{"id":9507,"date":"2025-03-05T18:08:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T07:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/?p=9507"},"modified":"2025-03-06T07:43:30","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T20:43:30","slug":"the-new-frigate-decision-this-year-or-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/the-new-frigate-decision-this-year-or-else\/","title":{"rendered":"New frigate decision this year or else . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ANI Newsletter: Minister pushes speedy frigate decision : Defence Minister Richard Marles has clashed with one of his top officials over whether the government will delay a critical decision on a new fleet of warships, as the presence of a Chinese flotilla off the coast of Australia focuses attention on the navy\u2019s vulnerabilities, <strong>The Sydney Morning Herald<\/strong> reports.<\/p>\n<p>Military experts urged Marles to override any bureaucratic resistance and stick to the plan to decide this year whether German company TKMS or Japanese firm Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will win a $10 billion contract to build 11 frigates to replace the navy\u2019s ageing fleet of Anzac-class vessels. With Beijing signalling its intention to operate far from the Chinese mainland, the Australian navy\u2019s fleet of surface combatants is set to shrink to nine next year \u2013 down from 11 a year ago \u2013 with a significant chunk of those vessels unavailable for operations because of maintenance and upgrades.<\/p>\n<p>Asked when a decision would be made on the general purpose frigates, Defence Department deputy secretary Jim McDowell told a Senate estimates hearing this week: \u201cWe expect a government decision in the first quarter of next year.\u201d McDowell, the top Defence official for naval shipbuilding and sustainment, said this was an \u201caggressive\u201d timeframe given such decisions can take between seven and 10 years. The first ship is due to be delivered in 2029. Marles refuted McDowell\u2019s comments at a subsequent press conference. \u201cWe want to see a decision made this year, so let me be clear about that,\u201d he said. \u201cOur number one objective here is speed into service. What came out of the surface fleet review [released last year] was really a need to get more surface combatants into service in the Royal Australian Navy as quickly as possible.\u201d [by Ed. Deputy Secretary Jim Mc Dowell has since announced his retirement.] Government sources said that Marles, who has said he expects defence officials to improve their performance, was pressing the department for a decision this year.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_9508\" style=\"width: 721px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9508\" class=\" wp-image-9508\" src=\"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mogami-class-frigate-300x200.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"711\" height=\"474\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mogami-class-frigate-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mogami-class-frigate-1024x682.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mogami-class-frigate-768x511.png 768w, https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Mogami-class-frigate.png 1320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-9508\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mogami class frigate<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANI Newsletter: Minister pushes speedy frigate decision : Defence Minister Richard Marles has clashed with one of his top officials over whether the government will delay a critical decision on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1821,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,57,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-ran","category-s1-ships","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1821"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9507"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9513,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507\/revisions\/9513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}