Hanwha Systems secures contract for second batch of indigenous C2A command-and-control systems

Hanwha Systems announced on 27 December that it has secured a KRW184.6 billion (USD168.5 million) contract from South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) to produce a second batch of locally developed ‘Command, Control, and Alert’ (C2A) systems.

Hanwha Systems announced on 27 December that it has secured a KRW184.6 billion (USD168.5 million) contract to produce a second batch of locally developed ‘Command, Control, and Alert’ (C2A) systems. (DAPA)

The move comes after DAPA had awarded the company – the lead company in the programme – a KRW32.9 billion (USD30 million) contract in December 2018 to produce an initial 12 units of the automatic C2A system.

The C2A system, which was developed from 2011–17 by a team led by the state-owned Agency for Defence Development in co-operation with more than 20 local companies, entered service with the Republic of Korea Armed Forces – and was integrated with the country’s air-defence system – in late 2019.

Unlike the previous system, the data for which is verbally relayed up the chain by radio communications, the new command-and-control system transmits this data digitally in real time. DAPA had pointed out in January 2019 that the C2A reduces the amount of time needed to detect and respond to a hostile target from what is currently up to 3 minutes down to 30 seconds.

The system is also designed to assign a target to the air-defence weapon system best suited to counter it.