The Philippine Navy’s lead Jose Rizal-class guided missile frigate, BRP Jose Rizal (FF-150) arrived in arrived at the Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) shipyard in Ulsan, South Korea, on 15 June for its first dry-docking and associated repairs since the commissioning of the ship in July 2020.
“BRP Jose Rizal will undergo maintenance, repair and overhauling services to be rendered by HHI,” Jose Rizal’s social media page noted. “The said services include repair or replacement of worn-out machinery parts while fulfilling all warranty claims of the ship.”
Details of the vessel’s maintenance and upgrade work and schedule were not disclosed.
Launched in 2019, BRP Jose Rizal was commissioned on 10 July 2020 and is one of two guided-missile frigates acquired under a ₱16 billion (US$287.5 million) contract with HHI. Another ₱2 billion was earmarked for weapon systems and munitions. Its sister-ship, BRP Antonio Luna (FF-151), was commission in March 2021.
The Jose-Rizal-class is a derivative of the HDF-3000 frigate design, which in turn is a smaller version of the Incheon (FFX-1) frigate class operated by the Republic of Korea Navy (RoKN).
The design features a standard displacement of 2,600 tonnes and a length of 107 metres. The two vessels are equipped with a customised version of the Naval Shield integrated combat management system from South Korea’s Hanwha Defense that is comparable with the one in use on the RoKN’s fleet of Incheon-class frigates.
More recently in October 2022, Naval Group announced that it was cleared to install its torpedo countermeasure system aboard the two frigates. The system is based on the company’s CANTO and CONTRALTO product range.
The system will also be incorporated into the frigates’ C-Guard decoy launching system.
by Jr Ng
