Apologies if previously answered but is there any reason it would not make sense for Australia to become part of the USN constellation build and have an Australian yard building the same ship for the RAN? It sees, that all or most
Except for 57mm we don't have, SeaRAM we don't have, RAN ships use MU90 for ship based torpedos, 9LV consoles, ceafar radar vs Spy6, the gt is 2500+G4 vs the ancient things we operate, sonar is different, we don't operate firescout, towed array is different, and its a design that is not yet FOC. It isn't the glove fit it first appears to be.
Its also very much in the same space as the Hobart class and the Hunter class, but is different to both and with a builder who doesn't have any? local footprint or delivered any ship building here in Australia. How many ways do we want to build essentially the same ship?
The main issue with the Hunter from what I can see from the outside, is that we spent a lot of effort specing it to be a very capable ship. It seems as if the UK also had its runs as a first of class issues as well. Its very frustrating that it is late, that the dates Pyne set were hopelessly unrealistic, for what ever reason, and it was noted at the time they were, and arguably we should have built a 4th AWD just to derisk the $6b DDG hobart upgrade program. We wasted so much money not building anything, then wasted more money and time on the attack class. But too late for that now.
But there is no one in government saying cancel the Hunter. But there may be some specing, as what the UK is doing with the Type 31. Hunter is a big ship, with lots of flexible space and big margins. If Australia no longer sought a large frigate with lots of flex space, well then, the radar, the combat system, is all there.
The talk is about smaller, more numerous combatants. Something that has a light defensive capability, but can probably take over the non-high intensity warfighting duties. We are back to the original concept of OCV- off shore combat vessels. 1500-3000t..~40 base, 80 full crew.
Richard Marles said:
“The second is that the DSR has observed that navies around the world are moving in the direction of having a larger number of smaller vessels. Now, with those two ideas in mind, we are thinking about the long-term structure of our surface fleet [into the 2030s].”
Building Fremm, F-110, nor constellations nor Type 31 will really net any more ships. Your just flicking between manufacturer. They are all ~150m x ~20m ships with 120-160 crew.
Moving to a smaller ship, with a core crew of ~40 sailors, but a weapons crew ~20-40 crew would allow the ship to more efficiently use the crew the RAN does have. So rather than a fully single crew the ship, the core crew could be single and the weapons crew could be more flexibly deployed. I don't know if that *IS* what they are going for, but something in that range would be wildly different from Hobart's and Hunter, and would offer real flexibility and useful capability, free the Hunters up to be all they can be.
