‘Lethal’ Royal Australian Navy review signals need for urgent change

The blueprint into the future of Australia’s Navy is a good one but should have come earlier, writes Charles Miranda.

Analysis: To borrow the line from Tom Cruise’s most famous film, Navy feels the need for speed.

And just like the Hollywood great’s Top Gun character’s name, what is being proposed for the future of the Royal Australian Navy is Maverick to say the least.

Just how much of the blueprint into the future of Navy is wish list versus an actual shopping list?

And speed is relative, just how fast can Defence actually move on this versus how fast it should or might want to move?

If you believe the analysts, we will be in conflict in three to five years so we need to be moving faster than the 30 knots of a frigate.

Evolved Hunter Class design for guided missile frigate. Picture: Supplied/BAE Systems Australia

The independent review into the Navy’s future needs will see the fleet more than doubled from 11 combat warships to 26 and with that, a boost of missile firing capacity from 400 to 700 including procuring the leading Tomahawk missile.

It includes for the first time the potential for uncrewed missile-firing drone ships and guarantees the nation’s shipyards will have work for decades to come.

Critically the report recognises the current state of our fleet is not fit for purpose and is the oldest armada the RAN has ever operated in its history.

This has been the case for years but successive governments either chose to ignore or suffered wilful blindness.

That is why there is a genuine sense of urgency noted throughout the independent review – aptly titled Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant Fleet – with recognition this course change is needed immediately.

Labor has put $11 billion of new money against this plan over the next 10 years but that’s effectively the price of one ship and more detail is needed on where other funding savings will be found.

Committing to six new Hunter class frigates as opposed to nine scheduled and six less patrol boats will go some way here.

Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Hammond, with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy, address the media in a press conference for the release of the independent analysis of Navy ships. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

Navy Chief Vice Admiral Mark Hammond committed to the immediate – as in from today – adoption of the blueprint but you would have to hope Australia is not pushed into a conflict anytime before at best the 2030s.

The ageing and unsustainable HMAS Anzac will be retired and HMAS Arunta in 2026 so that’s a quarter of Navy’s frigate capability gone with replacements years away.

The Hunter class frigate was chosen in 2018 but six years on, the first one is yet to be built let alone enter service.

Other general purpose frigates will be overseas off-the-shelf purchases so they can be made quicker than if they were built here but Australia’s order will have to tag on the end of their production line orders already made. How long this list and wait is, is not known.

The drone warships are also still in prototype design form with the United States Navy and it is not clear when they will be built and or enter service.

In short, the blueprint is a good one and offers much and is funded but the shame is that it was not commissioned years ago and is now forcing Defence to now scramble to meet our national security needs in what we are constantly reminded is the most strategically challenged period since WWII.