Spanish Navy launches its F-111 frigate Bonifaz fitted with GMV’s advanced solutions

On September 11th, the Spanish Navy celebrated the launching of its F‑111 frigate Bonifaz, at the Navantia shipyard in the city of Ferrol. The F‑111 is the first vessel from the new F‑110 series, which has been designed to relieve the earlier Santa María class frigates. For Spain, this milestone represents a major qualitative advancement in terms of its naval capabilities, with this new vessel equipped with the latest technologies for maritime defense and security operations.

GMV has been playing a key role in this program, by contributing strategic solutions that enhance the vessel’s navigation, tactical management, interoperability, and use of onboard intelligence. One of the highlights of these solutions is the company’s SENDA navigation system, which is able to ensure precise position, velocity, attitude, and time information by integrating a multi-constellation global navigation satellite system (GNSS), military receivers, and inertial sensors. This system ensures robust navigation even in signal-degraded and signal-denied environments, and it incorporates a high-precision time server with redundancy, which is essential for synchronizing all of the onboard systems.

The F-111 frigate’s SCOMBA combat system also integrates GMV’s SAPIIEM JISR suite, which has been developed in accordance with NATO’s STANAG 4559 standard. This technology allows planning and real-time exchanges of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information between the ship’s sensors and other units, which substantially increases situational awareness.

In terms of command and control, the new frigate incorporates GMV’s TALOS C4I system, which facilitates planning, conduct, and execution of naval fire support. This TALOS system is also integrated into SCOMBA, to optimize the operational effectiveness of the vessel’s naval fire capabilities.

GMV’s participation also includes the system’s onboard maintenance console, as well as one of the frigate’s latest-generation sensors, the IRST, with the company developing a scenario simulator and performing very high-fidelity sensor modeling.

Finally, interoperability of the onboard systems is ensured by the use of gateways developed by Autek, a company belonging to the GMV group. These cross-domain solutions act as controlled bridges between networks and systems with different classifications, to ensure secure transmission of information and compliance with NATO’s cybersecurity requirements and standards.

Launching of the F-111 Bonifaz represents the start of a new era for the Spanish Navy, which will now have a class of frigates fitted with state-of-the-art systems and a strong Spanish technological component, with GMV further solidifying its role as a leading strategic partner.

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