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Analysis of the Greek & Turkish Fleet
by the Honorary Fleet Chief Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazaraki-Ainian

FRIGATES

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian: 

"I will say a few words, of what does the Greek navy consists of today. We have 13 frigates of which the four of them are MEKO type, the first one was built in Germany and the other three in the shipyards of Scaramaga, the quality of the sheet metal, the sheet metal work and the ship building work is better in the Greek shipyards than the quality of those made in Germany, I say this to show the skills that we possess.

On the other hand, we no longer have the ability to build such ships, we have lost the know-how. We have Dutch frigates, standard type, as you can see  these are the backbone of our navy (showing the presentations) and our impact force. Excellent ships, we are very lucky because after an initial principal, Ellie and Limnos cancelled the continuation of the program.

But then, the Dutch, after a few years, decided to sell as the rest of the frigates at a really humiliating price, because they wanted to keep their shipyards alive. So they gave away all their ships, "gifted" their ships to Greece in order to build new ships in order to keep their shipyards alive. I say this in order to show the comparison with what we did with our own shipyards.."

Frigates GREECE 13 - 16 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"So they have frigates, eight of which are former American Oliver Hazard Perry type ships. The Americans recommended the same type of ships to us as well. We were lucky at the time and we got the Dutch frigates, they are not as capable as our own frigates but they have installed their own command and control system on their own development ships, from their own defense company, which is part of its defense industry. Almost all of them belong to the armed forces' equity fund.

They have some MEKO frigates, Barbaros etc. and on paper these are of less general capacity than the respective Greek MEKO, except from the latest Yavuz types which are almost equivalent to the Greek ones. But what I have to stress is that the material of the ships is excellent, really excellent, in capital letters. I’ve been there as Fleet Chief as part of the guests of the Turkish Fleet Chief, I have visited their fleet, their naval  bases, I have toured their ships, of course they showed me the best available but I saw how they maintain their ships, how much money they spend on maintaining their ships , how much damage is restored and how many spare parts are available in abundance to be used when needed etc."

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"They have the  MILGEM corvettes, which are of their own making. As I said earlier and I also learned a week ago that now they are also moving towards the construction of the first anti-aircraft frigate which has the name TF 2000 because it was originally supposed to be built in 2000.. "

CORVETTES

Corvettes GREECE 0 - 10 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

“The fast attack missile boats, of which I have the last two here, 72 and 73 [showing the presentations], the rest (Roussen, Danielos, Krystallidis, Grigoropoulos, Ritsos) have been built in the shipyards of Eleusis. These are very good ships, very modern, with very modern weaponry, very capable. Unfortunately, we don’t know if FAC Karathanasis and Vlachakos will be able to be built. We hope that, depending on the economic problems and the support that the shipbuilders of Eleusis will need from the State, the construction of these ships will also be able to be completed as they are very important. The rest of the ships that you see down (showing the presentations) are older ships of which half of them have been upgraded operationally and can last many more years.”

FAST ATTACK

Fast Attack Missile Boats GREECE 19 - 19 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"They have a large number of missile boats, I would say about equivalent to ours, except for the latest ones which have better weapons systems than ours (showing the presentations)."

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"We have several gunboats, they are good ships, they are built in the shipyards of Scaramaga which are now closed. We have some gunboats that complement, say, the power of the American navy old ships etc."

GUNBOATS

Gunboats GREECE 10 - 16 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

“Gunboats of their own design, if you see the photo you will understand (showing the presentations). It's their design and construction, yes they use stealth technology (answer to the question of whether it's stealth) now I don't know how much they have achieved implementing the stealth technology but it doesn't matter.”

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

“A small number of coastline patrol cars. They are very small boats which their sole purpose is to visually identify and show the presence of the targets when the radars of the islands see some targets going out, . They have no other use, say, except in the last few years they've been rounding up illegal immigrants..”

PATROL

Patrol Boats GREECE 6 - 0 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"We have an indicative very small force of minesweepers."

MINES

Minehunters/Minesweepers GREECE 4 - 11 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

“They have a large number of minesweepers, that’s because they have a sensitivity of freedom in the Dardanelles and from there begins their interest in the mine war.”

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2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

We have a huge submarine advantage over the Turks. We have the type 214 submarines, Papanikolis, which was the first submarine, and it was built in Germany. The contracts provided after many regressions, courts, etc. It's Pipinos, Matrozos, Katsonis and two other submarines. Fortunately, the navy managed to get inside the shipyards, to secure a salary for all of the shipyard personnel through the operational budget of the Navy's general staff, in order to allow the unions of the shipyard workers to be able to enter the shipyards and from now on, to complete the construction as “the navy” to the other submarines. But I don’t know if we’ll ever see the last two of them(submarines), I think not, let's hope I'm disproved.

As for the submarines above, you see that I have marked the ocean in green color (showing the presentations) because it is also a part of the submarine contract, upgraded, cut in half, added some particularly important operational capabilities and connected again, now having a longer length by 3 meters. So that's it, we can bring it to the equivalent of the Papanikoli-type submarines. The rest are the well-known old submarines, reliable, very good, although old but with the huge advantage of being too small and therefore have very little echo and can easily hide in the Aegean Sea. Here you see Matrozo in a photo in Kastelorizo, I like this photo because it proves the operational capability of the submarines that everyone said that they were leaning etc, with great responsibility to the journalists who passed the message that these submarines are not worthy. This is the best (submarines) in the world right now.

SUBMARINS

Submarines GREECE 11 - 12 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

“They have a number of submarines. Which are all older, they're a little bigger than our old submarines, they're not more capable in terms of hardware. If we put in the human factor it’s a different story , but speaking purely at the material level, their submarines are just a little bigger than our old ones and of course they have nothing to do with the 214. Turks also have a submarine 214 construction program. It proceeds with long delays because what the Turks care most about is building a submarine 214, the minimum number, with  the help of the Germans, steal their technology and then build the rest of it themselves. The Germans have understood this and there are always frictions and delays in the program but when they finally succeed they will have the knowledge on how to build the submarines themselves.”

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"We have a small force of landing ships and fast attack crafts, built in Greek shipyards. We also have some Russian and Ukrainian fast attack crafts, over 60 knots, which are very impressive and have the ability to carry tanks or entire battalions in a very short time to the islands without even needing a port, they go out on land. These so-called fast attack crafts are operationally important in that they can carry large forces very quickly to an endangered island."

LANDING

Fast Attack Crafts / Landing Ships GREECE 9 - 36 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"They have a large number of landing ships. Here I have only the 33 (showing the presentations) that are considered ships in the sense we give to a ship, but they also have a series of small and larger “flipper” boats which hold a fleet of hundreds of small landing ships that if they leave the coast of Asia Minor they will pass on an opposite island in a very short time."

Amphibious Assault Ship GREECE 0 - 2 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"This is the helicopter(showing the presentation), small aircraft carrier that they have ordered and will have it in their hands operationaly in 2021. I would not say that this threatens us as far as the Aegean , but it is a major threat to the eastern Mediterranean. It should be noted that the F 35s  they buy will also come out in a model that will be able to fly from this ship.."

Seismographic Ships / Drill Ships GREECE 0 - 6 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"This ship is an important acquisition, it doesn’t belong officially  to the Navy but because they could not convince the companies that do seismic surveys to make a research in the areas that the Turks wanted, mainly in the area of southern Kastelorizo and southern Cyprus, they bought their own ship, in fact, they rented it for some years , several years, they painted it red, they named it Barbaros and they now use it without asking for permission from anyone in order to make researches where no one accepts to because the areas are clearly opposed. By no means they can join the realm of the Turkish, let's say, continental shelf or exclusive economic zone."

Navy Air Force GREECE ? - 53 TURKEY

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

"We have  aircrafts, unfortunately from bad handling I would say of the navy itself among which I accept such responsibility, we managed to freeze them several years ago. Fortunately now there is an upgrade program and it is very important. These are planes that fly for up to 18 hours and can cover the entire eastern Mediterranean, they are armed with torpedoes and guided missiles that can be used against ships. They are important because they have the same engines with the c130. So there's an infrastructure community with the air force for maintenance. We have navy helicopters, which are two types, the new ones and the old ones."

2017 - Honorary Fleet Chief, Vice-Admiral Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian:

“They’ve got two types of aircrafts. I don't think that they've succeeded too much in terms of their planes because they are small, and it's been proven that you can't put a reliable anti-submarine weapon on a small plane. However they have a large number of aircrafts and this number gives them the possibility of a short-range short flight time with a large number of aircrafts and so they have a continuous presence in the Aegean, a naval surveillance, these are for naval surveillance, not for air warfare and they also have a presence in the eastern Mediterranean. But under no circumstances will these be compared to our P3s in the eastern Mediterranean, when they are operationally ready. They have a large number of helicopters, about twice as many as ours..”

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