French Frigate Tourville (D 610)

French Frigate Tourville (D 610)

The Tourville is a F67 type large high-sea frigates of the French Marine Nationale specialised in anti-submarine warfare, though it also has anti-air and anti-surface capabilities. She is named after the 17th century admiral Count Anne-Hilarion de Cotentin de Tourville.

Between 1994 and 1996, the Tourville (and the De Grasse) was refitted with the modern SLAMS anti-submarine system, an active Very Low Frequencies sonar.

The frigate Tourville was part of the French naval task group led by the Charles de Gaulle that departed Toulon on 30 October 2010 for a four-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Indian Ocean. and Persian Gulf. The task group commander, Rear Admiral Jean-Louis Kerignard, defined force's mission as follows:

The force would help allied navies fight piracy off the coast of Somalia and send jets to support NATO in the skies above Afghanistan."

Once on station, the Charles de Gaulle carrier task group joined two U.S. Navy carrier strike groups led by the Nimitz class aircraft carrier aircraft carriers USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) operating in the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, between 7–14 January 2011, the French carrier task group led by the Charles de Gaulle participated with bilateral naval exercise, code named Varuna 10, with the Indian Navy. Indian naval units participating in Varuna 10 included the aircraft carrier Viraat, the frigates Godavari and Ganga; and the diesel-electric submarine Shalki. Varuna 10 was a two-phase naval exercise, with the harbor phase taking place between 7–11 January and the sea phase between 11–14 January in the Arabian Sea.