Page 58 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

PACIFIC
HUNTER CLASS
A quiet Hunter –
Navy’s Future Frigate
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
Valued at $35 billion over its program life, Navy’s Future Frigate project, Sea 5000 Phase 1, is second only to Future Submarine in terms of cost to the Australian taxpayer.
NAVY will receive nine Hunter class frig- ates, built in South Australia to BAE Sys- tem’s Global Combat Ship (GCS) design and, although optimised for the Anti-Sub- marine Warfare (ASW) role, they are in- tended to be equally adept at Air Warfare and a number of other roles.
A number of sovereign features will separate the Hunter variant of the GCS from the UK’s City class ASW frigates (Type 26), including integration of CEA Technologies’ new generation CEA- FAR2 radar, Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Combat System and an Australian tacti-
cal interface developed by Saab Australia. The program calls for steel to be cut on the first vessel in Osborne in late 2022 with the lead ship, HMAS Flinders, launched in the 2027-2028 timeframe and
entering service between 2029 and 2031. The nine ships form part of the Com- monwealth’s Continuous Naval Ship- building Strategy and will be built in three flights of three vessels, to ensure the design keeps abreast of rapidly evolving technology. Completion of the last frigate is not due to occur until the early 2040s and the class will form the backbone of
58 | October 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au