Details of the Frigate 4000 for the Royal Thai Navy by Hanwha Ocean, South Korea

11 Juli 2025

Hanwha Ocean 4,000-ton export frigate at MADEX 2025 with Mistral SIMBAD-RC as CIWS (photos: NavalNews)

South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean showcased new destroyer and export frigate designs at the MADEX 2025 international naval exhibition held at the BEXCO Exhibition Center in Busan, Republic of Korea from May 28 to 31, 2025.

At that time, Hanwha Ocean had unveiled three concept models of a future destroyer, one of which was the Hanwha Ocean Destroyer 8000, which had a displacement of 8,200 tons, a length of 156.3m, a beam of 18.8m, and a draft of 9.9m.

The next ship type is a primarily export-oriented frigate based on the Republic of Korea Navy's Chungnam-class (FFX Batch-III) frigates, the Hanwha Ocean Frigate 4500.

The Frigate 4500 has a full load displacement of approximately 4,500 tons, a length of 130m, a width of 16m and a draft of 7.6m. It is equipped with a CODLOG (Combined Diesel-Electric or Gas) diesel-electric and gas turbine propulsion system and can reach a maximum speed of 29knots.

The final model is the Frigate 4000 , which is based on the Royal Thai Navy (RTN) frigate class HTMS Bhumibol Adulyadej , which Hanwha Ocean previously built for export to Thailand.

According to the actual data of the displayed model, the Frigate 4000 has a full load displacement of 3,700 tons, a length of 124m, a width of 14m and a draft of 8m. It is equipped with a CODAG (Combined Diesel and Gas) diesel and gas turbine propulsion system, the same as the Royal Thai Navy's HTMS Bhumibol Adulyadej, and a maximum speed of 27knots.

Hanwha Ocean promotes the Frigate 4000 as a high-quality, fast-delivery, and proven system, drawing on the Royal Thai Navy’s operational experience.

To enable rapid adaptation to evolving battlefield conditions, the Frigate 4000 adopts a modular design that supports future upgrades, additional armament and flexible system configurations.

Positioned atop a Frigate 4000, it offers sufficient and customizable interior space to support diverse mission requirements and future capability expansion. In addition, Hanwha Ocean has designed a shipboard system that will support a variety of foreign weapon and sensor systems.

To make the most suitable configuration based on the customer's needs and budget constraints, the weapon system installed on the ship also includes SIMBAD launchers for MBDA Mistral short-range surface-to-air missiles as a CIWS close-in defense system.

Analytical comments: 

The Royal Thai Navy has a requirement for four new high-performance frigates to be built in Thailand. However, the situation in the Thai parliament after the cabinet reshuffle has caused instability in the government, except in late June 2025 when the Thai Ministry of Defense approved the amendment of the S26T submarine contract to accept the Chinese CHD620 diesel engine power generation instead of the German MTU 396 that is not exported to China.

Which is still an issue that must be approved by the Cabinet and the Thai Parliament respectively as a government-to-government (G-to-G) agreement. The approval of the 2026 budget for the first phase of the frigate procurement project is approximately 1,750,000,000 baht ($53,796,496) for only 1 ship, while the Royal Thai Navy has explained that it wants to continuously build 2 new frigates in the country .

(AAG)