Earlier this month, a senior officer of the Finnish Navy indicated that his service was interested in acquiring an improved version of the South African Umkhonto naval surface-to-air missile (SAM). Commodore (Cdre) Veli-Pekka Heinonen was talking to the journal ‘IHS Jane’s Navy International’. Cdre Heinonen is Chief of the Maritime Systems Division of the Finnish Defence Forces’ Logistics Command.

He was talking to the British publication about the Finnish Navy’s current major modernisation programme, Squadron 2020, which will transform the country’s fleet. This programme involves both the upgrading of some existing vessels and the acquisition of new ships to replace older craft which will be obsolete by the 2020s.

Under the Squadron 2020 programme, the Navy’s existing Hämeenmaa-class minelayers and Rauma-class missile boats will be replaced and the much more recent Hamina-class missile boats will be upgraded. The two-ship Hämeenmaa-class and the four-ship Rauma-class both first entered service in the early 1990s. Most of the Hamina-class vessels first entered service in the early 2000s.

The six vessels that will be disposed of will be replaced by four new ships, variously described as offshore patrol vessels, multipurpose ships or corvettes. They will have strengthened steel hulls to allow them to operate in ice during the winter and will be capable of air defence, antisubmarine, antiship and minelaying operations. The new ships will be bigger than the 1 500 t Hämeenmaa-class vessel and much bigger than the 215 t Rauma-class vessel and will be among the biggest ships ever operated by the Finnish Navy. Although their primary role will be the defence of the Finnish coast, they will be designed so as to be able to also participate in international operations. Their expected acquisition cost is currently €1.2-billion.

The Finnish Navy already operates the Umkhonto, a product of Denel Dynamics, part of the State-owned Denel defence industrial group. Finland was, in fact, the first export customer for the missile, which it fitted to the Hämeenmaa-class and Hamina-class ships. In the words of the Jane’s Journal, Heinonen affirmed that “an updated version of the Denel Umkhonto SAM is in the frame to meet the air-defence requirement”. The missile would equip both the new corvettes and the upgraded Hamina-class missile boats.

The basic Umkhonto-IR is a vertical launch missile fitted with a passive infrared (IR) seeker and a low smoke emission rocket motor. Denel reports that it is a high-velocity weapon capable of all-round defence. The system can engage up to four targets at the same time and its 23 kg warhead gives it a high kill probability. It can easily be integrated into different ship types and classes. It has a range of 20 km, a maximum altitude of 8 km, and a maximum velocity of twice the speed of sound. The Umkhonto missile is 3.32 m long, with a diameter of 0.18 m, a wingspan of 0.5 m and a launch mass of 135 kg. Each missile is carried in and launched from a canister, which is 3.8 m in length and 0.65 m in diameter.

Denel Dynamics has already mapped out an upgrade path for the weapon. The next step would be a longer-range version, the Umkhonto-EIR (E for extended range), which would allow the weapon to be used as a local area air defence system – that is, to protect other, nearby, ships as well as the launching ship. The basic layout of this missile would be exactly the same as the Umkhonto-IR. This would be achieved by shrinking the size of the missile’s electronics and increasing the size of its rocket motor. It is currently not clear if development of the Umkhonto-EIR has been funded or whether Finland would be willing to contribute funding for the project.

Beyond the Umkhonto-EIR, the company has plans to develop a radar-guided Umkhonto-ER version, incorporating technologies being developed in its Marlin technology demonstration programme (which, in time, will hopefully lead to a fully developed Marlin missile).