I was thinking in terms of a persistent surveillance capability from the ship when away from the mainland. At 30000 ft and a few hundred kms from the ship I imagine it’s a pretty broad area you are keeping an eye on.
Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
- Thread starter OPSSG
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Stuart M
Well-Known Member
I suspect that, esp after our FTA with the UK, a future NZ build will be in UK yards.
Stuart M
Well-Known Member
I dont know why AU would include NZ either, as NZ is a different nation with different requirements and probably hasn't firmed up what it wants yet. AU should do AU and NZ will do NZ.
Stuart M
Well-Known Member
Possibly a lot of it, but would that be what AU wants for a so-called tier 2 combatant? I really don't know why NZ would be included in any AU shopping list or anyone elses, but I see it crop up so many times over the years..
Shanesworld
Well-Known Member
Given the history of the Anzac frigate program and the realities of our domestic politics in NZ- I would completely understand if Australia politely declined any relationship on frigates. Whether as a partner program or purely supplier customer type relationship.
Our reliability as a military partner stops at the nzdf level rather than the political or voter level.
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
An Australian build would be too expensive for an export order, we could not compete with an Eastern Euro or ROK shipyard building the A140 or any other Euro or ROK design. Australia gets economic and Tax benefits, by building RAN ships in Australian Shipyards, NZ would be paying full price with zero economic benefits.
Can’t quite agree there.
As a proper collaborative procurement, we’d share in the economies of scale of both the design, build, sustainment and training - bringing down both the unit cost and ongoing costs for both countries.
Common components could absolutely be built in NZ for the entire program.
Indonesian yard not a possibility?
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
That would potentially be a repeat of the ANZAC-class build programme, which did not work out quite as well as intended. IIRC Tenix facilities in Whangarei, NZ (now closed BTW) built something like 40% of the ship blocks for the entire programme, but NZ ended up only ordering two of the frigates and never exercised two options it had. One of the end results was that NZ built a greater portion of the ship blocks than it ordered so NZ ended up somewhat ahead with the build since NZ built a greater % of blocks for RAN frigates than Australia built for RNZN frigates.
I do not think Australia would be interested in paying NZ to build portions of future RAN warships, particularly given that one of the reasons I recall being given for not exercising the RNZN's additional options for ANZAC-class frigates was that NZ did not want to 'subsidize Australian dockyard workers'.
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
Don't know enough about Indonesian shipbuilding capacity to answer that, between what they are currently building and what is planned they are very busy, not sure how hungry and ready they are for exports. Eastern Euro and ROK yards however are very experienced, hungry and ready to build exports.
We have been down this path once before, with the Anzacs, sustainment and training have basically now gone out the door, because NZ decided not to keep pace with the RAN refits and the NZ ships are now virtually a different class of Frigate. If NZ had got all four they had planned to and if they had been refitted along the same lines, than yes. Components could be built in NZ, yes but at what cost to Australian manufacturers, is the loss to the Australian economy worth it? NZ would have to commit to enough numbers and I am not sure there is enough confidence in future NZ Defence spending in Canberra.
I think once NZ failed to order ships three and four and then failed to match Australia's upgrades then the whole Anzac joint procurement experiment failed.
It is not particularly in Australia's interest to make profitable ships for NZ. I don't think that would be a concern, if NZ wanted something that Australia was building, we would bend over backwards to accommodate them, including on price. If they really wanted to work and be in with AU on ships.
With the Pacific Guardian ships, we didn't build them at a commercial price and sell them to the pacific nations. We gladly and freely gave them to them. As many they wanted. We would help crew and train and maintain them as well. Any NZ order would be minimal, and the increase in volume means no one really cares about cost to build. NZ would have to pay market price for non NZ equipment, and tomahawks, mk41, essm II, aegis, Sm-6, NSM.
But the biggest and ongoing issue is that Australia and NZ want fundamentally different things. Australia has a history of project requirements going sky high, and costs blowing out in money time and capabilities as we go big. Our military procurement process isn't exactly flawless either.
Throwing in another partner, who would want equal peer input into the ship design, needs spec, local content, but only order<10% is why many euro ship projects fail.
One of the more fundamental issues would be crewing. Another could be ice capability or sea keeping. Another could be offensive weapons. NZ doesn't even operate ESSM anymore.
I think the ANZAC project was fairly successful. Australia and NZ didn't go to war after the project completed. As an Australian it is very satisfying to watch the Kiwis get roasted by Canada on their Anzac upgrades.
However, Australia has also had fails too. We had to rely on the Kiwi's for Canterberry.
Nice if we can procure together or alongside. But we certainly don't have to force it together. Particularly with things like Ships. We don't have to operate the same surface combatant. Just like Australia and the US don't have to operate the same surface combatant.
In many cases, I would like NZ to benchmark Norway or Sweden for its military. Everyone in Australia would be totally happy if NZ was equipped as well as Norway.
I guess it depends where we intend to operate. If we want to project power into the Indian ocean, that may be a very interesting asset to have.
I wonder if a NVL MMP90 OPV ship build would justify an order of larger ships from Navantia spain/henderson, with 48 VLS.
Can anyone see a world where the RAN has:
3 Hobarts (to get just an aegis computer upgrade)
3 Flight II (F110 based) Hobarts (144 additional VLS, aegis maybe Spy radar)
8 Anzacs to be replaced with 8 Hunters.
~6 MMPV90 based corvettes/escorts and the 6 existing ships (8 vls, NSM, helo).
The crew for the new Hobart's and the MMPV90's would be built over time and while the flight I Hobart's/Collins/Anzacs go in for upgrades. In this time the RAN grows.
Is that a realistic situation or is that just hopeful dreams and fantasy? Would that fleet be realistic going forward? Can the RAN operate 14 major combatants, 6 minor war vessels. The idea of the small ships is one based out of Singapore and One based in Manus.
Pepe le pew
Member
Tenix Marine sold the Port Whangarei facilities after completing the Lake Class IPV project in 2008. It is now owned and operated by Oceania Marine successfully servicing the superyacht industry.
Oceania Marine - Complete Superyacht refit service, Whangarei New Zealand
Doubt they end up with 8 hunters with ssns coming, usvs like the bluebottle etc
My guess and hope…
Tier 1 (10-12 total mid century)
-3 Hobarts + 2-3 more(Spain) 2028-30/32
5-6 Type 26 Hunters(Osborne South) 2032-40/42
5-6 Type 83 or 5-6* Type 26 DDG(Osborne South) replacing 5-6 Hobarts 2044-52/54
Potentially having just 1 hull form for both ASW and AWD variants with lots of commonality is a big +
Tier 2 (10-12 mid century)
-6 Arafura(2 Osborne South/4 Henderson) + 6 more(Germany) - to Border Force or sold off
10-12* tbd MultiRole frigates(Henderson) - Anzac size, similar range, more VLS, reduced crewing 35-45%, under 5,000 ton 2028-46/50
possible plug n play systems (C Dome etc?) on the Arafuras for a decade.
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
Do not forget to toss in the fact that a degree of redesign work would also be required, since some of the kit used in the existing fitouts are no longer in production or available...
If one is going to bother with having something redesigned for a new build, one might as well start off with a design large enough to have future flexibility and growth options/margins.
I can certainly see what Spain and Navantia would get out of such an order, but TBH I do not really see much advantage in such a deal for Australia, and certainly not a better deal than Australia could likely arrange elsewhere. A potentially relevant question to raise, would be to approach S. Korea and see how long it might take them to produce a frigate or destroyer that could be fitted out with systems in use by the RAN, and what it might cost to purchase.
I don't think people realise just how good a job was done building the Hobart's, or how well the physical construction (as opposed to the systems integration and certification) of the Arafuras has gone. Then there is the world leading work on the digital shipyard.
Forget building overseas, we should be building here, and blowing the trumpet about how good a job we do here. Brag about it and improve upon it, instead of shutting it down then starting from scratch again in a decade.
I don't think it is widely understood that the digital shipyard permits the introduction of different designs more easily than traditional yards. It would be possible to fabricate much larger and much smaller platforms than the Hunter, alongside the Hunter.
Commonality could be found in systems integrated to the platform, while the platform is tailored for the intended role.
Forget building overseas, we should be building here, and blowing the trumpet about how good a job we do here. Brag about it and improve upon it, instead of shutting it down then starting from scratch again in a decade.
I don't think it is widely understood that the digital shipyard permits the introduction of different designs more easily than traditional yards. It would be possible to fabricate much larger and much smaller platforms than the Hunter, alongside the Hunter.
Commonality could be found in systems integrated to the platform, while the platform is tailored for the intended role.
Stuart M
Well-Known Member
Sure, it could be done, but policy wise I'm not convinced that that's a path Australia wants to be on now for warship construction, AU seems to want to have warship builds done 'in house' as much as possible. Moreover, I'm not convinced that NZs future policy for frigates will align with any putative Australian tier two warships, whilst numbers are always questionable element, I suspect that NZ will look at a UK build of some sort of Type 26 batch two or three depending on where the Brits are at that point in time.
The platform is quite versatile, being sensors and weapons agnostic. We would prefer US weapons and should consider fitting AEGIS and either SPY-6 or SPY-7. From my POV we should follow the RCN CSC fitout sans some of the Canuck specific requirements. We already use their LMC CMS330 and so would make sense to follow the RCN in that aspect. Since the CSC will be using both ESSM Blk-2 and Sea Ceptor, it makes good sense for us because we could use ESSM2 if we can't get Sea Ceptor resupply quickly enough.
It wouldn't make economic sense for us to build anything in Australia because building ships in Australia, North America, UK and western Europe, is quite expensive/
Why? The UK like Australia is quite expensive to build in.
@StingrayOZ NZ has never used the ESSM at all. We replaced the Sea Sparrow 7 with Sea Ceptor.
Flexson
Active Member
Having served on 2 Australian built ships and the 4 Spanish built ones, every time someone suggest buying more Spanish builds a shiver runs down my spine "no, please no". I know a number of techo's who have discharged and count the Spanish builds as a contributing factor.