From Iver Huitfeldt to ORP Wicher. How a Danish frigate design reached a Polish shipyard

On 12 August, PGZ Stocznia Wojenna in Gdynia holds the christening ceremony for ORP Wicher, the first of three Miecznik-class frigates for the Polish Navy. The ship is due to launch the following day. Its design lineage runs back nearly two decades to a Danish shipyard in Odense and the Iver Huitfeldt class, and its route to the Baltic ran through the United Kingdom, where the same baseline design became the foundation of the Royal Navy's Type 31 programme.

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08 august 2026   |   14:14   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. PGZ Stocznia Wojenna

The Danish starting point

The design behind this lineage came from Odense Maritime Technology (OMT), the design house owned by the Odense Staalskibsværft yard. Between 2008 and 2011, the Royal Danish Navy took delivery of three Iver Huitfeldt-class frigates, developed with the then Danish Navy Materiel Command and classed by DNV.

Iver Huitfeldt was never a marketing showpiece, but it was a carefully engineered answer to build and running costs. The Danes built in modularity through the StanFlex system, gave the hull a spacious layout suited to different weapons fits, and applied commercial shipbuilding standards to a warship, holding costs well below comparable Western frigates. A decade of Royal Danish Navy service generated feedback that later informed how the design was adapted for other customers.

Turning Iver Huitfeldt into Arrowhead 140

In May 2018, Babcock, working with BMT and Thales Group, put forward the Arrowhead 140 design as its bid for the UK's Type 31 programme, intended to replace part of the Royal Navy's Type 23 frigate fleet. Babcock and BMT had previously competed with separate concepts, Arrowhead 120 and Venator 110 respectively, before signing a co-operation agreement in November 2017 and rallying behind a single design.

The Iver Huitfeldt hull formed the basis of Arrowhead 140, with OMT joining Team 31 as a technical partner, contributing its expertise in commercial build methods and modular design. The British adaptation did not carry over the Danish StanFlex system, but it kept the underlying philosophy of interior flexibility. What changed more substantially were the parameters governing battle survivability and compliance with Royal Navy safety standards, which set Arrowhead 140 apart from its Danish parent more than the shared hull form might suggest.

Babcock was awarded the contract to build five Type 31 Inspiration-class frigates at its Rosyth yard in November 2019. The programme has since moved at a steady pace: the lead ship, HMS Venturer, was launched in June 2025, and the second, HMS Active, followed on 21 March 2026. The keel for the third hull, the future HMS Formidable, was laid in December 2025, and on 24 February 2026, the same day HMS Active rolled out of the assembly hall, steel was cut on the fourth ship, HMS Bulldog.

Poland's decision in March 2022

Arrowhead 140 secured its first export win in September 2021, when Indonesia selected it for its Balaputradewa-class frigate programme. Poland followed a few months later. In March 2022, the Polish Armaments Agency chose Babcock's design from three concepts put forward within the PGZ-Miecznik consortium, closing a years-long search for a replacement to the Polish Navy's Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates.

The reasoning behind the choice echoed the one that had already convinced the British: a mature, proven baseline design, lower technical risk than a clean-sheet build, and enough flexibility to tailor weapons and systems to the customer's requirements. Poland's Miecznik-class frigates share Arrowhead 140's core dimensions, at 138.7 metres long, 19.8 metres wide and a standard displacement of 5,700 tonnes, broadly matching the British Type 31. The key differences sit in the fit-out: Thales UK, alongside Polish partner OBR CTM, supplies the TACTICOS combat management system, while air defence rests on MBDA's Sea Ceptor system with CAMM-family missiles, eventually supplemented by the medium-range CAMM-MR being developed jointly with the UK under the Future Common Missile programme.

Three hulls at once in a new hall

What sets the Polish programme apart from Indonesia's, and partly from Britain's own, is the scale of the domestic yard's involvement. PGZ Stocznia Wojenna in Gdynia is building all three hulls in parallel rather than in sequence: work on ORP Burza is proceeding alongside the outfitting of ORP Wicher, and the keel for the third ship, the future ORP Huragan, was laid on 28 April 2026. Bow sections are also being built at the partner CRIST yard in Gdynia, spreading production further across Polish industry.

A new, covered assembly hall was built in Gdynia specifically for the Miecznik programme. That is an infrastructure investment that stays with Poland's shipbuilding sector for decades, and it gives future builds a more predictable schedule than open-berth construction allows. Technology and know-how transfer from Babcock and OMT, covering modular build methods and systems integration, is intended over time to give PGZ Stocznia Wojenna a stronger hand in delivering later stages of the programme, including the additional ships the Polish Navy retained as an option under its agreement with Babcock.

The PGZ-Miecznik consortium signed the contract to design, build and deliver three frigates with Poland's Armaments Inspectorate on 27 July 2021, then valued at roughly PLN 8 billion. Including logistics packages and armament, the programme's total value is now estimated at around PLN 15 billion, making Miecznik the largest order placed with Poland's defence industry since 1989. The christening of ORP Wicher therefore marks not the end of the road but the shift from hull construction to fitting-out and systems integration, the most demanding part of the programme. PGZ Stocznia Wojenna expects the ship to enter service by the end of 2029. It will be followed by ORP Burza and ORP Huragan, and the programme's horizon extends beyond the first three ships, with the Polish Navy holding an option for further frigates of the class.

Jobs and investment

The Miecznik contract gave PGZ Stocznia Wojenna, formerly Stocznia Marynarki Wojennej, a second life after years of decline. The yard, previously majority-owned by the state Industrial Development Agency, had been in liquidation bankruptcy since 2011 and was best known for the long-delayed Gawron corvette project, which eventually yielded only the smaller ORP Ślązak patrol vessel. Today, according to PGZ Stocznia Wojenna chief executive Marcin Ryngwelski, the yard has work secured for seven years ahead. Headcount has grown from 560 to more than 900 over the past year or so, with the company targeting at least 1,200. Infrastructure investment, including the hall in which the frigate hulls are built, has stayed under 2.5 percent of the contract's value, or PLN 300-400 million, much of it self-financed by the yard.

Alongside Miecznik, PGZ Stocznia Wojenna is building the Ratownik rescue vessel, worth roughly PLN 1 billion, and taking part in the consortium building Kormoran-class minehunters led by Gdańsk's Remontowa Shipbuilding. Ryngwelski has also signalled the yard's readiness to take on warship refits, including rearming ORP Ślązak, and even to participate in building a submarine for Poland should such a programme go ahead. The wider family of vessels built on the Arrowhead 140 design is meanwhile growing beyond Poland and the UK, a story Daily Mare will pick up in the next instalment of this series.

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PGZ Stocznia Wojenna ORP Wicher fregaty Marynarki Wojennej Miecznik fregaty Arrowhead 140

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