BNS chief executive Azhar Jumaat said the remaining four were at the 48%, 43%, 36% and 22% completion stage.

“Many have claimed that the LCS are non-existent, that they’re made of wood and even that the Sultan of Perak had been misled. All these claims are untrue,” he said.

“Most importantly, these are not wooden ships, nor replicas. Seeing is believing,” he said during a media visit to the project site at the BNS dockyard here.

The LCS programme, which costs a total of about RM9 billion, is the biggest military procurement undertaken by the defence ministry.

The project has come under parliamentary criticism over its costs and delays in delivery – the first was scheduled for delivery in 2019 and the others in stages every six months until this month.

Last week, following the release of a report by the parliamentary watchdog Public Accounts Committee (PAC), comments were spread on social media claiming that a wooden mockup of the first ship, KD Maharaja Lela, had been used for the launch ceremony in 2017.

On Wednesday, former navy chief Ahmad Kamarulzaman Ahmad Badaruddin said it was untrue that the ceremony was intended to deceive the public.

There were also claims that the ceremony involved a fully-commissioned ship, but Kamarulzaman, who was at the launch, said the ship was not fully completed at the time.

The LCS project has come under much scrutiny after PAC chairman Wong Kah Woh recently revealed that not a single ship had been completed although Putrajaya had already spent RM6 billion on the project, which was given to BNS through direct negotiations.