Navy Constructs First 3600t-Class Frigate Chungnam Ham

Operational Deployment After Delivery to Navy by End of Next Year

The Navy's latest frigate, Chungnam (FFG-828), has been constructed. Chungnam is the Navy's first frigate with a light displacement (the volume of water displaced by the hull) of 3,600 tons.

The Navy and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration announced on the afternoon of the 10th that the launching ceremony for Chungnam, the first ship of the Ulsan-class Batch-III, will be held at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan. After a testing and evaluation period, Chungnam will be delivered to the Navy by the end of December next year, and then will be deployed for operations following the process of becoming fully operational.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The existing Incheon-class (Ulsan-class Batch-I) was 2,500 tons, and the Daegu-class (Ulsan-class Batch-II) was 3,100 tons. Within the same class, the higher the batch number, the better the performance.

Chungnam measures 129 meters in length, 14.8 meters in width, and 38.9 meters in height, and is equipped with a 5-inch naval gun, Korean Vertical Launching System, anti-ship guided missile defense missiles, anti-ship missiles, tactical surface-to-surface missiles, and long-range anti-submarine torpedoes as its main armaments. The ship's "brain," including the combat system, main detection equipment, and armaments, are all domestically produced. Notably, it is the first to be equipped with a multifunction phased array radar (MFR) developed with domestic technology.

Like the Aegis radar, the MFR is fixed on four sides, enabling 360-degree detection and tracking of air and surface targets and simultaneous response to multiple air targets. The previous Incheon-class and Daegu-class operated separate rotating detection and tracking radars, which caused coverage gaps.

The mast of Chungnam was built using the Integrated Sensor Mast (ISM) method. In addition to the four-sided fixed MFR, infrared detection and tracking equipment are included in the mast, and a stealth design was applied. The propulsion system is a hybrid type, similar to the Daegu-class, minimizing underwater radiated noise. It operates domestically developed hull-mounted sonar and towed array sonar system (TASS) to enhance anti-submarine warfare capabilities. Chungnam will replace the older frigates (FF) and patrol combat corvettes (PCC) currently operated by the Navy. Designed and built domestically, Chungnam was contracted for construction with HD Hyundai Heavy Industries in March 2020, with a groundbreaking ceremony in 2021, keel laying in 2022, and now the launching ceremony.

Based on the established naming convention of using names of major local government areas for frigates, the Navy designated the name Chungnam for the first ship of the Ulsan-class Batch-III in November last year. There have been two previous ships named Chungnam in the Navy. The first was the frigate-destroyer DE-821, acquired from the U.S. Navy in 1963, which in 1964 expelled a Soviet submarine that entered Korean territorial waters. The second Chungnam, the frigate FF-953, was the first to complete a world circumnavigation training cruise in 1992 and was decommissioned in 2017.