The Numerical Re-Designation of the Philippine Navy Key Surface Fleets

In a developing move, the Philippine Navy redesignates the pennant number of its key assets, primarily involving the large capable surface vessels belonging to the Offshore Combat Force (OCF) as the organizational shift now coincides the expansion of both qualitative and quantitatigve capabilities of the expanded Philippine Naval Fleet.

As provided on the key official Facebook Pages of the primary naval assets of the Philippine Navy, each of the pages display a new numerical designation, effecrtively replacing the old pennant numbers associated to the ships of the fleet.

The first changes took place with the subtle removal of the number ‘0’ in the official designation of BRP Diego Silang, a guided missile frigate now effectively carrying its official numerical designation ‘FFG7‘ instead of ‘FFG07‘ when it got commissioned into the Philippine Navy’s active fleet of ships on December 2025.

This then moved into the re-designation of the pennant numbers of the two (2) Jose Rizal-class ships – BRP Jose Rizal and BRP Antonio Luna, which now bears the guided missile frigate or ‘FFG’ classification, aside from getting its new pennant numbers, now corresponding as FFG14 and FFG15 from the previous general frigate designations of FF150 and FF151, respectively.

The move comes alongside plans of the leadership within the Philippine Navy to provide the necessary upgrades for the Jose Rizal-class guided missile frigates as mentioned in the Procurement Monitoring Report (PMR) of the Department of National Defense encompassing the second half of 2025. It particularly points to the towed array sonar and close-in weapons system integration, especially given that both subsystems count as fitted-for-but-not-with (FFBNW) on its initial design stage.

Following the three ships aforementioned is the not-so-sutble redesignation of the BRP Miguel Malvar guided missile frigate’s pennant number, following BRP Diego Silang’s lead of removing the ‘0’ on its official designation, now bearing the FFG6 from the former FFG06 when it was commissioned into the active fleet in May 2025.

Ultimately, the changes made for the BRP Jose Rizal (FFG14) and BRP Antonio Luna (FFG15) also led to the changes of the pennant number designation of the three (3) Del Pilar-class Patrol Vessels, now being the BRP Gregorio Del Pilar (PS-40), BRP Ramon Alcaraz (PS-41), and BRP Andres Bonifacio (PS-42), replacing their previous designations of PS-15, PS-16, and PS-17, respectively.

Previously, the Del Pilar-class Patrol Vessels were considered ‘Patrol Frigates’ of the Philippine Navy, bearing the ‘PF’ nomenclature, and subsequently carried the ‘FF’ nomenclature before it got redesignated in 2019 as Offshore Patrol Vessels with ‘PS’ nomenclature.

Overall, the move of reorganizing the surface vessel lineup of the Philippine Navy provides a clear sign of what might come in the next couple of years where, depending on the budget availability and also the availability of naval facilities that can accomodate the docking, operational, maintenance, and repair requirements of the ships, can help detail the number of ships that the fleet might add to its roster of officially active vessels, all while expanding its capabilities that further improve its combat readiness that lines up to its intended purpose.

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