By Kirsty Needham, Tim Kelly and Alasdair Pal
SYDNEY/TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will deliver the first of Australia’s new navy frigates under a A$10 billion ($6.5 billion) deal, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said on Tuesday.
The three frigate contract will be the biggest Australian defence purchase since the government in 2023 agreed to build nuclear-powered submarines with the United States and Britain, and one of Japan’s biggest defence export deals.
“Its going to be really important in terms of giving our navy the capability to project, and impactful projection is at the heart of the strategic challenge,” Marles said, adding it was “a very significant moment in the bilateral relationship between Australia and Japan”.
Japan’s Minister of Defence Gen Nakatani said it was a “major step forward in Japan’s defense cooperation efforts”.
“The benefits include enhanced joint operations and interoperability with both Australia and the United States,” he told a briefing in Tokyo.
MHI’s Mogami frigate was selected over German company ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems’ MEKO A-200 in a meeting of the Australian government’s national security committee on Monday.
The upgraded Mogami-class frigate was capable of launching long-range missiles, and had a range of up to 10,000 nautical miles, compared to Australia’s current Anzac Class frigates, which had a range of around 6,000 nautical miles, Marles said. It also operated with a smaller crew than the Anzac class.
The government said in 2024 it would spend up to A$10 billion for the general-purpose frigates to replace the Anzac Class. They will be equipped for undersea warfare and air defence to secure maritime trade routes and Australia’s northern approaches.
It said the first three general-purpose frigates will be built in Japan, with the remaining eight expected to be built by Austal in Western Australia state. The first frigate is expected to be delivered in 2029.
The frigate contract is Japan’s biggest and most significant defence deal since it lifted a decades-long ban on military exports in 2014, and only the second after it agreed to supply air defence radars to the Philippines.
“This collaboration is of significant security importance to Japan,” Nakatani said.
The Japanese government had supported Mitsubishi’s bid, after losing an Australian submarine tender to France a decade earlier, he added.
Contract negotiations will begin this year with a contract expected to be signed in 2026, Australian and Japanese officials said.
Finalising pricing, maintenance and sustainment arrangements, and the later transfer of production to Australia are major issues to be addressed, the officials said.
($1 = 1.5456 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Tim Kelly in Tokyo; Editing by Stephen Coates and Michael Perry)
