Hanwha Ocean’s Integrated Vision for Next-Generation Submarines
Beyond Platforms
BY JOETEY ATTARIWALA
Hanwha Ocean is a core pillar of the Hanwha Group’s defence and industrial enterprise and a key contributor to South Korea’s rapid emergence as a major global supplier of advanced naval platforms. As part of one of South Korea’s largest and most technologically diverse conglomerates, Hanwha Ocean carries forward a shipbuilding and naval innovation legacy that positions the company as a competitive global prime in the design, construction, and sustainment of next-generation submarines and surface vessels. Today, Hanwha Ocean plays a central role in the Group’s overarching defence vision: to become a global integrated systems provider capable of delivering sovereign, end-to-end defence solutions across land, sea, air, and space. This strategic direction aligns closely with South Korea’s national priority of expanding defence exports, strengthening domestic industrial capability, and deepening security cooperation with allied nations.
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THE BROADER HANWHA GROUP
Across the broader Group, Hanwha defines its defence posture through three strategic lenses that directly inform Hanwha Ocean’s naval business. First, the company emphasizes localized, sovereign-capable production as a core element of its international engagements, seeking to embed deep in-country industrial participation within host nations. Second, Hanwha focuses on integrated systems and platform-level solutions rather than isolated subsystems, ensuring that its naval offerings combine propulsion, combat systems, sensors, weapons, and digital infrastructure into cohesive mission-ready platforms. Third, Hanwha pursues targeted, long-term investments that enable scale and resilience in export markets, particularly in regions such as the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and North America. This combination of localization, systems integration, and long-term investment underpins Hanwha Ocean’s rapid growth and its expanding role in global naval procurement competitions.
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Hanwha’s multi-domain technology depth strengthens Hanwha Ocean’s ability to field complete maritime solutions. The Group’s land-system successes — most notably the widely exported K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer and the AS21 Redback infantry fighting vehicle — demonstrate its capability to absorb requirements, integrate complex systems, and execute large-scale co-production programs. Meanwhile, Hanwha Aerospace and Hanwha Systems bring advanced propulsion, sensor suites, unmanned technologies, C4ISR integration, and space-based capabilities to the Group’s naval offerings. These shared capabilities increase Hanwha Ocean’s competitiveness by enabling the company to integrate proprietary combat systems, energy technologies, advanced materials, AI-enabled analytics, and autonomous functions directly into its submarine and surface ship designs. The scale of the Group provides further advantages through supply-chain integration, financing strength, smart-factory manufacturing methods, and cross-domain engineering commonality.
HANWHA’S GROWTH
Hanwha’s international expansion strategy also informs Hanwha Ocean’s approach to new markets, including Canada. The Group prioritizes entry into countries where sovereign industrial requirements, interoperability demands, and defence industrial policy favour deep co-production and long-term cooperation. Hanwha’s partnerships in Poland, Australia, and across NATO states illustrate this model: early commitments to in-country manufacturing, transparent technology transfer, and robust local supply-chain development. These lessons define Hanwha Ocean’s approach to delivering advanced naval capability while enabling host nations to grow domestic industrial capacity.
Technology acquisition and partnership are central to Hanwha’s growth model, and these principles are embedded within Hanwha Ocean’s strategy for submarine innovation. Through targeted acquisitions, joint ventures, and co-development initiatives, the Group has expanded its portfolio in propulsion, radar, guided weapons, automation, and AI. Hanwha Ocean benefits directly from this ecosystem: advanced underwater propulsion technologies, integrated combat systems, and digital engineering tools are shared across Group entities and incorporated into evolving submarine platforms. Hanwha’s technology strategy is iterative and scalable — partner for capability, industrialize locally with the host nation, and leverage co-production to enable long-term sustainment and export opportunities.
Hanwha invests significantly in emerging technologies that are reshaping maritime defence, including autonomy, AI-enabled decision support, robotics, and directed-energy systems. For Hanwha Ocean, digital engineering, simulation-based design, and advanced manufacturing underpin a shift toward high-efficiency, high-precision shipbuilding. Digital twins, predictive maintenance systems, automated welding and assembly lines, and simulation-driven design cycles reduce lead times, increase quality, and allow rapid replication of production lines in partner countries. These capabilities directly support projects such as the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project, where lifecycle management, and long-term sustainment are critical decision criteria.
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LOCALIZATION COMMITMENTS
International industrial partnerships are a defining feature of Hanwha Ocean’s operating model. Programs in Australia and Poland have reinforced several core lessons for Hanwha: early localization commitments drive political and industrial acceptance; transparent IP-sharing frameworks reduce long-term customer risk; local supply-chain cultivation improves program resilience; and collaboration with domestic primes and SMEs accelerates capability transfer. Hanwha Ocean applies these principles through co-production, technology transfer, locally assembled components, licensed manufacturing arrangements, and comprehensive workforce training packages. This approach is not limited to major platforms; it extends across tiered supply chains from propulsion and materials to digital integration and sustainment infrastructure.
Small and medium-sized enterprises are a critical part of Hanwha Ocean’s strategy, both within Korea and internationally. The company integrates SMEs into global supply chains, supports skills upgrading and quality-assurance programs, and seeks niche innovations that enhance submarine and surface-vessel performance. Hanwha’s approach is to replicate successful supply-chain models from Korea within partner nations, incorporating domestic suppliers that can meet or exceed established performance and quality thresholds.
QUALIFIED SUPPLIER FOR CPSP
These principles underpin Hanwha’s growing presence in Canada. Canada is a priority strategic market for Hanwha, reflecting aligned interests in Indo-Pacific security, supply-chain resilience, and modernization of defence and industrial capabilities. In August, Hanwha was selected as a qualified supplier for the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project — a major milestone that positions Hanwha Ocean as a key contender for Canada’s largest naval procurement in decades. As a contender for CPSP, Hanwha Ocean brings modern conventional submarine design, contemporary manufacturing facilities, advanced propulsion technologies, and a deep commitment to Canadian industrial involvement.
The company has established teaming agreements and MOUs with more than a dozen Canadian organizations, including Babcock Canada, Blackberry, CAE, Curtiss-Wright Indal Technologies, Des Nedhe Group, EllisDon Construction, Gastops, Hexagon, J Squared Technologies, Kongsberg Geospatial, L3Harris Canada, ModestTree, PCL Construction, Paradigm Shift and Racerocks. This network reflects the Group’s wider strategy: deep industrial engagement, Indigenous business participation, and systematic integration of SMEs and regional suppliers.
For Canada, Hanwha Ocean’s value proposition is defined by a combination of advanced platform capability, cost efficiency delivered through modern manufacturing, rapid localization backed by proven co-production models, and strong commitments to sustainment and long-term industrial growth. The company’s approach aligns well with Canada’s Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) Policy and its focus on broad regional and Indigenous participation. Hanwha also sees opportunities for R&D collaboration with Canadian universities, research institutions, and technology accelerators, especially in propulsion, materials science, autonomy, energy systems, and submarine technologies.
LOOKING AHEAD
Looking ahead, Hanwha identifies several growth frontiers that will shape its defence and naval trajectory: multi-domain integration across land, sea, air, and space; next-generation propulsion systems; guided weapons and missile localization; autonomous underwater and surface systems; and advanced manufacturing capabilities. For Hanwha Ocean, these investments are foundational to delivering modern, resilient, and adaptable submarine platforms. Canada, through the CPSP and related industrial partnerships, represents a particularly important element of Hanwha’s long-term global growth strategy.
In an increasingly competitive global defence environment, Hanwha Ocean intends to maintain leadership by closing capability gaps through mergers and partnerships, expanding localization and sustainment commitments, scaling smart-factory technologies, and working closely with allied governments to align platform solutions with sovereign requirements. Through this model, Hanwha Ocean positions itself not only as a capable submarine builder, but as a long-term industrial partner for nations seeking to expand their maritime capability and sovereign defence industrial base.
Joetey Attariwala is CDR’s Senior Staff Writer
