Talk:List of active Finnish Navy ships

Cleanup
I have cleaned the list a bit a lot, removing unnecessary redlinks and vessels that are no longer listed on the website of the Finnish Navy. I will continue working on this and the decommissioned ships list at some point, and try to find out which vessels have actually been removed from the inventory and add them to the other list. This and the other list could use some rearranging and further cleaning — do we have any good examples of "list of ships" that could be used as an example? Any comments are welcome. Tupsumato (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2012 (UTC)


 * BTW, the Finnish Navy links are insanely long. The size of the article almost tripled even though I only added references. :D Tupsumato (talk) 20:16, 31 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Good work! Perhaps the list could be improved further by adding images, commissioning dates and type / class ship totals. Also a short mention of decommissioned sister ships if the class originally included more vessels than currently in service might be useful (eg. "Kampela 1 and Kampela 2 decommissioned in xxxx and xxxx respectively"). List of current ships of the Royal Australian Navy has a quite nice format in my opinion. MKFI (talk) 10:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I can work on this when I have time. Tupsumato (talk) 11:12, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I made some tables. What do you think? I think we can include the Katanpää class as it's coming pretty soon. Tupsumato (talk) 16:02, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I like the idea with the tables, but I believe we could work a little on the design. I could lend a hand during evening hours. --MoRsE (talk) 16:15, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I will work on them every now and then. Tupsumato (talk) 18:18, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Good work, MoRsE! I have added and will continue adding details (builders, years, etc.) whenever I have time working on the list. As for the background color, I would prefer white as teh dark grey makes the table "heavy". At least I would propose swapping the background colors of the title row and the data rows so that the former would be darker than the latter. I also think we could omit ship-specific inline citations if they just point to the Finnish Navy website, which is cited in the lead section. The links are rather long and make editing harder. I would also propose that we should start working on the red class links. I'm still working on the icebreaker project, but I don't mind jumping to Navy every now and then. Tupsumato (talk) 04:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Corvettes or frigates?
The list of naval ships contains the assertion that the future Pohjanmaa class corvettes are actually frigates. This note is based solely on a somewhat opinionated article by reporter Jarmo Huhtanen in the daily Helsingin Sanomat in 2019. At the time, there was a lively discussion on whether the Finnish Navy should order larger ships or stick to small fast attack craft, and the article in question supported one side of the argument. Historians may recall a similar argument from the late 1920s when the Navy ordered two heavily armed coastal defense ships (the Väinämöinen class).

The displacement of the Pohjanmaa class is 3900 tons. The definition of what constitutes a corvette, a frigate, or indeed a destroyer, has changed over the years. During WW2, destroyers ran to around 1300-3500 tons depending on the country while corvettes weighed in at around 900-1000 tons and frigates between 100-1500 tons. Modern frigates like the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen class run to 5290 tons, the Dutch De Zeven Provincien class come in at 6050 tons, the French-Italian FREMM class at 6000-6700 tons, and the British Type 26 frigates at 6900 tons. Although smaller frigates exist (the article in question specifically mentions the Russian Steregushchi class at 2200 tons), NATO frigates as a rule displace over 5000 tons; see also the Spanish Álvaro de Bazán class (5800-6390 t.), the Danish Ivar Huitfeld class (6645 t.), the German Sachsen class (5800 t.) and the British Type 23 (Duke) class (4900 t.). The smallest modern destroyers start at c. 3000 tons while the largest displace as much as cruisers at 10 000 tons. Admittedly most modern corvettes displace less than 2000 tons, but at 3900 tons, the Pohjanmaa class is less than 20% heavier than the Indian Kamorta class of corvettes, which, with a displacement of 3300 tons, are slightly longer than the Pohjanmaa class at 109 vs. 105 meters. At least by NATO standards, the Pohjanmaa class is intermediate between corvettes and a frigates, weighing in at slightly more than half of a typical NATO frigate and with roughly a third less length. I would deem the comment in the list as representing an individual opinion rather than a fact.--Jarmo K. (talk) 17:51, 16 April 2022 (UTC)


 * IMHO ships should be classified primarily based on their mission and capabilities, not purely by displacement. In this case, the ice strengthening adds weight. All WP:RS refer to the ships as corvettes; calling them frigates is an opinion. However, the issue is notable enough that it is mentioned in the class article. Nonetheless, this list should refer to them by their official designation i.e. corvettes. Tupsumato (talk) 18:47, 16 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Replaced "frigate" with "corvette" and removed unnecessary information from the list article. Tupsumato (talk) 06:09, 19 April 2022 (UTC)