China warning as ships delayed

The $45 billion project to build nine new frigates for the navy is in trouble, with construction of the first three ships delayed amid concern over design and weight.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton. Picture: Zak Simmonds

The construction of the first three of the navy’s nine new frigates will be delayed by up to 18 months, as Defence Minister Peter Dutton warned China’s rise meant Australia could not afford further slippages in the timeline for its new frigates and submarines.

A frustrated Mr Dutton has ­delivered a blunt message to all prime contractors for the $45bn frigate project and the $90bn submarine project, saying Australia cannot allow these crucial projects to drift at a time of growing strategic uncertainty.

His comments came after he publicly confirmed for the first time that construction of the first of the new Hunter-Class frigates had been pushed back by up to a year and a half due to delays in the development of Britain’s Type 26 Frigate, on which the Australian ship design is based.

Under a revised schedule, the delay will be recovered only by the time construction begins on the fourth ship, meaning the first three frigates will now face a delayed introduction into naval service from the early 2030s.

“It is frustrating to see an up-to-18-month delay to the start of construction of ship one, but importantly this delay will be recovered over the term of the project,’ Mr Dutton told The Weekend Australian. “We are making difficult decisions in the national ­interest.

“It is important to note that the Australian changes are not the cause of the delay. The delay is directly related to the UK’s Type 26 design maturity which flows through to our program.”

He warned that Australia could not afford further setbacks in its major naval shipbuilding projects, given the rise of China.

“Our strategic circumstances with regard to the CCP (China) in our region mean I don’t intend to just sit back and let these projects drift,’ he said. “I have delivered a blunt message to all the primes and made it very clear they are to deliver these defence projects on time and on budget.”

Both the plan to build the frigates – the mainstay of Australia’s future fleet – and 12 new French-designed submarines have hit problems early before steel is cut on any of them.

The frigates will be based on Britain’s Type 26 frigate but will be modified to include a US combat system and an Australian radar, among other changes.

However, the development in Britain of the Type 26, which is not yet in service, has been delayed by design and weight problems, as well as by the Covid-related lockdowns in the UK this year.

This has meant the design is still too immature for the Australianised version to proceed as scheduled in Adelaide, and Mr Dutton has accepted advice that a delay of up to 18 months in the first ship would reduce design-related risks for the Hunter-Class boats.

The revised schedule means all nine frigates will still be delivered as originally planned by 2044. However, steel will not be cut on the first ship until 2024. It will not be completed until 2031, and will not enter service until 2033.

There is a concern that the weight of the new Hunter-Class frigates is already too heavy to ­accommodate future upgrades to weapons or other systems, potentially limiting their lifespan as ­effective warships.

The evolving design work on the Hunter-Class has seen the ship’s weight jump from a full displacement weight of 8800 tonnes to more than 10,000 tons.

The vessel’s weight margin – in other words the margin of growth to place future systems on the warship in years to come – is only 270 tonnes, or 3.3 per cent. By contrast the current ANZAC-class frigates had an initial weight margin of growth of 10 per cent, although this was larger than normal because they were built without ­several key systems.

“The risk is you won’t be able to evolve the vessel over its career because essentially you have used up the weight margin to add future systems to it as the threat evolves,” said Marcus Hellyer, a senior defence analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Craig Lockhart, the managing director of the frigate builder, BAE Systems Maritime Australia, denied the ship was too heavy and said its weight would not detract from its performance. “The Hunter ship … is within the design criteria to meet key whole-ship per­formance characteristics,” he said.

The government recently revealed that the cost of the project had jumped from $35bn to $45bn.