A new fleet of warships will be the government’s response to a rising China

A new fleet of small, well-armed warships will be the centrepiece of a sweeping restructure as Labor seeks to rebut claims it’s been too slow to respond to China’s threat.

The Hunter frigates will not be operational for nearly a decade. Picture: Supplied

A new fleet of small, well-armed warships will form the centrepiece of a sweeping restructure of the navy as the Albanese government seeks to rebut claims that it has been too slow to respond to the threat posed by China.

The long-awaited review of the navy’s surface fleet, to be released on Tuesday, will also retain the troubled $45bn Hunter-class frigate program in Adelaide, but with only six of the anti-submarine ships likely to be ordered rather than the initially planned nine.

It will also seek to shore up Labor votes in South Australia and Western Australia by announcing a plan for continuous naval shipbuilding in both states, despite studies showing substantial savings for buying warships off-the-shelf from overseas.

The decision on the navy’s surface fleet comes as the government is under fire for failing to provide any significant increase in defence funding, regardless of warnings last year that Australia faced the gravest strategic outlook in generations.

Criticism of the government’s national security credentials is expected to force it to approve an increase in defence spending in the May budget to fund a revamped, enlarged surface fleet as well as the AUKUS nuclear submarines.

The navy is in a parlous state, saddled with the oldest ships in its history, a lack of firepower, not enough crew to sail the existing fleet and the country’s biggest new warship project, the Hunter frigates, beset by delays, cost overruns and design problems.

In December, the government was unable to agree to a US navy request to send a warship to the Red Sea because no crew or ship was available for deployment at short notice. The navy has already pulled one Anzac-class frigate from the water because of crew shortages and is looking at mothballing up to two more.

The government is expected on Tuesday to unveil plans for a new fleet of at least eight small warships, either corvette or light patrol frigates, to try to boost the navy’s firepower more quickly in response to a rising China.

The new fleet will increase the total number of the navy’s current 11 surface combatants and will also increase its firepower, which has fallen by 43 per cent since 1995 at a time when the Chinese navy has become the largest in the world, with more than 370 ships and ­submarines.

The move towards smaller so-called tier-2 warships was foreshadowed in last year’s Defence Strategic Review, which called for a navy with a “larger number of smaller surface vessels” to allow more well-armed ships at sea at any one time.

The government has examined a range of options to acquire a fleet of corvettes or light patrol frigates between 3500 and 5000 tonnes from Spain, Germany, Britain, Japan and South Korea. The first few of the new fleet of small warships is likely to be built overseas to accelerate their entry into service, but the rest of the corvette-frigate fleet is likely to be constructed in WA to produce a continuous shipbuilding capacity in that state.

The decisions on the structure of the navy, which contains 18 recommendations, comes in response to an independent analysis of the navy’s surface combatant fleet last year by former US admiral William Hila­rides.

The public version of that report, which was commissioned as part of the DSR, will also be released on Tuesday. The foreword of that report will state that “the independent analysis team (was) concerned with the DSR’s findings that the current and planned surface combatant fleet is not appropriate for the levels of risk we now face and that cost pressures already existed in the program. They noted that the current surface ship fleet is the oldest the navy has operated in its history.”

However, the government has decided to retain the Hunter-class frigate program in Adelaide, despite claims by former admirals that the ships are too heavy and lack sufficient firepower for modern warfare, with only 32 missiles.

The government is expected to reduce the Hunter-class frigate program, which is not expected to deliver its first ship until 2032, from nine ships to six. It is possible it may ask Hunter shipbuilder BAE Systems to replace the three lost ASW ships with three new, better-armed Air Warfare destroyers built from the same hull.

Both the Hunter program and the new corvette/frigate program will be designed to provide an ongoing shipbuilding capacity in critical seats in SA and WA, which the government needs to win the next election.

Strategic Analysis Australia director Michael Shoebridge said it was critical the government provided extra funding in its response to the surface fleet review, and a clear timetable on the arrival of ships to replace the fragile Anzac-class frigates.

He said decisive action was needed from the government to head off the “death spiral” facing the navy, given the Hunter frigates will not be operational for nearly a decade.

Mr Shoebridge said it would be better if the Hunter program was dumped altogether and warned of capability gaps in waiting for the new ships, given the fragile condition of the ageing Anzac-class frigates. “A central thing I expect is they’re going to retain the $45bn Hunter frigate program and not get any ship from that enormous and slow program until 2033,” he said.

“If they cut the numbers from nine to six, the cost per ship goes up and we still don’t get anything into the navy fleet for a decade.

“So the path of least resistance is what I expect them to take on the Hunter. I would be delighted to be surprised and hear that they had cancelled the program.”

He said he expected the government to announce a “process” to acquire another fleet of ships to help with the limited capacity of the Anzac-class frigates.

Strategic Analysis Australia director Peter Jennings said lowering the number of Hunter frigates would see “per unit costs rise and we get nothing until the 2030s”.

“It looks as though the navy is finding the Anzacs are worn out. So we lose naval power over the 2020s and into the 30s – precisely the wrong time, given the strategic outlook,” he said.

Mr Jennings said it would be “no loss” if the government cancelled the offshore patrol vessel program.

He declared there was a need for new vessels with “lots of missile vertical launchers”.

Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said the government needed to secure more funding for the navy as part of its response to the surface review.