I'm in total agreement with this philosophy mainly through derisking and commonality of the huge collection of basic ship systems.
Further, if we stay with the G&C design philosophy upgrades to further batches are evolutionary not revolutionary and provide a continuum to industry.
Given that philosophy, batch 3 of the Future Frigate may even look similar to the AB cousins Kongo or KDX although Secdef Richardsons view is that anything over 6000 tonnes is unnecessary, let's hope he's changed his mind.
Richardson was apparently one of the key players behind the Soryu fiasco. It was all about alliances' and trade deals with no consideration given to the actual requirements of the RAN, or the damage the deal would do to Australia's strategic shipbuilding capability. A skilled bureaucrat, diplomat and deal maker, as demonstrated by his almost successful play to Abbott, Johnston and Corman on the Japan sub deal, his lack of technical understanding in regards to life cycle costs and capability definitely show through with the 6000t ceiling.
I see the ANZACs as a missed opportunity, the MEKO design was fully modular, meaning a batch build would have been dead easy and more to the point, evolving the design to meet changing requirements through batches would have been a no brainer. Instead we had HMAS ROTABLE PARTS POOL (PERTH), and a class of ship in need of serious upgrade before the last one commissioned.
A common sense approach could have seen the second batch completed with a larger MEKO hull, second GT and systems recycled from the DDGs to provide the RAN with a perfectly good enough evolved FFG or DDG variant. A third batch could have then been built instead of upgrading the FFGs. By the time the last of the FFG replacements were ordered we would likely have been in a position design a MEKO based AWD to replace Melbourne and Newcastle then progressively the Batch one ships.
