Yes, lots of speculation.Speculation about cuts to the Hunter program have been around for a while. Won’t free up any short term funding for tier two warships of course. Actually I could play the role of devil’s advocate and point out that so much has changed since these ships were ordered.
To start with the best ASW vessels in the fleet will probably be the new SSNs. We obviously still need ASW frigates but really we also need to get a better balance between ASW and AWD warships.
If we swap out three of the Hunters for extra AWDs that would probably be a good thing.
Of course this is me being optimistic.
We will know what the plan for the surface fleet in a few weeks and to be honest I am bracing myself for more bad news. When you think about it governments from both sides have made one bad decision after another in regards to the selection of combatants for the navy.
The ANZACs were too small, the regionally superior conventional submarine was cancelled with out a boat being delivered, they decided against building additional Hobarts, the Arafuras are simply the wrong ship and now the Hunter seems to have joined that list.
At this stage we have seen billions of dollars wasted and not a single vessel ordered by the Turnbull government back in 2016 is in service. In the meantime the size of the navy has dropped to just 34 commissioned vessels and most of those are on borrowed time.
The management of the navy over the last few decades has been nothing short of disastrous.
The current government claims to want to fix this but so far I am not hearing anything that fills me with any confidence. The narrative that what we really need are more smaller ships concerns me greatly.
I guess we will know more in the next few weeks.
I trust the outcome of the naval review is actually released later this month and not delayed.
Answers are needed ASAP.
I also hope it is not a wash with vague concepts, but actually states in some detail what we are to get.
Appreciate some secrecy re negotiating with clients for XY and Z, but still if choosing a class of vessel there is realistically not too many choices.
It needs clarity and commitment.
It's not just the tier two mystery.
A lot if floating things for both Army and Navy big and small that need clarity and prompt commitment.
Cheers S