We don't need more ships, we need Anti-Ship Missiles

The Philippine Department of National Defense is about to buy two (2) naval frigates from India. It appears that the Indian bidder has outbid its South Korean and Spanish competitors.

To the layman that would make sense. After all, who would want to spend more for the same equipment? But are we really getting the same equipment? Did we really compare apples to apples here?

Clearly, this situation is not just like buying a Toyota from Dealer A instead of Dealer B. In fact, my greatest fear is that this will be a case of buying an Indian Ambassador instead of a South Korean Hyundai. All because the former is just much cheaper than the latter.

So I made a quick comparison of the as-deployed specs of the rumored offerings of each bidder, and here is what I found:

1. South Korea (Inchon-class frigate)

Displacement: 3,251 tons

Range: 4,345 nmi

Guided Missile (GM) Weapons: Anti-Ship Missiles (ASMs) or Cruise Missiles; Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs)

2. Spain (Avante 2200 Combatant corvette)

Displacement: 2,419 tons

Range: 3,500 nmi

GM Weapons: ASMs; SAMs

3. India (Kamorta-class corvette)

Displacement: 4,200 tons

Range: 4,500 nmi

GM Weapons: None (but claims to have plans for SAMs)

Based on their deployed capabilities, the Indian ship will have a good reason to be the cheapest. In its present deployed configuration, it has no guided missile capability whatsoever. Even if the Philippines is willing to spend for the upgrades, the most that can be done to upgrade the Indian ship is to install SAMs. And, in all likelihood, this would be of the short-range variety. There is no mention at all of ASMs.

ASM and SAM capabilities are what the Philippine Navy sorely needs right now in its naval confrontation with Communist China in the West Philippine Sea. Viewed from this perspective, therefore, this purchase of corvettes from India would not make strategic military sense.

We need surface ships that have ASM and SAM capabilities on a turnkey basis (similar to what Italy had offered us before). If the DND is not capable of buying these with the PN's PHP16 Billion (USD 355 Million) budget, we might as well use the money to install ASMs and SAMs on our three (3) Hamiltons.