T26 is the optimal solution for your needs (and Canadian ones). But you had tons of delays in the original program. Thus the parameters of the problem changed.
Did we really? We had delays, but mostly due to the ambitious/unrealistic time frame given for the project. There has been lots of complaining about it, but there were two delays.
The list of contenders was whittled down to three, who were funded to conduct design activities such as assessing the risk of modifying their designs. Those risks forced the government to acknowledge that it wasn’t possible to meet the 2020 construction deadline. So, the 2020 milestone was redefined as the start of ‘prototyping’ (that is, demonstrating that the new shipyard in South Australia worked), while the start of construction on actual ships was moved to the end of 2022.
None of the original contenders for Sea5000 were going to meet the 2020 steel cutting deadline originally set out in the project, not even the F-105 based design, of which ASC were already building hulls for, as it was a significantly different design with different systems and different capabilities. Including the doubling the size of the hangar for two helos, the massive and power hungry Ceafar2, etc etc. Selected in what 2018 and cut in 2020.. To make the 2020 date realistic, they should have moved the selection earlier than 28 jun 2018. Even if you had a reference design with no changes, just getting all the suppliers and contracts/acquiring short lead items sorted would have taken 18 months. You could build a hull, but no wire, plumbing, ventilation etc to put inside it.
For me to order a Toyota Landcruiser today, will take 18-24 months, and that is for a mass produced item from a factory making thousands. Why would someone expect a complete, bespoke high end surface combatant to take less time to draw up, modify, contract and start welding.
The second delay was from BAE of 18 months as the design had not yet been completed, again due to the large amount of ambitious capabilities we wanted in this design. Caefar2 is the full monty four face mega radar, not a 3 face radar using regular frigate levels of power like the UK and Canadian selections. All of this surprised few people, as the UK ship still isn't in the water, and wasn't expected to be in the water for some time. Political promises does not change engineering reality.
We could have chosen, just a regular radar like the smaller ones UK/Canada has chosen, and had normal amounts of endurance and other less ambitious systems, and started production earlier. Or we further customise and build later.
The Australian program was never going to overtake the UK program which had started construction in 2017 and main gated in 2015, designed for the RN from the outset.
The biggest problem with the Hunter program was that it wasn't given enough time to be such an ambitious program. I would argue the Attack class suffered from the same issues, as it had been delayed and put off so long (10-15+ years?), it was looking increasingly unlikely to meet ultra ambitious targets. We then decided to custom build a nuclear sub as a conventional, requiring billions of modifications and variations. Like going to a residential home builder, using their design, and turning single level home into an airplane, via variation.
I don't think things would have been different with FREMM. We would have spent just as long, and had a generally less capable platform and made it difficult to meet other project outcomes.
The success the US is having with Constellation isn't because they selected FREMM, and FREMM is magical, its because they didn't try to put the full size SPY-7 radar on it, make it have a 10,000 nm range, put in four helicopters, 4 CIWS, 8x landing craft, an 8" main gun and then say batch 2 will have 64 strike length cells.. I know that seems like hyperbolic exaggeration, but Hunter literally has twice the number or size of everything on the Constellation other than the VLS. Plus the hunters have come under pressure for only 32 vls.
They had a reasonable list of requirements for a low cost frigate. 57mm, smaller radar, single helo, 32 vls. Done. Even then they had to stretch the design.
