new Aussie frigate

[vincent]

Ships are getting bigger. This Aussie frigate will be ten thousand tons. The Knox-class frigate to which I was assigned in the early 1980s was 3200 tons.

www.defensenews.com/naval/2023/12/21/australias-anti-submarine-frigate-program-sails-rough-seas/

[dennisw]

When you don't have many of them you have to make them bigger to carry sufficient armament

[Ian Thomas]

The entire notion of further developing these new 🍋(?) frigates is being ferociously contested behind the scenes. We catch glimpses of it in the open media.

Australia’s Hunter frigate project should be sunk
RADM (retd) Rowan Moffitt
www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/australia-s-hunter-frigate-project-should-be-sunk-20231212-p5equp

The fact is that persisting with Hunter in the hope it will somehow turn out okay is delusional. Delaying the project even further and spending a lot more money on major redesign effort would compound the original folly. It ignores the urgency highlighted by the recent Defence Strategic Review and the situation in the Red Sea and the pressing need to retire the Anzacs light frigates – minimally armed ships that are increasingly unreliable after long, hard lives.

The Hunter frigates will be the most underarmed warship of their size in the world and that’s a big problem. With displacement over 10,000 tonnes being forecast, they will be in the same league as the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke and equivalent Japanese and Korean Aegis equipped destroyers. Hunter will have 32 missile cells compared with their 96 and carry one combat helicopter where ships of that size today generally carry two – both very important considerations for Australia today.