The Philippine Navy Frigate Combat Management Controversy

During the Maritime Defense Industry Exhibition 2017, the Hanwha Naval Shield Combat Management System Baseline 2 announces that it will supply the Combat Management System for the Philippine Navy Frigate. The Combat Management System is use to integrate and manage weapon systems, radar system, navigational and other subsystems. All information of these are different system are all feed into the single management allowing the operator full situational awareness, targeting and protecting the ship from all kinds of threat.

However, citing from different credible defense post, the Maxdefense Facebook Page objecting the use of Hanwha Naval Shield ICMS. "Aside from cost reduction, this is primarily the reason why Hanwha System cannot offer the same sensor suite originally offered with the Tacticos BL2 CMS because Naval Shield cannot support most of them. " statement read. "For example, the Thales NS100 originally offered by Hyundai Heavy Industries for Frigate Acquisition Project Air and Surface Search 3D radar requirement was launched in 2012, and Naval Shield has not yet been tweaked yet to accept the system, so HHI instead is offering an alternative based on a 1990s-developed 3D radar


The DND's "Hanwha Thales"


The probable of stemming out from the fact that it was originally Hanwha Thales who was dealing with Hyundai and DND/PN during the planning stages of the Frigate Acquisition Project. But when the contract was signed between Hyundai Heavy Industries and Department of National Defense last October 2016, there is no more "Hanwha Thales". Therefore, the DND is wrong in its continuous use of the name "Hanwha Systems" to identify Thales.

Furthermore, the Hanwha Systems' Combat Management System is called the Naval Shield ICMS, which is a product based on the Thales Tacticos Baseline Zero (Tacticos BL0) model develop in the late 1980s by Thomson-CSF (now known as Thales since 2000). Thales formed a joint venture with Samsung in 2000 to form Samsung Thales, and part of their technology transfer agreement included the use of Tacticos BL0 to develop FFX CMS, which was the original name of Naval Shield ICMS.


Meanwhile Thales is already in their Baseline 2 (Tacticos BL2) model which is their current model and the same model originally offered by Hyundai in their submitted bid documents for the FAP Stage 2 bidding, with improvements over Baseline 0 and Baseline 1, including the Maritime Security Operations mode which is not present on both Tacticos BL0 and BL1 and Naval Shield. That means the Naval Shield ICMS, the same CMS model offered by HHI now as part of their "Alternative Configuration" for the PN FAP, is 2 generations older than the Tacticos BL2.

Now, with Thales out of their JV with Hanwha, it also means that Thales has nothing to do with Hanwha Systems' CMS, and will not be part of integration and support of the Hanwha CMS in any way. It also turns out that DND and HHI's continued use of the name "Hanwha Thales" is illegal and was probably done to misinform everyone involved in the FAP., including other people who sourced their info from DND and PN insiders.


The BIG Difference: COMPATIBILITY


The Naval Shield ICMS Baseline 2 is inferior to the Thales Tacticos Combat Management System in such a way that the Thales can integrate many different subsystem while the Naval Shield ICMS has a limited compatibility . The Thales Tacticos CMS is being used by many Navies all around the world while the Naval Shield ICMS is being only used by few Navy such as the Korean Navy. By using the Naval Shield ICMS, this limits the Philippine Navy to integrate different sub-system that are available in the global market.