while using the F-100 Frame would incur savings over the long term it might be wise to decentralize the production line for the RAN. That way if a labor strike or some sort of natural or man made disaster occurs, they would still be getting ships. Also the competition might keep prices low between BAE and Navinata.
I don’t think Australia has such demand for frigates to need the redundancy of two production lines. It has been the long held desire of the Government to rationalise around one yard and operate it continuously they just haven’t found the right ship/yard arrangement to date. Which is why they went and built this big yard beside the submarine yard in Adelaide.
They wont have AEGIS but they will have the highly capable AUSPAR.
The word I heard around Boeing is the Navy want another batch of three Aegis ships as part of SEA 5000 and the other six as “mission deck” ships. So in the future they will operate in pairs with one AF100 with Aegis and one AF110 with unmanned vehicles.
AUSPAR is still in development and is just a radar not a combat system. The idea is to build a radar as powerful as SPY-1 but with the far lighter, cheaper and more flexible technology. If it reaches its power output goals it will possibly replace the SPY-1 radar on Aegis ships. It will also probably replace the SPS-49 radar on the Anzac class and be the primary radar with the 9LV combat system on the non Aegis SEA 5000 frigates.