Type 26 frigate

These are the big, big through deck kind of amphibious vessels, the Canberra that they had built.

They're building a new air defense destroyer based on a British model, the Type 26 destroyer.

But the most amazing thing I saw in Australia, I will tell you, is I was on the west coast of Australia back in October over in Perth.

I went to Perth for a visit and I went down to Fremantle and there was a facility down in Fremantle where they were actually scrapping.

And to be deadly honest, the best way to do that would be to take the Virginia-class reference model and just evolve it, not radically redesign it, not come up, because we're seeing any time you start to radically redesign things, and naval architecture and ship design in each three countries is not progressing very well.

Look at the Type 26 problems in the UK, the Hunter-class problems in Australia on the surface vessels.

Look at the issues with, you know, they may have canceled Constellation class frigates in the United States.

We would have been better off taking a submarine that is world-class and fantastic in the Virginia, evolving that base design and making minimal changes, putting it into production in all three countries, reaping the benefits and rewards of that technology transfer and multiple country industrial base and doing that on into the future.

But also jobs that come from investment.

So when we've got a contract with Norway to build Type 26 frigates, I am no expert in defence, but I do think you've got to make sure that jobs that come out of that are accessible to everyone.

So, you know, so I've got to get interested in that.

And of course, I've got an interest in women's issues, which I will never lose.

What, what does on schedule mean?

The, the fact that the Type 26 was shortlisted for this, the Future Frigate competition as a supposedly mature design-

Is it in, is it in service?

... back in 2016, and we are now 10 years down the track.

[laughs]

Is, is the Type 26 in service yet with the Royal Navy?

Uh, no.

No.

So they already use a lot of our doctrine and our approach to business there.

And then we have this great opportunity that is the Norwegian strategic deal, Lunar House, and the associated Type 26 ship sale with Norway, which has given us this new platform for achieving what we describe as interchangeability between our navies.

You'll hear a lot, for those military geeks, we hear a lot about interoperability and the need to be able to work closely with allies.

Well, interchangeability is the next step.

So interchangeability means it's really agnostic of which nation is in what place conducting tasks.

We all act for each other's collective requirements in a way that we fully, instinctively, in a very kind of deep way, understand how our ally is going to act in those circumstances and can exchange our capabilities with them.

The Norway platform offers us, in Type 26, offers us the opportunity to build that in.

We will build identical ships with Norway.