The lack of urgency certainly won't help the Type 26 cause. The Type 26 looks like it would be the riskiest selection for Australia and I am having my doubts as to whether the benefits of a newer design outweigh those risks.
This may seem like an obvious question, but I'll ask it anyway.
WHY is T26 the
RISKIEST selection for Australia
?
For instance, I know from speaking with at least x1 individual, that since 2013 Australia has had serving Naval officers attending (
as observers), at all levels of the design process, attending the various reviews & a dearth of other general, day-to-day meetings, to see how things are going with the overall design of the UK RN Type 26.
I also know that the SEA 5000 programme has had teams of engineers from the UK, come to Australia on more than one occasion, to present the designs and be put on the spot by both politicians & naval personnel, answering technical queries to help tailor the Type 26 / Global Combat ship design, specifically for the customer's requirements. These x2 processes tell me that over the last 5 years Australia has actually been de-risking the design, while attempting to give the navy what it wants.
Shipbuilding, is not like the mass production of a mobile/cell phone or a new variant of a particular model of car, where designers can redesign something from scratch in 10 months to produce 100's of 1,000's. It takes time to design a ship and by the time a design is agreed, manufacturing completed & testing has started, the technology that goes into the ship has moved on, newer / better weapons & sensors have been developed & operational tempo / tasking has changed as the geo-political situation on the planet fluctuates & new players bring new problems.
The point of the last paragraph was a means to explain that even if the ship that was agreed in design 5 - 7 years ago ticked all the Navy & govt's boxes, it probably wouldn't tick all those boxes that we need ticked today, so if we sit on our hands & put up with the same old technology we've always had, we'd never have gotten the wheel, or the tools to carve it from stone !
Finally, while I can't dispute the comments from the hansard "
The Secretary of State for Defence visited the Clyde last Thursday (19th April 2018), to witness the completion of the first Type 26 units. This unit will form part of the first ship, HMS Glasgow, which is due to be accepted by the summer of 2025. The Royal Navy will then train and prepare her and she will enter service in 2027."(
Type 26 Frigates: 23 Apr 2018: House of Commons debates - TheyWorkForYou), or statements made relating to Type 31 e "
Key Points - The MoD plans to award up to four, seven-month competitive design phase contracts - A firm price of GBP1.25 billion has been set for the procurement of five Type 31e frigates, with the first to be delivered before the end of 2023" (
UK set to release ITN for Type 31e frigate | Jane's 360), just because the British government has attempted to slow down one of its most technically complex & costly shipbuilding programmes, to concentrate on some smaller, easier vessels, does not mean that the proposals being put forward by the UK manufacturer of the Type 26 well be any worse than those being offered by others.
SA
