Contracts are only just starting for the initial build in Japan. These things take time in defence land…
Yes, but there should be a sense of urgency. This isn't a regular acquisition program happening according to decades of planning, and we would be happy with a decade of IOC. But you are right, this isn't a snap your fingers and contracts and agreements just appear, at a greenfields site, with new primes never built in Australia before, building a type of ship we have never built before, partnered country with minimal military export experience. The weakness and risk is probably mostly in the contracts and agreements.
These are last moments type of stuff. They should be real priority. Every day we get something done is an important victory that could save lives, every weld every rivet asserts Australia's sovereignty and national security. We need to shift our approach. Our mindset.
Which is why perhaps I think additional Japanese built frigates are still likely to happen. Even if everything local is a total dream run, ahead of schedules, under budget, we won't be building them fast enough. We are already at the point of decommissioning Anzacs. We need to preserve crews, we need to build deployable capability, 6 Mogami's can maybe do the work of 8 Anzacs. But 2 Mogami's can't do the work of 4 Anzacs, and the crews will just dissipate and we will be starting from nothing, again. Timing and numbers are critical.
We should be billeting out sailors onto the Mogami's (and other Japanese surface ships) as much as we can now.
With the initial Mogami build I definitely think there was a feeling of testing the waters on how people felt. The reaction I think has shown that the Mogami's were probably the right decision, and people can see the world is a less secure less certain place. Bumping up numbers on an existing program later on seems very sensible.
www.navalnews.com
