The U.S. State Department has approved two missile sales to Finland. This includes Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles for the new multipurpose corvettes and [Harpoon missiles] for the Hamina class, the new corvettes, and for coastal batteries.

Evolved Sea Sparrow is a medium range air defense missile developed by Raytheon. It is a well established brand which is used in many nations. Finland will apparently buy 68 ESSMs and an inert training missile. Finland also buys 17 quad pack canisters and eight shipping containers. The price of this is estimated at $112.7 million.

Harpoon is an anti-ship missile which is widely used. However, Finland will buy the new Extended Range (ER) version which has a range of almost 250 kilometers. This is also known as Harpoon Next Generation, and Finland is the first buyer of the missile since it was unveiled by Boeing in 2015. In total Finland will buy 112 Harpoon missiles and eight exercise missiles. The price of the Harpoon package is estimated at $622 million.

The announcement comes as a surprise as earlier rumors said that Finland was considering the Saab RTS-15 or Kongsberg NSM missiles.

Finland’s four new multipurpose corvettes are constructed under the name of Flotilla 2020. Their costs are estimated at €1.2 billion which does not include the missiles. They will have a displacement of around 3000 tons, a length of 105 meters, a breadth of 15 meters, and a draft of 5 meters.

Update: I was wrong on this one. Finland actually decided to acquire the Israeli anti-ship missile system Gabriel. So they bought neither Harpoon, nor Saab RTS-15, nor Kongsberg NSM.