Sigh, this comes down to a number of issues that most people that only think of weapon mounts and size never seem to deem worthy of study.
The ANZAC frigate program was designed to deliver a lower cost, lower capability vessel to replace the Destroyer Escorts such as Parramatta and Swan.
These ship’s capability was quite outmoded, and the replacement vessels would deliver increased capabilities over the DEs.
The contenders were the Dutch M class and the German Meko 200. The Meko 200 was selected for a number of reasons, including cost, commonality with a number of operators, reduced crewing requirement, much greater operational range and the capability to take a number of increases in sensors and weapons over the life of the vessel.
The concept at the time was that the RAN would operate three tiers of vessel, Tier 1 was the DDGs and the FFG’s equipped with an area SAM systema (and 3D radars in the case of the DDGs) and capable of operating in high threat operations in conjunction with allied forces, Tier 3 was the Fremantle class patrol boats, capable of maintaining the integrity of Australia’s EEZ and working with South Pacific navies.
This left Tier 2, which was designed to provide a lesser level of capability than Tier 1, but be capable of upgrading over time to allow it to integrate into forces led by Tier 1 vessels in a high threat environment. The notorious ‘Fitted For But Not With’ concept.
The Meko 200 was selected and construction commenced on 8 ships for the RAN and 2 (planned to be 3 or 4) for the RNZN.
These vessels were duly delivered on time and at cost, an acheivement somewhat rare in naval shipbuilding (I am no fan of Tenix but they did acheive what was set out in the contract) and quite noteworthy.
The Anzacs are fitted with 1 x 127mm gun, ESSM, ASW torpedo tubes, Nulka and other passive countermeasures, are being fitted with 8 x Harpoon and operate with the S70-B-2 variant of the Sea Hawk.
The RNZN ships differ in having a single Phalanx instead of the Nulka, no Harpoon and operate Sea Sprite heicopters.
If the decision had been taken to series produce FFG’s rather than introduce the Meko 200 Anzac ship, the RAN would have had to find a lot more money, or accept that they could only have afforded 6 FFGs rather than 8 Anzac ships.
In addition they would have to have found some 60 additional personnel for each FFG, over the complement of the Anzac, so that is an additional 480 sea going personnel across eight FFGs. The RAN has enough trouble recruiting personnel now, let alone another almost 500 billets.
The Anzac hull has proven more capable in the Great Southern Ocean than the finer FFG hull, with each FFG that deployed down there having suffered damage, ranging from minor to major, which has not affected the Anzacs to anywhere near the same extent.
All in all, while the Anzac ships are not as effective as the FFG’s in high threat environments, they have provided the RAN with an increase in capability over the preceeding vessels and were a cost effective way to maintain fleet numbers in a period of financial constraints.
As for the modification of the FFG by swapping around the weaponry, one of the proposals saw the Mk13 launcher replaced by a 127mm gun, the 76mm mount replaced by a Tactical length Mk41 VLS launcher with 24 cells and the insertion of the 8 cell self defence length ahead of the 127mm gun in the bow. It required a reworking of some of the internals but was do-able.
This was scuppered and the much more limited upgrade proposed by ADI / Thales was implemented on only part of the FFG fleet due to the degradation suffered by the early members of the class (Adelaide and Canberra in particular) and the limited life left in Sydney and Darwin (all have been hard worked and were not designed as long-life warships by the USN, rather as limited capability ocean escorts).
Thus the limited upgrades only being implemented on Sydney and Darwin (to get the most out of their remaining life) and on the Australian-built ships, Melbourne and Newcastle.
Simply looking at shipbuilders brochures and stating “X is better than Y” is a simplistic measure of measurement, you have to analyse the role of the vessels, the political and economic situation extant at the time, the constraints under which the navy in question is operating, and the operational circumstances in which the vessels will operate.
The Anzac frigate program delivered 10 ships on time and on budget, and the vessels have undertaken all that has been asked of them by their operating navies, two results that many classes of warships cannot claim.
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