Australia’s new frigate options: No easy choices as pressure mounts on DoD
HMAS Anzac will be retired in 2024, with HMAS Arunta to follow in 2026. The remaining six Anzac-class frigates will not receive the planned Transition Capability Assurance Program (TransCAP) upgrade that could prevent a 'Tier 2' capability gap. (Photo: US Navy)
A new class of General Purpose ‘Tier 2’ frigate will replace the Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN’s) Anzac-class frigates, but the selected design options appear to have major issues in terms of compatibility and availability for the future fleet.
Australia’s Independent Analysis of Navy’s Surface Combatant Fleet has highlighted four frigate designs as “exemplars” of what the RAN’s new ‘Tier 2’ general purpose frigate should look like.
The recommendations included the MEKO A-200 design from German shipyard ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), the Mogami-class 30FFM from Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Engineering, the Daegu-class FFX Batch II/III from Hanwha Ocean and Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) in South Korea, and the ALFA 3000 from Spanish shipyard Navantia.
What has remained unclear, however, was whether this was an exclusive shortlist that the Australian Department of Defence (DoD) has been looking at, or if there were other designs under
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