Hanwha Systems

Hanwha Systems traces its roots to 1977, when it started life as Samsung Precision, later becoming Samsung Aerospace and then Samsung Thales after a joint venture with Thomson-CSF in 2001. Hanwha Group bought the defense electronics business from Samsung in 2015, renamed it Hanwha Thales, and folded it into Hanwha Systems the following year, later merging its ICT division into the same company in 2018. That history matters because it explains why Hanwha Systems looks like two businesses stitched together, which it is: a defense electronics arm and an information and communication technology arm operating under one roof. The defense side covers what the company describes as avionics, space, surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control, and precision strike solutions for the South Korean military and export customers.

In practice that means radar systems, electro-optical and infrared sensors for surveillance and targeting, naval combat management systems, and the C4I and C5I command-and-control networks that tie sensors to shooters across land, sea, and air forces. Hanwha Systems sits within a much larger Hanwha Group aerospace and defense portfolio that includes Hanwha Aerospace, its sister company that builds artillery systems, armored vehicles, and rocket engines. Where Hanwha Aerospace makes the platforms and propulsion, Hanwha Systems tends to supply the sensors, radar, and electronics that go inside and around them, though the group's structure has shifted over the years and the lines between subsidiaries are not always sharp. On the space and communications side, Hanwha Systems has pushed into satellite technology more aggressively than most Korean defense suppliers, including an investment in the low Earth orbit satellite broadband operator OneWeb and work on satellite ground systems and space situational awareness.

Its ICT division, meanwhile, provides IT and cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and AI-driven systems, both to defense customers and to the wider Hanwha Group and outside commercial clients, which the company markets under a strategy it calls hyper-intelligence, hyper-convergence, and hyper-connectivity. Hanwha Systems is a public company listed on the Korea Exchange under ticker 272210, having gone through an IPO after its ICT and defense units were consolidated. It is one of a cluster of Hanwha Group units, alongside Hanwha Aerospace, Hanwha Ocean, and Hanwha Defense, that has become central to South Korea's push to become a major global arms exporter, particularly into Europe and the Middle East. Because the company spans both hardware sensor systems and software-and-cloud services, its scope is wider than a typical defense electronics house, closer to a domestic C4ISR and IT integrator that happens to also build radar and optics for the battlefield.