Page 59 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

Navy’s major surface combatant fleet for decades to come.
The Hunter class will follow the Type 26 by around five years and will benefit from lessons learned during completion of at least the first two ships, before Flinders enters the water towards the end of the next decade.
The GCS design has been touted as the world’s most capable ASW ship and in Royal Navy service it will be the succes- sor to the Duke class (Type 23) frigates, long regarded as the benchmark in the domain. BAE Systems has also sold the
design to Canada, where it will be known as the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) and the family now includes no fewer than 32 ships across three of the world’s leading navies, all members of the Five Eyes community.
The good news for Australian tax- payers, at this early stage at least, is that Sea 5000 remains on schedule for the first steel to be cut at Osborne in 2022. Around 50 per cent of the first UK ship, HMS Glasgow, is now in production and steel was cut on the second, HMS Cardiff, in early August.
The Hunter class will replace the Anzacs but will have technologies in common.
Acquiring the Future Frigate
The Future Frigate competition was fierce- ly fought by BAE Systems, with a version of the Global Combat Ship referred to within the company as GCS-A (Aus- tralia); Fincantieri, with a version of the ASW-optimised Fregata Europa Multi- Missione (FREMM) frigate in service with the Italian Navy; and Navantia, with an evolution of its F105 design (which forms the basis of Australia’s Hobart class destroyers), known as the F-5000.
Following the release of a Request For Tender (RFT) in March 2017 the three shipbuilders submitted bids in August 2017 and each design was then subjected to a rigorous Competitive Evaluation Pro- cess (CEP).
At the RFT release, then Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne made it clear that all nine frigates would be built in an Australian shipyard, using an Australian workforce. Furthermore, he stipulated each of the three shipbuild- ers would be required to demonstrate their ability and willingness to develop a local supply chain to support the ship- building enterprise. In addition, each was required to provide local industry with opportunities to bid into their existing global supply chains.
From a capability standpoint, the Com- monwealth mandated the CEAFAR2 radar, a next generation radar based upon the highly successful CEAFAR fitted to post Anti-Ship Missile Defence (ASMD) Anzac frigates. In October 2017 then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also announced that Aegis, together with an Australian tactical interface, would be mandatory for all future major surface combatants.
BAE System’s GCS-A proposal was for- mally announced as the preferred tenderer on June 29, 2018, at which time it was also revealed the nine ships would henceforth be known as the Hunter class. The first three ships of the Hunter class will carry the names of three major Australian re- gions, all with strong historical maritime and naval ties. HMA Ships Flinders (II) (SA region named for explorer Captain Matthew Flinders - first circumnavigation of Australia and identified it as a conti- nent); Hunter (NSW region named for Vice-Admiral John Hunter – first fleet Captain and 2nd Governor of NSW); and Tasman (state and sea named for explorer Abel Tasman – first known European ex- plorer to reach Tasmania, NZ and Fiji).
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