Michael Shoebridge
In February, the Albanese government’s Deputy Prime Minister (and Defence Minister) Richard Marles announced that Defence would be taking delivery of the first of 11 new ‘general purpose frigates’ this decade, with three of the ships to be delivered to the Navy by 2034 after spending $11 billion.
He announced that Defence had ‘down selected’ four ship designs from four builders – the Spanish Navantia company’s ALFA3000, Germany’s Meko A-200 frigate built by TKMS, South Korea’s Daegu class FFX Batch II and III built by Hanwha and Japan’s Mogami 30FFM frigate built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. (That was actually 5 ships – two Korean ones made by two shipbuilders – a confusion in the surface combatant review that was the input to the minister’s announcement.)
And that’s when the trouble started. Mr Marles handed this framework over to Defence to turn a beer coaster sketch into a multi-billion dollar government project, delivering ships on a timeline that Defence struggles to achieve when buying office furniture, let alone 11 missile-equipped warships.
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