HD Hyundai starts building the first of two new frigates for the Philippine Navy

South Korea's HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has started construction of the first of two new 3,200-ton frigates for the Philippine Navy. The shipbuilder held a steel-cutting ceremony for the lead ship at its headquarters yard in Ulsan on 4 November, with Philippine Navy officials in attendance alongside Kim San, the executive vice president who heads its naval ship production division.

A steel-cutting ceremony marks the moment the first steel plate for a hull is cut, and it is treated in the industry as the formal start of full-scale construction. The ship now under way is the lead vessel of the pair ordered by the Philippine Department of National Defense in December 2025.

The order

The contract for what the Philippine side calls its second frigate acquisition programme was signed in Manila on 26 December 2025, according to the company announcement carried by Naval News at the time. South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration valued the deal at about 850 billion won, or roughly 587 million US dollars, and the Ulsan Press put the contract value at 844.7 billion won. Naval News reported the Philippine figure as 34 billion pesos.

Both ships are due to be handed over to the Philippine Navy one after the other starting in 2029. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries said it intends to deliver them earlier than the contract requires, drawing on its experience building frigates and on the larger production capacity it gained through last year's merger with the former HD Hyundai Mipo yard.

A repeat of the Miguel Malvar class

The new frigates are being built to the same basic specifications as the two Miguel Malvar-class frigates the company has already delivered to the Philippines. The shipbuilder and Korean reports said that commonality should let the Philippine Navy operate and maintain the new ships alongside the existing pair more efficiently.

Naval News described the Miguel Malvar-class ships as carrying a 16-cell vertical launching system for VL MICA air defence missiles, eight C-Star anti-ship missile launchers, a 76mm main gun, a 35mm close-in weapon system, two triple torpedo launchers and an active electronically scanned array radar. The company has not said whether the new pair will carry an identical weapons fit.

A growing naval partnership

The programme is the fourth naval shipbuilding project between HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and the Philippine Navy. It began with two Jose Rizal-class frigates ordered in 2016 and delivered in 2020 and 2021, followed by the two Miguel Malvar-class frigates and six offshore patrol vessels. With the new pair, the company's Philippine orders reach 12 warships.

The new frigates form part of the Horizon 3 phase of the Philippine armed forces modernisation plan, Naval News reported. It also noted that a 2009 agreement between Seoul and Manila on defence procurement allows Korean companies to negotiate directly with the Philippine Department of National Defense. The Korean procurement agency presented the 2025 contract as a result of government-backed arms sales diplomacy and of Korean firms' maintenance and overhaul support.

Why it matters

Korean-built warships have become a mainstay of the Philippine armed forces, as the Korean procurement agency pointed out when the deal was signed, and this order extends that relationship to a dozen ships. Buying repeats of a design already in service lets Manila add frigates without taking on a new class to train crews for and support. The builder's stated aim of beating the 2029 schedule will matter to a navy that is relying on these ships for its next modernisation phase.