Australian Hunter Class ASW Frigate

"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.
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So:
'large'
optionally crewed
Aegis
32xVLS

That's an interestingly challenging design for Tier 2.
 
GTX said:
In what respect?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
since Oz is smaller than the Lower 48,
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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.
 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
 
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https://www.defensenews.com/global/...twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tw_dfn
MELBOURNE, Australia — BAE Systems Australia ceremonially cut steel on the first batch of Hunter-class Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) frigates at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in South Australia on June 21.

The company also signed a production contract with the Commonwealth of Australia on the same day, for the first batch of three vessels.
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The cutting of the steel, which is to be part of the understructure support for the port propeller shaft brake system, was initiated by South Australian Premier Peter Maklinauskas following the contract signature.

The first ship, HMAS Hunter, is due to be completed in 2032 and is expected to be fully operational by 2034.
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1719584505295.png
 
Re the updated image of the Hunter frigate anyone know the radar layout array panels on the deck house, understood the larger lower diamond shaped panels are the four CEAFAR2 L-band distributed 360 degrees for long range volume search, above each are twin medium sized CEAFAR2 S-band diamond shaped panels for its multi-function radar and on top pointing skywards what looks like the smaller CEAMOUNT X-band panels dedicated for target illumination for semi-active homing missiles. Speculating the other large and medium shaped isosceles triangle panels pointing downwards are EW jammers? If so it looks like a neater design solution than the SEWIP Block 3 fitted to USS Pinckney (DDG 91) under the DDG Modernization (MOD) 2.0 upgrade which from front and rear makes it look like a chubby cheek chipmunk.
 

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Cordy said:
Re the updated image of the Hunter frigate anyone know the radar layout array panels on the deck house, understood the larger lower diamond shaped panels are the four CEAFAR2 L-band distributed 360 degrees for long range volume search, above each are twin medium sized CEAFAR2 S-band diamond shaped panels for its multi-function radar and on top pointing skywards what looks like the smaller CEAMOUNT X-band panels dedicated for target illumination for semi-active homing missiles. Speculating the other large and medium shaped isosceles triangle panels pointing downwards are EW jammers? If so it looks like a neater design solution than the SEWIP Block 3 fitted to USS Pinckney (DDG 91) under the DDG Modernization (MOD) 2.0 upgrade which from front and rear makes it look like a chubby cheek chipmunk.
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Probably functionally a great design on the Hunter but I'm definitely not a fan of the appearance.
 
Cordy said:
above each are twin medium sized CEAFAR2 S-band diamond shaped panels
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I'm pretty sure only one of those panels per face is CEAFAR-S, I expect the other would be a large CEAMOUNT array for horizon search and illumination, especially given the small size of the zenith CEAMOUNT arrays, which would probably have problems conducting horizon search and illumination of sea-skimming missiles given the very small aperture size of the arrays at low angles of elevation.
 
Cordy said:
Re the updated image of the Hunter frigate anyone know the radar layout array panels on the deck house, understood the larger lower diamond shaped panels are the four CEAFAR2 L-band distributed 360 degrees for long range volume search, above each are twin medium sized CEAFAR2 S-band diamond shaped panels for its multi-function radar and on top pointing skywards what looks like the smaller CEAMOUNT X-band panels dedicated for target illumination for semi-active homing missiles. Speculating the other large and medium shaped isosceles triangle panels pointing downwards are EW jammers? If so it looks like a neater design solution than the SEWIP Block 3 fitted to USS Pinckney (DDG 91) under the DDG Modernization (MOD) 2.0 upgrade which from front and rear makes it look like a chubby cheek chipmunk.
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Reminds me of the Long Beach and CVN-65 Enterprise.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
I'm pretty sure only one of those panels per face is CEAFAR-S, I expect the other would be a large CEAMOUNT array for horizon search and illumination, especially given the small size of the zenith CEAMOUNT arrays, which would probably have problems conducting horizon search and illumination of sea-skimming missiles given the very small aperture size of the arrays at low angles of elevation.
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You may well be correct, a puzzle as why have two separate S-band radars next to each other and not a single array, layout to make max use of space? understood CEAMOUNT is an X-band active phased array and purely a missile illuminator associated with the CEAFAR2 S multi-function radar similar in role to the USN continuous wave X-band AN/SPG-62 target illuminator for SPY-1.
 
My impression that CEAMOUNT, being an AESA, is theoretically capable of more if given a array with sufficient aperture, and given X-Band's better search performance against sea-skimming targets, and the potentially limited performance of the zenith CEAMOUNT arrays, if one of those two medium-sized arrays per face is a CEAMOUNT array, then this ship has six X-Band arrays that can perform a role equivalent to that of APAR or SPY-3 (at least in it's original design as a component of DBR, rather than a standalone system).
 

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