Australia announces the outcome of it's Frigate competition

raptor82 said:
www.navalnews.com

Australia to Double Fleet Size with Small Warships - Naval News

Australia will slash the number of Hunter frigates being bought to free up funding for "Tier 2" small warships that will help double the fleets size.
www.navalnews.com www.navalnews.com

Hunter Class: 6 (-3)
Tier 2 FFG : +11
Optionally crewed LUSV : +6
Click to expand...
Aussies need to add a couple more big drydocks. It's not as horrible a situation as the USN with yard space since Oz is smaller than the Lower 48, but you still need at least one 200+m drydock up north, one on the east coast, and one on the west coast.
 
"optionally crewed” large surface vessels, built in Western Australia and based on work underway in the United States on large-unmanned surface combatants, that will “significantly enhance” the RANs long-range strike capabilities. According to the review, they’ll be armed at least 32 vertical launch systems, and equipped with the AEGIS combat system.
Click to expand...

So:
'large'
optionally crewed
Aegis
32xVLS

That's an interestingly challenging design for Tier 2.
 
GTX said:
In what respect?
Click to expand...
Rough dimensions, and more importantly you don't have to detour clear down to freaking Panama to go from east coast to west coast...

And I'm having a hell of a time finding a good place for the north coast drydock... Darwin is just too small a city to support that big a facility.
 
Probably wouldnt want it on the north coast anyway, right on the frontline if Australia attacked and unlike the sub base in Darwin where they could sail with reasonable notice of impending hostilities a ship in drydock would be vulnerable.
 
DWG said:
So:
'large'
optionally crewed
Aegis
32xVLS

That's an interestingly challenging design for Tier 2.
Click to expand...

I think they are referring to an Australian version of the LUSV the American Navy is experimenting with.
 
WatcherZero said:
Probably wouldnt want it on the north coast anyway, right on the frontline if Australia attacked and unlike the sub base in Darwin where they could sail with reasonable notice of impending hostilities a ship in drydock would be vulnerable.
Click to expand...
Then you're stuck with only having two such shipyards, and that's a much simpler attack problem. All the people who would work in the shipyards are down around the southern coast and halfway up the east coast.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Then you're stuck with only having two such shipyards, and that's a much simpler attack problem. All the people who would work in the shipyards are down around the southern coast and halfway up the east coast.
Click to expand...

Which is on the order of 2,000-2,500km further away from potential adversaries on east or west coast or 6,000km further away on the south coast. Your in the Panama Canal during WW2 realm, yes they may want to attack but their ships have neither the range nor at-sea resupply capacity to extend their logistics chain beyond the Java Sea.
 
Last edited:
Scott Kenny said:
since Oz is smaller than the Lower 48,
Click to expand...
Wikipedia data gives land area of
- Australia as 7,550,667 sq km (7,688,287 sq km total - 1.79% water area)
- USA Lower 48 as 7,649,506 sq km (9,147,590 USA total land - 1,481,346 (Alaska land) - 16,638 (Hawaii land))

Non-Hawaii US-islands thrown in with US Lower 48 total.
Australian islands thrown in with Australia total.
Australia is a big place.
 
Last edited:
Arjen said:
Wikipedia data gives land area of
- Australia as 7,550,667 sq km (7,688,287 sq km total - 1.79% water area)
- USA Lower 48 as 7,649,506 sq km (9,147,590 USA total land - 1,481,346 (Alaska land) - 16,638 (Hawaii land))

Non-Hawaii US-islands thrown in with US Lower 48 total.
Australian islands thrown in with Australia total.
Australia is a big place.
Click to expand...
Right. And you don't have to detour an extra 1000+ miles south to get to the closest place to get from one coast to the other.
 
WatcherZero said:
they may want to attack but their ships have neither the range nor at-sea resupply capacity to extend their logistics chain beyond the Java Sea.
Click to expand...

Which is undoubtedly why China is cosying up to places like the Solomons.
 
Scott Kenny said:
And I'm having a hell of a time finding a good place for the north coast drydock... Darwin is just too small a city to support that big a facility.
Click to expand...

The demographics haven't really changed since WWII, you have to go south to Townsville or thereabouts for the population to support major installations.
 
WatcherZero said:
US coastline 12,383 miles
Australian coastline 21,126 miles
Click to expand...
Not counting some 8000 miles of landlocked borders...

Again.

How far does a ship have to travel to get from San Diego to Norfolk?

5500 nautical miles.


How far does a ship have to travel to get from Perth to Sydney?

2050 nautical miles.
 
Scott Kenny said:
5500 nautical miles to go from San Diego to Norfolk.

2050 nautical miles to go from Perth to Sydney.

Which one has the shorter trip again?
Click to expand...

What point are you trying to make? we were talking about having naval facilities in Australia further from an adversaries reach and yes despite being a smaller country at 7.6m km2 of which 7% is inland waterways such as the Great Lakes border with Canada (122,000 sqkm of the US landmass) as opposed to your original claim of Australia being smaller than the 48 with a shorter coastline; having Canada to the north and Mexico to the south provides a geographical advantage to the US by increasing the distance an adversary would have to travel to blockade the entire coast line.

Incidentally for an aircraft they are pretty much identical distance, 2,045 miles between Perth and Sydney and 2,186 miles between San Diego and Norfolk. Though the port of San Diego and port of Seattle are only 1,070 miles apart as the crow flies as opposed to the port of Melbourne and port of Darwin which are 1,950 miles apart.
 
Last edited:

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom