U.S. approves $3B sale of 24 sub-hunting Seahawks to South Korea

The U.S. State Department approved a potential $3 billion sale of 24 MH-60R Seahawk naval helicopters to South Korea on May 18, doubling Seoul’s fleet of the American-built submarine hunters just weeks after the country’s navy put its first two Seahawks into operational service.

The MH-60R Seahawk, built by Sikorsky and supported through Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems in Owego, New York, is the U.S. Navy’s primary shipborne helicopter for hunting submarines and attacking surface vessels. It carries a radar that can detect a submarine’s periscope breaking the surface, an airborne low-frequency sonar it can dip into the water while hovering, and torpedoes and Hellfire missiles it can fire at targets above or below the waterline.

The helicopter deploys from the decks of destroyers and frigates, extending the ship’s ability to detect and engage threats far beyond the range of hull-mounted sonars. For South Korea, the platform’s core advantage is that it compresses the detect-to-engage cycle against submarines and fast surface contacts, pushing the anti-submarine screen farther from the fleet and prosecuting contacts faster than legacy arrangements allow.

The proposed deal covers 24 helicopters along with a comprehensive package of equipment that reads like a complete naval warfare toolkit: 52 GPS and inertial navigation systems, 24 airborne low-frequency sonars, night vision devices, missile warning systems, electronic countermeasures, multi-spectral targeting systems, the APS-153 multi-mode radar, and training simulators, among a long list of additional items. The principal contractor will be Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems in Owego, New York, with the full scope of sub-contractors and final pricing still to be negotiated if South Korea moves forward with the purchase.

South Korea is already midway through an initial Seahawk buy. Seoul ordered 12 MH-60Rs in an $878 million deal from 2020, procured through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, under the Republic of Korea Navy’s Maritime Helicopter-II program. The first MH-60R was delivered to the South Korean Navy in September 2024, and the ROK Navy placed two aircraft into operational service on April 1, 2026, at Jinhae Naval Base in South Gyeongsang Province, marking the transition from procurement to frontline capability. The new notification covering 24 additional helicopters would roughly triple that initial fleet if finalized, giving the ROK Navy a substantially expanded airborne anti-submarine force operating from its destroyers and frigates across contested waters.

A separate third batch of naval helicopters is also currently underway, with South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration running a procurement process worth approximately $2.23 billion between 2025 and 2032, in which the MH-60R is once again a candidate alongside the NHIndustries NH-90. The May 18 approval covers a different requirement from that ongoing competition, signaling that Seoul is pursuing multiple tracks simultaneously to close capability gaps it considers urgent rather than merely important.

The MH-60R helicopters will fly missions aboard KDX-series destroyers and Incheon-class guided-missile frigates, extending the fleet’s long-distance surface and underwater detection and attack capabilities, with Link-16 datalink connectivity allowing the two fleets to share targeting data in joint anti-submarine operations. That interoperability dimension matters beyond the Korean Peninsula. U.S. Navy Admiral Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, said during a visit to Seoul that it is “a natural expectation” that South Korea’s growing naval capabilities be used to meet combined goals regarding what the United States considers its “pacing threat,” which is China.

South Korea’s induction of the MH-60R was driven by the growing submarine threat from North Korea, with Pyongyang having invested heavily in its underwater capabilities including work focused on launching ballistic missiles from submarines, and the type offering interoperability with the U.S. Navy as the world’s biggest MH-60R operator. That interoperability is not theoretical: the two navies conduct annual joint exercises that now include Seahawk operations, and the shared sensor architecture means American and Korean crews can hand off submarine tracks and coordinate prosecution missions in real time.