On April 17, the Indonesian Navy (TNI AL) commissioned its newest warship, KRI Bung Hatta (370), an 80-metre domestically-built corvette named in honor of Mohammad Hatta, the country’s first vice president and one of Indonesia’s founding fathers.
The commissioning ceremony was held at PT Karimun Anugrah Sejati’s shipyard in Batam, Riau Islands, where the vessel was first launched and named on February 27, 2025. According to TNI AL, the ship was constructed in 20 months and demonstrated the service’s commitment to procuring more domestically made products.
The corvette measures 80.3 meters in length, 12.6 meters in beam, and can reach a top speed of 25 knots. It can accommodate a crew of 82 personnel and has an endurance of five days at sea.
While it currently mounts an older Bofors 57mm naval gun, the Navy stated that it could be replaced later with a 76mm main gun to enhance the ship’s firepower.
Designed for multi-role operations, KRI Bung Hatta will also be equipped with surface-to-surface missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and a torpedo launch system. In addition, the corvette will feature electronic warfare capabilities, including radar-electric countermeasures (R-ECM) and radar-electric support measures (R-ESM). However, TNI AL has not publicly provided a clear timeline for when all these systems will be fully installed.
Operational control of the vessel will fall under TNI AL’s 2nd Fleet Command based in Surabaya City, East Java. KRI Bung Hatta will also be deployed to patrol and secure the country’s key maritime choke points, TNI AL added.
Back in April 2023, the same shipyard launched a 73-metre corvette named after Indonesia’s first President, Soekarno (KRI Bung Karno-369). While both ships share a similar lineage, there are notable design distinctions beyond their dimensions.
KRI Bung Hatta features a shorter angled forward superstructure compared to its predecessor. It also has a visible gap along its superstructure (amidship)—an area typically reserved for surface-to-surface missile launchers, suggesting a greater emphasis on combat tasks.
One likely explanation for this design divergence is that, unlike KRI Bung Karno, KRI Bung Hatta was neither designed nor designated as a presidential or VVIP corvette, which would have otherwise required expanded internal spaces to accommodate high-level dignitaries and enhanced comfort features. This allowed for greater allocation of space to mission-critical systems, including weapons and sensors.
