Singapore Fits Blue Spear Missiles to Formidable Frigates, Replacing the Harpoon

RSS Steadfast, the third of the Formidable-class stealth frigates, was open to guided public tours at the Tokyo International Cruise Terminal on August 21 and 22, 2026. Photographs taken during the visit and published by The War Zone are the first public images of a Blue Spear anti-ship missile launcher installed aboard a warship.

The frigate carried a single quad-pack launcher on its missile deck during the Japan call. The class can accommodate up to 24 rounds in six quad packs, so the Tokyo fit represents a fraction of the magazine the ships are designed around. Neither Singapore's Ministry of Defence nor the manufacturer has published a delivery schedule for the retrofit across the six hulls.

Blue Spear is built by Proteus Advanced Systems, a joint venture between Israel Aerospace Industries and Singapore's ST Engineering. IAI credits the turbojet-powered, subsonic weapon with a maximum range of 290 kilometers, an active radar seeker backed by an inertial navigation system the company describes as immune to satellite navigation jamming, and a low sea-skimming approach designed to complicate interception. It can be fired in fire-and-forget or fire-and-update modes and, unlike the missile it replaces, can be used against land targets as well as ships.

The RGM-84 Harpoon it supplants is credited with roughly 120 kilometers in GlobalMilitary.net's database and has no land-attack mode. Singapore selected Blue Spear as the Harpoon's replacement in 2023; the design shares its heritage with the Gabriel family Israel has developed since the 1960s. Estonia is the other declared customer, having picked the missile for coastal defense.

The six Formidable-class ships are multi-mission derivatives of the French Navy's La Fayette-class design, adapted for the Republic of Singapore Navy and in service since 2007. At 3,200 tonnes and 114.8 meters, they are the largest surface combatants Singapore operates and give the republic one of the more capable frigate forces in a region where the largest frigate fleets are concentrated further north. The missile swap is one strand of a mid-life upgrade that also covers the combat management system, communications and engineering plant.

The upgrade will overlap with the arrival of the Victory-class Multi-Role Combat Vessels, six of which are on order as drone motherships with deliveries expected from 2028. The MRCV design includes at least four Blue Spear mounting points as an option, which would make the missile the common anti-surface weapon across Singapore's future surface fleet, alongside the Invincible-class submarines delivered from Germany.

Shipyard capacity, integration personnel and missile production are the constraints that will set the pace: the Formidable retrofits and the MRCV deliveries draw on the same pool through the end of the decade.