Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has made significant inroads into the Asian arms market, with its Blue Spear coastal missile system being selected by Singapore for the RSS Valour warship.
This comes after IAI was part of Israel’s largest-ever arms sale worth $4bn to Greece, which included the company’s Barak MX medium-range interceptor missile.
This is a notable development for both IAI and Singapore, with the 8,000-tonne warship acting as a massive upgrade on the city-state's existing fleet of vessels weighing up to 595 tonnes, Globes observed.
The Blue Spear, developed by IAI in collaboration with Singaporean defence contractor ST Engineering, is derived from the Gabriel missile platform and is designed for all-weather, around-the-clock deployment.
The system features radar homing heads, advanced navigation capabilities and high-velocity engagement at extended range. It will replace Singapore's ageing Harpoon missiles aboard the new vessel. Several European nations operate variants of the same system.
The RSS Valour is configured as a command ship and mothership for unmanned aerial, naval and underwater systems, with an operational endurance exceeding 21 days at sea and a crew of fewer than 100.
ST Engineering's shipyard completed construction in 455 days from first steel cut to launch. Beyond the IAI system, the vessel integrates a French-made radar and an Italian-made main gun.
The deployment of the Blue Spear highlights Israel's growing role as a supplier of advanced naval strike systems to Indo-Pacific defence forces, with ST Engineering's co-development role reflecting Singapore's strategy of embedding local industrial capability into major platform acquisitions.
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