In January, the Qatari Emiri Navy’s brand-new landing platform dock was launched in Palermo, Italy. At 143 meters long, the ship can accommodate 550 people, two military helicopters, and several landing craft designed for carrying vehicles. The ship, which will soon be transferred to Muggiano to complete at-sea training, is the main symbol of an unprecedented naval expansion project launched by Qatar in the mid-2010s.

Qatar has several reasons to embark on such an expansion. As one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporters, Qatar must secure its essential sea-based extraction activities and export routes across a turbulent Gulf at a time when attacks on tankers and hijackings have become increasingly common. Maritime trade routes have also become much more important for Qatar’s non-oil economy: In 2017, Qatar inaugurated the multibillion-dollar commercial Hamad Port, which repositioned Qatar as a competitive regional economic hub. But noneconomic factors also played a role in Qatar’s decision to upgrade its navy. Tensions between Qatar and some of its Gulf Cooperation Council neighbors escalated in 2014 and left it isolated, especially from 2017-21. While relations were restored following the 2021 signing of an agreement at a GCC meeting in Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, Qatar’s leaders are still focused on building up capabilities to help Qatar counter any future threats. Senior Qatari security officials have also referenced concerns about terrorism, regional instability, and drug smuggling as motivating factors for the naval expansion.

The accelerated growth of the Qatari navy was facilitated by two crucial partners: Italy and Turkey. In 2009, the Qatari navy had only seven fast attack craft (all shorter than 60 meters) and a few coastal patrol craft shorter than 15 meters. In 2017, Qatar signed a $5.9 billion contract with Italy’s Fincantieri for four corvettes, two offshore patrol vessels, and a landing platform dock, which was followed by a $1.1 billion deal with MBDA Italy for missiles for the new ships. Two years later, Qatar purchased 28 NH90 helicopters from Italy’s Leonardo for $3.7 billion, 12 of which are in the naval configuration. And there is speculation that Qatar could procure Italian submarines soon. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Ares Shipyard has supplied 31 new patrol boats to the Qatari coast guard – effectively the entirety of the coast guard’s new fleet – since 2016 and recently announced it would supply three additional interceptors. And Anadolu Shipyard signed contracts to supply two 90-meter cadet training ships and four landing ships to the Qatari navy.

The Qatari navy’s rapid growth has several implications. First, the increase in the number of platforms is being accompanied by an expansion in Qatar’s naval infrastructure. The maintenance requirements for Qatar’s new landing platform dock, for example, are much more complex than those of a fast attack craft, so Qatar recently inaugurated two new navy facilities. In 2019, Qatar inaugurated Al Dayeen Naval Base, the headquarters for the Qatari coast guard, approximately 19 miles north of Doha. In 2019, Qatar also started building the Umm Al Houl Naval Base, adjacent to Hamad Port, which is intended to accommodate thousands of personnel and the navy’s largest acquisitions, including its four corvettes and landing platform dock. For added security, the Qatari navy contracted MBDA to build a coastal missile defense system at Umm Al Houl, which was unveiled in February and cost over $700 million. The base will also be equipped with a naval operation center built by Leonardo, the first of its kind in Qatar, to monitor the country’s waters and provide better situational awareness.

These acquisitions have been accompanied by renewed training efforts as some estimates suggest the Qatari navy will need four times as many personnel as in 2016 once all of Fincantieri’s vessels are delivered. A Qatari navy spokesperson claimed the navy is expected to increase from fewer than 3,000 personnel in 2022 to 7,000 by 2025. To address its staffing needs, in 2018, Qatar expanded its compulsory national service program from three to 12 months and began allowing women to volunteer for the military. The Mohammed Bin Ghanem Al Ghanem Maritime Academy, a specialized institute aimed at expanding the navy’s ranks, opened in 2019. Additionally, Doha established the Maritime Center for Warfare Courses and Operational Training to train naval officers through coursework and simulators in 2022. Since 2018, Qatar has been sending officers and enlisted personnel to Italy to complete training on the ships it acquired from Fincantieri. Despite all these efforts, Qatar will be challenged to fully man its naval platforms exclusively with Qataris, given the country’s small population and correspondingly small pool of military-age Qataris eligible to serve on board ships. However, defense expert DB Des Roches argues that it is relatively easy to hire third-country nationals to crew ships. There are many Filipino and Indian sailors ready to serve as crewmen in the Qatar navy, and Eastern European officers have already served in command and technical positions aboard ships in the navies of other Gulf Arab states.

Much of this Qatari naval expansion has been in planning documents or taking shape in Italian and Turkish shipyards (and with high-tech French defense company Thales) for years. With these ships, systems, and port infrastructure now operational or well along in the procurement pipeline, the real challenge begins for Qatar’s military to absorb these assets and ramp up training and manpower recruitment efforts. If current military cooperation trends continue, Qatar is also likely to ramp up security cooperation and joint naval exercises, with the United States, its key security partner. And the perennial challenge for Gulf security will also need to be confronted: ensuring the billions of dollars spent on procurement translate into heightened, sustainable security capabilities.