Philippines orders 2 new guided missile corvettes from South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries

 

CGI of HDC-3100 corvette from HHI. Photo c/o HHI.

The Philippines Department of National Defense (DND) has ordered 2 new guided missile corvettes for the Philippine Navy (PN) from South Korea naval shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries.

The DND has been reported to have awarded a project to supply 2 new corvettes for the Philippine Navy on 15 December 2021.

It has also confirmed that it has signed the Contract for the corvettes with Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) on 28 December 2021.

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana was quoted by press report saying the decision to build the corvettes with HHI allows for the ease of maintenance and support of the new ships as well as the PN's existing Jose Rizal-class light frigates, which were also built by HHI.

According to Philippine defense page MaxDefense Philippines, HHI has offered their HDC-3100 (also known as the HDF-3100) small warship design to meet the corvette requirements of the Philippine Navy.

The design is an improvement over the Jose Rizal-class which used the HHI's HDF-2600 design, and is around 114 meters long, 14.8 meters wide, and displaces at around 3,100 tons.

It also reported that the Corvette Acquisition Project of the PN is valued at around PHP28 billion (US$550 million), with the project divided into lots for the warship and weapon launchers, and the munitions.

The project is among those included in the Horizon 2 phase of the Revised AFP Modernization Program, and was approved in-principle by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in June 2018.

There are no further confirmation on the timeline of the project, but it is expected that HHI would start building the ships by 3rd quarter of 2022, and complete the first ship of the class by 2nd quarter of 2024.

There are also no official information on the ship's subsystems, but it is believed that it would not deviate much from the subsystems already found on the Jose Rizal-class frigates, including the use of Oto Melara 76mm Super Rapid gun, Aselsan SMASH 30mm secondary gun, LIG Nex1 SSM-700K C-Star anti-ship cruise missiles, and LIG Nex1 K745 Blue Shark anti-submarine torpedoes.

It is expected that a gun-type close-in weapon system (CIWS) as well as a Vertical Launch System (VLS) would be installed.




[1] Inquirer.net
[2] MaxDefense Philippines
[3] Philippine Defense Resource