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John Currin

15 years in Royal New Zealand Navy

Australia fast-tracks its hunt for replacement frigates

Australia plans to retire a second Anzac-class frigate in 2026, leaving six in service until the first general-purpose frigate arrives in 2030. (Gordon Arthur/Staff)

By Gordon Arthur

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Australia has approached several foreign shipbuilders in an urgent quest to procure general-purpose frigates under Project Sea 3000, the Defence Department told Defense News.

The government sent requests for information to German, Japanese, South Korean and Spanish shipbuilders on May 24, the department said. However, a spokesperson for the department declined to provide further details “while the evaluation is underway, due to [the] commercial, procurement and probity process.”

A government review unveiled in February, titled “Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant Fleet,” recommended 11 general-purpose frigates replace eight existing Anzac-class frigates. To speed up the process, the first three would undergo construction overseas and the remainder in Western Australia.

The review pinpointed Germany’s MEKO A-200, Japan’s version 30FFM, South Korea’s FFX from the second and third batches, and Spain’s Alfa 3000 as contenders. It cites the two FFX batches as a single platform type, though it’s unclear why.

The shipbuilders were reportedly given four weeks to respond to the initial request, plus another three weeks to explain how follow-on frigates can be built in Australia.

Selection is expected to occur next year, with commissioning of the first overseas-built ship to take place in 2030. The fourth through sixth vessels, built in Australia, are to have an identical baseline. No decision has been made on the design of the seventh through eleventh frigates.

The Royal Australian Navy’s surface combatant fleet will feature a total of nine hulls in 2026, underscoring the looming capability gap before new frigates start arriving.

Shipbuilders approached by Defense News declined to go into detail regarding Australia’s procurement effort. For example, German company ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems confirmed it “participated in the tender” but added that “we’ll not comment on further details of the ongoing process.”

Ongoing construction of six Ulsan-class FFX-III vessels for the South Korean Navy is split between Hyundai Heavy Industries, SK Oceanplant and Hanwha Ocean. The construction of eight Daegu-class FFX-II ships concluded last year. A Hyundai Heavy Industries spokesperson confirmed it received the request for information.

“HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has great competitiveness with its rich experience in warship building, such as [research and development] and first ship of the latest Ulsan-class frigate,” the spokesperson said. “This will be an opportunity for HHI to show how they approach warship orders that fit the situation of each country.”

In reference to frigate designs, Rear Adm. Stephen Hughes, Australia’s head of naval capabilities, told the Combined Naval Event conference in the U.K. on May 23 that the country is using existing designs in order to quicken the introduction of the vessels into the fleet.

However, Australian frigates identical to the aforementioned parent ships — the exemplars have been built for Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea — raises potential difficulties because some of their weapons, sensors and systems were chosen by the original customers and could be unfamiliar to the Royal Australian Navy. Notably, Saab’s 9LV combat management system, which the Australian service uses across its fleet, isn’t incorporated into those ships. Likewise, the Australian-made CEA Technologies radars are also excluded.

“Whatever we choose, whatever standard we go with, we’re going to adopt that. We’re going to have discipline around that capability,” Hughes said, describing the acquisition process as “an opportunity, not a risk.”

“The risk is we don’t choose wisely and we don’t understand the designs.”

About Gordon Arthur

Gordon Arthur is an Asia correspondent for Defense News. After a 20-year stint working in Hong Kong, he now resides in New Zealand. He has attended military exercises and defense exhibitions in about 20 countries around the Asia-Pacific region.

HMS Nelson (pennant number: 28) was the name ship of her class of two battleships built for the Royal Navy in the 1920s.

They were the first battleships built to meet the limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Entering service in 1927, the ship spent her peacetime career with the Atlantic and Home Fleets, usually as the fleet flagship. During the early stages of Second World War, she searched for German commerce raiders, missed participating in the Norwegian Campaign after she was badly damaged by a mine in late 1939, and escorted convoys in the Atlantic Ocean.

In mid-1941 Nelson escorted several convoys to Malta before being torpedoed in September. After repairs she resumed doing so before supporting the British invasion of French Algeria during Operation Torch in late 1942. The ship covered the invasions of Sicily (Operation Husky) and Italy (Operation Avalanche) in mid-1943 while bombarding coastal defences during Operation Baytown. During the Normandy landings in June 1944, Nelson provided naval gunfire support before she struck a mine and spent the rest of the year under repair. The ship was transferred to the Eastern Fleet in mid-1945 and returned home a few months after the Japanese surrender in September to serve as the flagship of the Home Fleet. She became a training ship in early 1946 and was reduced to reserve in late 1947. Nelson was scrapped two years later after being used as a target for bomb tests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Nelson_(28)

The Army-Navy Gaza aid pier is back in the beach

By Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press and Tara Copp, AP

The U.S. military-built pier designed to carry badly needed aid into Gaza by boat has been reconnected to the beach in the besieged territory after a section broke apart in storms and rough seas, and food and other supplies will begin to flow soon, U.S. Central Command announced Friday.

The section that connects to the beach in Gaza, the causeway, was rebuilt nearly two weeks after heavy storms damaged it and abruptly halted what had already been a troubled delivery route.

“Earlier this morning in Gaza, U.S. forces successfully attached the temporary pier to the Gaza beach,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters by phone Friday. “We expect to resume delivery of humanitarian assistance from the sea in the coming days.”

Cooper said operations at the reconnected pier will be ramped up soon with a goal to get 1 million pounds of food and other supplies moving through the pier into Gaza every two days.

The pier was only operational for a week before a storm broke it apart, and had initially struggled to reach delivery goals. Weather was a factor, and early efforts to get aid from the pier into Gaza were disrupted as civilians desperate for food stormed the trucks that aid agencies were using to transport the food to the warehouses for distribution.

However before it broke apart the pier had been gradually increasing aid movement each day. Cooper said Friday that the lessons learned from that initial week of operations made him confident higher levels of aid throughout could be attained now.

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The Gaza aid pier is made possible by an oft-neglected but vital military capability known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS.

By Geoff Ziezulewicz

A large section of the causeway broke apart May 25 as heavy winds and high seas hit the area, and four Army vessels operating there went aground, injuring three service members, including one who remains in critical condition. The damage was the latest stumbling block in what has been a persistent struggle to get food to starving Palestinians during the nearly eight-month-old Israel-Hamas war.

The maritime route for a limited time had been an additional way to help get more aid into Gaza because the Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafah has made it difficult, if not impossible at times, to get anything through land routes that are far more productive. Israel’s Rafah military operations and military strikes in northern Gaza had also temporarily halted U.S. airdrops of food.

Cooper said Friday the U.S. also expects to resume those airdrops in the coming days.

President Joe Biden’s administration has said from the start that the pier wasn’t meant to be a total solution and that any amount of aid helps.

After the May 25 storm damage to the causeway, large sections were disconnected and moved to the Israeli port for repairs. In addition, two of the U.S. Army boats that went aground during the same bad weather near Ashkelon in Israel have been freed.

Two other Army boats two beached onto the Gaza shoreline took on a lot of water and sand and the Israeli Navy has been helping with the repairs, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said.

Biden announced his plan for the U.S. military to build a pier during his State of the Union address in early March, and the military said it would take about 60 days to get it installed and operational. The initial cost was estimated at $320 million, but Singh said earlier this week that the price had dropped to $230 million, due to contributions from Britain and because the cost of contracting trucks and other equipment was less than expected.

It took a bit longer than the planned two months for installation, with the first trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip rolling down the pier on May 17. Just a day later, crowds overran a convoy of trucks as they headed into Gaza, stripping the cargo from 11 of the 16 vehicles before they reached a U.N. warehouse.

The next day, as officials altered the travel routes of the convoys, aid finally began reaching people in need. More than 1,100 tons of aid were delivered before the causeway broke apart in the storm, Pentagon officials said.

About Tara Copp, AP

Tara Copp is a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. She was previously Pentagon bureau chief for Sightline Media Group.