Royal Australian Navy Chooses F-100 and BPE

The Australian Government picked Navantia for both of its two major Naval projects.

Spain's Navantia is the big winner in an Australian $ 11 billion (US$9.3 billion), five ship expansion of the Royal Australian Navy.

The Australian Government has selected the F100 design by Navantia for three next generation Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD) for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).

And a version of Navantia's 27,000 tonne strategic projection ship has also been chosen for two amphibious ships, beating out a design from France's Armaris based on its Mistral Class LHD.

Specific details were not released with the initial major media reports, however there are some details regarding the offer itself.

For the Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) the offer was what Armada Española call the "Victor" baseline of the F-100, specifically the baseline used in the fifth F-100 (F-105) purchased last year. Those modifications to the baseline F-100 included the "Victor" standard (SPY-1D(V)) and upgrades the AEGIS Combat System to Baseline 7 Phase II. It also includes new AEGIS integrations of ESSM, AEGIS integration for a Cruise Missile weapon system (presumably Tomahawk), integration for Harpoons, and integration systems like the interface calibration with the US-Navy (I presume this is CEC?), plus modifications in crew reduction. Because my Spanish is decent, not excellent, some of this is lost in translation, except to say that "integration" basically means a commitment to COTS systems and software.

Presumably, given Australia's special defense status with the US Navy, Raytheon will be authorized to provide the very latest mods to AEGIS and COTS integration, which means the AWD will likely be in the league of the DDG-1000 in terms of upgrade potential with its SPY-1D(V) AEGIS system. There are no reports of any redesign regarding an additional helo or more VLS cells.

Click the picture above for a detailed tour of the BPE.

For the BPE design, Tenix went all out putting out the capability worksheets. The LHD media kit has just about any general information you would want to know about the offer to Australia, and is a good place to start to get a feel for what the RAN is getting.