It could be argued that, as every attempt to increase MFU numbers, by any government has failed, that the concept of selecting individually smaller, less capable designs, to facilitate increasing numbers, has by default, also failed.
The furthest any government has gotten was the construction of the ANZAC Class. They were meant to be a second tier, nested between a first tier of eight or nine FFGs and or DDGs, and a third tier of missile armed (ESSM/Harpoon), helicopter equipped (the origin of the Super Seasprite acquisition), corvettes.
This fell over before the last ANZACs entered service and the ANZACs became the the core of the fleet, instead of its second string.
Now we have eight aging ANZACs, ordered on the assumption there would be eight or nine destroyers and a dozen or more missile corvettes, serving along side them, serving as the bulk of our fleet. They are masqueradinding as FFGs, supported by three FFGs, masquerading as DDGs.
Imagine instead we had ordered we had ordered six enhanced FFGs then followed them with five or six proper DDGs? No plans for twenty eight to thirty smaller combatants, that would have cost more, just stick to a dozen high end ships, delivered in a continuous build of one new ship every two to three years.
In fact look at it this way. Hobart 202 crew would have been the ideal for the nine FFG/DDG we didn't get, that's 1818, crew plus 163 per ANZAC (1304), and 12 Corbett's at say 70 crew (840) a total of 3962. That's enough for ten Burke's.
Probably the wrong topic for this post.
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