Royal Thai Navy to Equip Khamronsin-Class Corvettes with MSI 30mm Machine Gun.

The Royal Thai Navy (RTN) has allocated THB170 million (USD5.2 million) to procure 30 mm naval gun mountings from MSI Defence Systems for its Khamronsin-class corvettes.

The 7-barrelled MSI-DS Seahawk SIGMA system – first announced in 2011 (Picture source: MSI)

According to documents released by the RTN Naval Ordnance Department on the service's official website, the planned expenditure was approved on 23 April and the allocated sum includes installation and support work on the weapons.

The documents do not specify the variant that the RTN intends to procure, but the service is likely to sign for the MSI-DS Seahawk DS range of mountings to leverage on commonality with weapon systems found on its Naresuan, Krabi, and T 994 classes of warships.

The MSI-DS is a ship-protection system made by MSI-Defence Systems consisting of a 30mm Mark 44 Bushmaster II cannon on an automated mount. It was designed to defend Royal Navy frigates from fast inshore attack craft armed with short-range missiles, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns or explosives. The DS30M Mark 2 system consists of a 30mm Mark 44 Bushmaster II on a fully automated mount or manual controlled with an off-mount electro-optical director (EOD).

The MSI DS30M has been installed as the main guns and secondary guns of many ships stationed in the Royal Thai Navy, such as fast attack Tor 991 class, Tor 994 class, Laemsing gunboat, 2 Krabi class OPV, 2 Naresuan class frigate, Bhumibol Adulyadej frigate, Ang Thong landing platform dock.