will be a challenge.


But Navy plans show a total of only eight Lekiu (X) cruisers over the next 30 years, far less than the stated requirement for 19 of the ships. The shape of the Lekiu(X) program has been in limbo for more than a year. An Analysis of Alternatives was to have been released in the fall of 2010, but the Navy spent all of last year reviewing and revising the plan, and has yet to announce when it could appear.