It is not intended as an ASW ship. Its oriented to anti-surface warfare, especially in the littoral (i.e. coastal zone and land inward). It will operate as part of a group of ships, which will provided long range air defence. As for 'lack of armament'....
It's fitted with a 127mm naval gun that fires Volcano projectiles out to 100+km.
It has 2 remote control MLG-27 27mm cannon firing 1700 rpm each out to 2km for close in anti-surface and anti-air,
5 Hitrole remote control HMGs and 2 handtrained HMGs
2x4 Harpoon AShM,
2x 21 RAM Block II (RAM is a missile based CIWS, that can also engage surface targets. The block 2 missile doubles the missile range relative to earlier versions from 9 km to 18 km, and 2 launchers means 42 ready to fire missiles (not to mention reloads, as this missile is compact enough to actually manually reload at sea).
It has space for:
- Submarine ROVs
- 4 × 11 m (36 ft 1 in) RHIB, capable of more than 40 kn (74 km/h)
- 2x 20ft mission containers
It also carrier 2 NH-90/TTH-90. TTH is a troop transport (can carry gun pods and rocket pods), NH is a multirole ASW chopper. These can bring:
Dipping sonar and searchradar and sigint/esm
Marte missile
ASW torps
TTH-90 + arms