Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0

Redlands18

Well-Known Member
Someone is clearly pushing politically and with the media against the T26. Can you help me understand? The image i created in my mind is the next one.

The parameter of CEFAR made it clear the requirement of a ship like the T26 and not like the other two competitors. No other way around it.

But what if the problem was the CEFAR itself in combination with a SEA5000 that started 5-7 years delayed because politics didn't answer to RAN needs. Thus not leaving time margins to make changes of directions.

I feel your politics are doing a blame-game towards the RAN preparing the ground to whats going to come considering that it will have an high political price.
Naval shipbuilding in Australia today is done at either Osborne in South Australia or Henderson in Western Australia and there has always been strong politicking between those 2 states over shipbuilding. At present Osborn is getting the FFGs and SSN-AUKUS, in other words the big expensive stuff. Henderson is currently getting the OPVs*, Cape class PBs, and the Army's Littoral Manoeuvre fleet(LCMs and LSTs), in other words, the small cheap stuff. There would without any doubt be WA members of Government pushing for a reduction in Hunter numbers and instead build a Corvette/Light Frigate at Henderson for purely political reasons that have little to do with RAN requirements.
*First 2 OPVs are being built at Osborne.
 

Volkodav

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Someone is clearly pushing politically and with the media against the T26. Can you help me understand? The image i created in my mind is the next one.

The parameter of CEFAR made it clear the requirement of a ship like the T26 and not like the other two competitors. No other way around it.

But what if the problem was the CEFAR itself in combination with a SEA5000 that started 5-7 years delayed because politics didn't answer to RAN needs. Thus not leaving time margins to make changes of directions.

I feel your politics are doing a blame-game towards the RAN preparing the ground to whats going to come considering that it will have an high political price.
The original need was for an an approximately 10000t multirole destroyer, ideally a clean sheet design specifically for RAN requirements.

It was readily apparent that the former tier 2 ANZACs, no matter how much money and time was spent upgrading them, would never adequately fill the gap resulting from buying only three F-100 based FFGs.

With less than a dozen ( to increase to a dozen) major combatants it was clear everyone of them had to be a multi role destroyer with a core AEGIS type combat system. The deteriorating strategic situation dictated the potential to be upgraded or built with ABM and land attack strike, as well as a top end ASW capability.

Secdef, i.e. on government direction, said no, it has to be smaller and cheaper, but still able to do everything.

This is a mistake Australian government's have been making for decades. They buy the smallest, cheapest capability, that just about does what was needed at the time. This capability is only borderline fit for purpose as it enters service and already in need of expensive upgrades. By mid life (if not before) it is clear it is inadequate, but is then upgraded and life extended, well beyond its useby date.

In the 60s a light destroyer program, intended to increase numbers was evolved into a destroyer replacement. It was then cancelled and replaced with the FFG-07s, when what was needed was a real multi role destroyer.

The FFGs eventually became the new baseline and their replacements became the DDG and FFG replacements. The thing is what Australia actually needed in the 70s/80s was something like the Kidd's, Audace, or Tromp.

There is nothing wrong with smaller or more specialised ships, so long as you have a sufficient number of large, capable, survivable, multirole ships to enable them to do their jobs.
 

StingrayOZ

Super Moderator
Staff member
The question in my mind is are the extra 16 strike length VLS worth losing the main gun? My (very amateur) thinking is that perhaps it is. G&C have said that:
In Taiwan case, yeh maybe.

With other navies. Its nice to have an option that costs less than a million a shot. ESSM, SM-2, SM-6 are all basically a million a shot, and you have very limited load out. The 5" is still thought as of handy to have, its cheap per round and can carry many rounds an reload. There is also the ability to make thousands of rounds in Australia per year, where as pretty much ever missile is more like dozens per year max.

Someone is clearly pushing politically and with the media against the T26. Can you help me understand? The image i created in my mind is the next one.
It state based bias is involved, WA wants more ship building, Austal one WA ship builder is in deep trouble even with it Australian and US arms.
Also the Hunter program has its issues, but these are a combination of government and RAN bad decisions. The design needed more time to mature, but the selection process was well underway and had itself been delayed. Government went with an unrealistic time frame for construction that no one could meet, but by then, its next term of government, power has changed, ministers, moved on.

I think the Type 26 was the right hull, its the biggest and newest and will have commonality with UK and Canada, where we steal sailors from. But the problem was unrealistic build schedule, very ambitious capability targets even the large Type26 hull could barely meet. By not building anymore Hobarts, we starved industry to "allow for more hunters" But that is a stupid concept. The hunter is a continuous build, even if we had 6 hobarts today, we would still be continuously building Hunters and replacing them, no fewer Hunter would be built, they can't be built in the past because the design wasn't ready, they can only be built in the future. In trying to Force and protect the Hunter selection and build, they broke the rules, they broke good project management concepts, they compromised everything.

Now the fleet is in trouble. WA has a strong argument for some sort of combat ship build program. Once they get that up they can further poo poo the Hunters and try to increase WA build numbers. We already know they were undermining the Attack program in South Australia and trying to get it moved to WA. This recently came out in an unrelated a parliamentary sexual assault case but involved staff of the defmin.

The Western Australian mafia doesn't just involve politicians and bureaucrats, it involves industry and it involves uniform.
TBH there is also a South Australian Mafia, that fights the WA mafia. But the SA mafia generally is supported by the east coast, because SA really, really needs the industry, and it was part of the national plan for major surface and submarine ship building.

The current defmin is the deputy PM and from Victoria (not SA or WA) and labor is in power replacing the previous coalition government.

None of the other Sea5000 options were really workable. The CEAFAR requirements are basically other worldly in terms of power and weight, volume, Cg etc. They had to enlarge the original Type 26 design to even meet the original, smaller specs while the Type 26 was in the design phase.

Couple that with pretty high end requirements for load outs and aviation, and endurance and weapons, we probably should have designed a ship from scratch for our requirements. But we don't really have sovereign shipbuilding design capability like that and don't have go it alone industry size or order volume and Australians don't think like that, our typical process is take something someone else has done and Australianise it.

We Collins classed it. We tried to take a smaller existing European design, then upscale the hell out of it, to try to meet requirements no one else remotely has, which mean it required significant design work, then delays, increased risk, overly ambitious build schedule, but expected it to be a build to print design which none of these designs ever were.

I feel your politics are doing a blame-game towards the RAN preparing the ground to whats going to come considering that it will have an high political price.
There is a political price but defence should be bipartisan, but the issue really isn't partisan along political party lines, its provincialism.

There is definitely a priority around defence in Australia. Australia isn't Canada or EU. Its not protected by NATO or even other similarly sized powers, in fact Australia has defence commitments protecting other mid size power nations like Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and PNG. Australia has superpower like responsibilities to nations like Fiji, Samoa, Tonga etc. America doesn't have a presence in our region like it does in Europe, or North Asia, or the Middle East.

So I think things will continue, but as per normal it will be a shit storm of controversy. Heck even our acquisition of nuclear submarines some people in the US see it as a threat to US production because we are so chaotic in what we do with these big engineering projects.

Collins went through a even more dramatic shitstorm and cost and capability blow out. Now people openly regret not building 8-12 of them.
 

ADMk2

Just a bloke
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
In Taiwan case, yeh maybe.

With other navies. Its nice to have an option that costs less than a million a shot. ESSM, SM-2, SM-6 are all basically a million a shot, and you have very limited load out. The 5" is still thought as of handy to have, its cheap per round and can carry many rounds an reload. There is also the ability to make thousands of rounds in Australia per year, where as pretty much ever missile is more like dozens per year max.
Not to mention with the very close to service HVP (perhaps quietly even in limited service in some areas...) the old 5 inch gun is likely to gain a new lease of life at providing high volumes of fire (compared to missiles) in long range maritime attack, "strike" and air defence missions and at around$75k per shot the value adding is unquestionable...


 

StingrayOZ

Super Moderator
Staff member
Not to mention with the very close to service HVP (perhaps quietly even in limited service in some areas...) the old 5 inch gun is likely to gain a new lease of life at providing high volumes of fire (compared to missiles) in long range maritime attack, "strike" and air defence missions and at around$75k per shot the value adding is unquestionable...
I think there is a lot of value in some of these older gun based systems, particularly with the rise of drones and UAV's. These typically aren't amazingly evasive, but they tend to be lower observable, slow, not particularly agile, soft and numerous. A few shots of something anti air, and then a precision launched shot at where signals were originating.

But also in protracted conflict, gun based systems typically do have reasonable stocks and manufacturing can spool up and get some back onto the front line even if production ended decades ago. Missiles are very much into a different category.

Not that every gun system has a future, but I am not sure now after recent events, guns are dead in many common applications.
Gun based systems are still seeing development and deployment. I think there might be a discussion about calibres, applications and missions.

If your talking about an extreme range missile platform, just launching long range missiles. Well SSBN's don't have deck guns.. Guns have also been removed off most bombers..
 

spoz

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
No they are certainly not - the USN is shooting drones down with guns, not (generally) missiles; and the new types of ammunition are increasing that utility. You need both; but using a million dollar missile to shoot down one (of potentially dozens) of $1000 attack drones makes no sense; and in the longer term is a losing proposition.
 
Last edited:

Maranoa

Active Member
I think atm, we can only crew 7 Anzac and 3 Hobart's.
With Anzac on blocks and Ballarat and Parramatta still under AMCAP upgrade at BAE Syst Aust in WA, that is five deployable Anzacs and what ever of the three Hobarts isn't undergoing routine maintenance.
 

StingrayOZ

Super Moderator
Staff member
No they are certainly not - the USN is shooting drones down with guns, not (generally) missiles; and the new types of ammunition are increasing that utility. You need both; but using a million dollar missile to shoot down one (of potentially dozens) of $1000 attack drones makes no sense; and in the longer term is a losing proposition.
I wasn't really hinting about the USN, I was actually talking more about the Ukrainians and their success in dealing with huge numbers of many different types of drones. The Ukrainians have a very tight supply issue, and a very high frequency of drone attacks.

The USN is still in a bit of a different space. They came underfire (or in range) by a small number of missiles and drones.
The USN did use SM-2 to down the larger missiles.

I believe they used SM-2 on the drones as well.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/20/politics/us-warship-intercept-missiles-near-yemen/index.html

Again the US I think wanted to make a clear statement about stuff like that. It was going to intercept them, intercept them with missiles that while high value and a bit of overkill, would definitely intercept, intercept at significant range and intercept anything else. With a large VLS count, ~20 SM-2 missiles is nothing to the US. Its not even a huge number on that particular ship. They didn't even bother with ESSM, don't want anything that close and the cost difference between ESSM and SM2 isn't really a big consideration.

Makes me wonder if the RAN has any ships suitable for middle east deployment in this kind of environment.
 

Samoa

Member
The HCF hull form largely common to the T26 can accomodate an increased VLS payload. The model showing 96 VLS is a testament to that, and it isn’t just a marketing model, it’s underpinned by a comprehensive engineering design assessment right down to equipment allocations in revised compartments, variable missile payloads and a full build and cost impact assessment.

The HCF design baseline is fixed at 32 Strike length VLS, for one reason, and one reason only. It is what the Commonweatlh wanted. During the initial bid, BAE offered different VLS cell configurations and was keen to offer 48 VLS at the baseline offer to match the AWD variant, but the CoA assessment only wanted 32, and BAE was told that there are no bonus points for more….

Fast forward 5 years, and now it is made to look like the T26 selection was not appropriate because HCF hasn’t enough VLS cells. Go figure. BAE can offer a two variant build strategy supporting both a ASW frigate and DDG, with greater than 95% ship design and system commonality. But again, those in charge remain paralysed awaiting a further review of Naval capabilities.
Recently came across this article which describes the Guided Missile Frigate variant. Provides some good insight describing the conservative approach to minimise redesign, cost and maintaining the build program

And an article from BAE Land and Armaments about the variant of the Hunter Class Mk45 5inch gun which is supported by a new automated handling system to support future extended range munitions.
 

MickB

Well-Known Member
Recently came across this article which describes the Guided Missile Frigate variant. Provides some good insight describing the conservative approach to minimise redesign, cost and maintaining the build program

And an article from BAE Land and Armaments about the variant of the Hunter Class Mk45 5inch gun which is supported by a new automated handling system to support future extended range munitions.
With some speculation as to the number of Hunters to be built, does anyone know the number of Mk 45s ordered?
Perhaps the number of guns will be an indicator to the final number of Hunters.
Or is this just a case of business as usual until the reveiw is final?
 

MickB

Well-Known Member
While still just a concept design, BAEs adaptable strike frigate looks to fill a role very much like the WW2 APDs ( as mentioned by Volk) but greatly expanded due to modern tech.
A large modular frigate style vessel with low permanent crewing with additional specialists brought in as different equipment requires.
With a renewed concentration on littoral operations by the RAN this may be a design to watch in the future.

BAE mentions similar littoral interest by UK and Norway.
 

hauritz

Well-Known Member
Isn’t the Hunter class already pretty much a large modular frigate design?

While it is much maligned in the press as a 10000 ton ship with the firepower of maybe a 7000-8000 ton ship not much is mentioned about its other features and capabilities beyond just being a ASW frigate.

Take the massive mission bay and lengthened flight deck for example. The Hunter class will be able to operate Chinook helicopters. I have seen those things up close. They are freaking huge. The mission bay is large enough to accommodate a whole range of equipment including helicopters, UUVs, USVs and UAVs.

The mission bay could be used to deploy special forces with their boats and equipment for littoral operations. They could be quickly reconfigured for HADR. MCM and hydrographic work. Really as a ship design it seems to match up pretty well with a lot of the recommendations made in the DSR.

Even the models shown at the recent Indo Pacific trade show seem to indicate that the mission bay can simply be replaced with extra VLS although personally I would rather see the mission bay retained and maybe stretch the hull instead.
 
Last edited:

Systems Adict

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Not quite as simple as “dropping in” the Mk 41s; there is stuff underneath the mission bay so, as noted in the BAE releases, there would need to be some redesign.
I think from the data I've seen (IWO images), I believe the Mk41 cells will literally fit between the hanger top & the mission bay deck, but only just ! (believe that the mission bay is effectively 3 decks high).

HOWEVER, the redesign is around the likes of the re-routing of 'systems' (cable routing / pipework (fire-fighting &
drains), & ventilation systems, etc., etc.
), adding in some structure, possibly redesigning the whole area at the deckhead at the fwd end of the hangar / across the mission bay / onto the RAS deck compartments. 'REMOVING' that big hole in the middle of the ship (AKA the Mission Bay), is a BIG task.
 

Volkodav

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
I think from the data I've seen (IWO images), I believe the Mk41 cells will literally fit between the hanger top & the mission bay deck, but only just ! (believe that the mission bay is effectively 3 decks high).

HOWEVER, the redesign is around the likes of the re-routing of 'systems' (cable routing / pipework (fire-fighting &
drains), & ventilation systems, etc., etc.
), adding in some structure, possibly redesigning the whole area at the deckhead at the fwd end of the hangar / across the mission bay / onto the RAS deck compartments. 'REMOVING' that big hole in the middle of the ship (AKA the Mission Bay), is a BIG task.
It will need a deluge firefighting systems for the VLS, pumps piping etc.

It will be interesting if one of the changes will be an extra GT and simpler propulsion system.

I'm going to really stick my neck out and suggest the long term aim be to classify the Hunters as tier 2 and the enhanced missile Type 26 or if the full Type 83 is decided on, i.e. high end air defence, ABM, strike, ASW and a multi mission capability, they be the tier 1.

Fantasy fleet here sorry, but the RAN really needs to increase major combatant numbers to reverse the "shrinkflation" ('Shrinkflation' to rise as grocery manufacturers offset rising costs) of the last 50 years.

We need fifteen or more majors. I would suggest, three Hobart, six hunter and six hunter DDGs. Then the Hobart's be replaced with Type 83 multi role destroyers based on the Type 26.

Concurrently a GP frigate be acquired as a third tier. Perhaps eight.

This would result in a structure of a growing number (three then six) tier 1 multi role destryors (more like cruisers), a second tier of twelve, shrinking to nine ASW (6) and air defence / strike (3) frigates. Then eight tier 3 GP frigates.

It would take a couple of decades to get there, but planning needs to start now.
 

iambuzzard

Active Member
It will need a deluge firefighting systems for the VLS, pumps piping etc.

It will be interesting if one of the changes will be an extra GT and simpler propulsion system.

I'm going to really stick my neck out and suggest the long term aim be to classify the Hunters as tier 2 and the enhanced missile Type 26 or if the full Type 83 is decided on, i.e. high end air defence, ABM, strike, ASW and a multi mission capability, they be the tier 1.

Fantasy fleet here sorry, but the RAN really needs to increase major combatant numbers to reverse the "shrinkflation" ('Shrinkflation' to rise as grocery manufacturers offset rising costs) of the last 50 years.

We need fifteen or more majors. I would suggest, three Hobart, six hunter and six hunter DDGs. Then the Hobart's be replaced with Type 83 multi role destroyers based on the Type 26.

Concurrently a GP frigate be acquired as a third tier. Perhaps eight.

This would result in a structure of a growing number (three then six) tier 1 multi role destryors (more like cruisers), a second tier of twelve, shrinking to nine ASW (6) and air defence / strike (3) frigates. Then eight tier 3 GP frigates.

It would take a couple of decades to get there, but planning needs to start now.
Sounds like a plan Volks. We certainly need to start building up the top end of the fleet quickly. Three Hobarts was never enough, it was half what we need. The people in control need to put their thinking hats on.
 
Top