Australia's first Hunter-class frigate reaches keel laying stage ahead of planned 2034 service entry.

On August 24, 2026, BAE Systems Australia officially laid the keel for the first Hunter-class frigate, NUSHIP Hunter, at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in South Australia. Joining two major lower-hull blocks marked the commencement of full structural integration for the Royal Australian Navy's next-generation anti-submarine warfare platform. The milestone transitions the heavily modified British Type 26 design from individual module fabrication into continuous hull assembly following extensive industrial prototyping.

The NUSHIP Hunter features an 8,800-tonne full-load displacement, a quiet CODLOG propulsion system, and an integrated sensor suite comprising CEAFAR2 phased-array radar, S2150 hull sonar, and CAPTAS-4 towed arrays. Representing the lead ship in a revised six-vessel program, the frigate incorporates a 32-cell Mk 41 VLS and the Aegis combat system, with operational delivery projected for 2032.

Related topic: Australian Hunter-class frigates gain direct link to US Aegis missile defense system

Each Hunter-class frigate is assembled from 78 production units consolidated into 22 major blocks, with 20 to 22 of the HMAS Hunter's blocks already under construction by the time of the ceremony. (Picture source: BAE Systems Australia)

On August 24, 2026, BAE Systems Australia laid the keel of the first Hunter-class frigate, the NUSHIP Hunter, at Osborne Naval Shipyard in South Australia, eight years and two months after Australia selected the Type 26-derived design in June 2018 and 26 months after production steel was cut on June 21, 2024. The ceremony joined two lower-hull blocks and marked the point at which separate fabricated sections began forming the first continuous structure of the ship. The HMAS Hunter is being assembled from 78 production units consolidated into 22 major blocks; by mid-2026 more than 60% of the first frigate had entered fabrication or construction, and by the keel event work had started on essentially the entire block set.

This followed a four-year industrial preparation phase beginning in December 2020, during which Osborne constructed five prototype hull blocks to establish welding sequences, dimensional tolerances, panel-line processes, block movement procedures and workforce proficiency before production material for the operational ship was cut. The first construction contract covers the HMAS Hunter, HMAS Flinders and HMAS Tasman, the initial three ships of what is now a six-frigate class. Australia had selected nine Hunters under SEA 5000 Phase 1, but in February 2024, a surface combatant review cut that number to six, eliminating one-third of the planned class before the first ship reached keel assembly.

Current scheduling places the HMAS Hunter's delivery in 2032 and operational entry around 2034, implying about eight years from first production steel to delivery, roughly ten years from first steel to operational service, and approximately 16 years from design selection to operational availability. The HMAS Flinders and HMAS Tasman are expected to follow in 2035 and 2036. The HMAS Hunter's physical dimensions make the frigate class closer in size to a destroyer than to the Anzac-class frigates it replaces. The hull is 151.4 m long and 20.8 m wide, compared with 147.2 m for the Hobart-class destroyer, while the Hunter's lightship displacement is approximately 8,167 to 8,200 tonnes, rising to about 8,800 tonnes at full load. Despite its greater displacement, the ship carries only 32 Mk 41 Vertical Launching System cells, compared with 48 on Hobart.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the final design, or a future configuration, could exceed 10,500 tonnes. Its VLS density is approximately 3.9 Mk 41 cells per 1,000 tonnes at 8,200 tonnes, compared with about 6.9 cells per 1,000 tonnes for a 7,000-tonne Hobart, making Hunter's cell density about 43 percent lower. That difference reflects the volume committed to acoustic isolation, sonar handling equipment, aviation, mission-space capacity, and the larger internal arrangements required for long-duration ASW operations. Propulsion uses one Rolls-Royce MT30 gas turbine, four MTU 20V 4000 M53B high-speed diesel generators, and two electric propulsion motors in a CODLOG arrangement. Electric propulsion is central to the ship's ASW role because the diesel generators can produce electrical power while being acoustically isolated from the propulsion train, reducing shaft-line vibration and machinery noise transmitted into the sea.

Maximum speed exceeds 27 knots, while electric-drive range is 7,000 nmi, equivalent to 13,000 km. The normal complement is about 180 to 183 personnel, including aviation personnel, while accommodation supports 208, leaving 25 to 28 berths for additional specialists, mission personnel, or expanded aviation detachments. The ship's ASW architecture is built around persistent detection at different ranges and depths rather than one principal sonar. Ultra Maritime's S2150 hull-mounted sonar provides active and passive submarine detection, mine and obstacle avoidance, underwater communications, and automated torpedo detection, classification, and localization from the ship itself. Its principal long-range sensor is the Thales Sonar 2087, the British designation of the CAPTAS-4, which combines a low-frequency active source with a passive towed array and variable-depth deployment.

The key advantage of the variable-depth body is physical rather than simply electronic: the active source can be lowered beneath temperature gradients and surface layers that bend sound energy away from a hull-mounted sonar, placing the sensor at a depth where acoustic propagation is more favorable. A cited maximum detection distance of up to 60 km gives a useful scale for the system, but that figure is not constant because submarine acoustic detection depends on water temperature, salinity, sea state, seabed characteristics, water depth, target speed, target machinery noise, and whether the contact is above or below a thermocline. The Towed Body Handling System and Towed Array Handling System completed factory acceptance activity at Brest in 2025, covering the machinery that physically deploys and recovers the active body and passive array.

Above the waterline, one MH-60R Seahawk forms the mobile part of the ASW system. The helicopter can move tens of kilometres from the HMAS Hunter, deploy its own sensors and attack a submarine with Mk 54 lightweight torpedoes, allowing prosecution to continue beyond the ship's immediate sonar position. The Hunter-class itself has two twin torpedo launchers for MU90 Impact lightweight torpedoes, giving the frigate a ship-launched close-range anti-submarine weapon in addition to helicopter-delivered Mk 54s. The tactical chain is therefore explicit: the S2150 monitors the local area, the Sonar 2087 searches farther from the hull and across depth layers, the MH-60R investigates or prosecutes contacts outside the ship's position, and the electric propulsion configuration reduces the ship-generated noise competing with those passive sensors. The Hunter's missile magazine is more constrained than its displacement would suggest.

Each ship has 32 Mk 41 cells, so six ships provide 192 cells across the class. The three Hobart destroyers carry 48 each, or 144 in total, which means Australia's six Hunters and three Hobarts would together field 336 Mk 41 cells across nine Tier 1 crewed surface combatants. Had all nine Hunters been retained, the Hunter class alone would have provided 288 cells, 96 more than the six-ship force, so the 2024 reduction removed the equivalent of two complete Hobart VLS magazines from the future fleet's theoretical cell count. The Hunter's 32 cells have to support several roles. SM-2 uses one cell per missile; Tomahawk would also require one strike-length cell per missile if integration proceeds, while ESSM can be quad-packed at four interceptors per cell. A Hunter carrying eight Tomahawks and 12 SM-2s would already have 20 of 32 cells occupied, leaving 12 cells for up to 48 ESSMs.

Conversely, filling all 32 cells with quad-packed ESSMs could theoretically produce 128 missiles, but would eliminate the long-range air defense and land-attack roles expected from the same launcher. Surface strike is partly separated from this competition by two four-canister Naval Strike Missile launchers, giving eight NSMs per ship without consuming Mk 41 capacity. Using the cited 185 km class range, those eight dedicated missiles provide the ship's principal anti-ship battery while leaving the VLS for air defense and possible land attack. Close defense is also independent of the Mk 41, with two 21-cell Mk 49 launchers for 42 RIM-116C RAM missiles, four quad Nulka active decoy launchers, three MASS Omnitrap infrared and RF decoy launchers, and the Surface Ship Torpedo Defence system.

The result is a layered defensive fit, but the 32-cell strike-length magazine remains a hard numerical limit whenever Australia wants the HMAS Hunter to combine SM-2, ESSM and Tomahawk in the same deployment. The Hunter-class's combat system is also substantially different from that of the British Type 26 despite the common hull origin. The British configuration combines the Type 997 Artisan radar with 48 Sea Ceptor CAMM missiles and 24 strike-length Mk 41 cells. Australia instead selected the Aegis combat system, Saab Australia's 9LV tactical interface and CEA Technologies' CEAFAR2 radar, creating a ship whose combat management and radar architecture is Australian rather than British. The CEAFAR-2L is an L-band gallium-nitride AESA optimized for long-range volume surveillance and early warning, while the CEAFAR-2S is an S-band AESA providing higher-resolution multifunction surveillance and fire control support; the CEAMOUNT supplies additional missile fire control functionality.

The division between L-band and S-band is operationally important because the longer L-band wavelength is useful for wide-area search and track initiation, while S-band supports more precise tracking and engagement-quality functions. The Hunter-class therefore combines the Type 26 hull and acoustic design with a sensor architecture closer to Australia's Hobart modernization path than to the Royal Navy's Type 26 fit. Anschütz completed the Critical Design Review of the Warship Integrated Navigation and Bridge System in March 2026. The WINBS is intended to distribute validated navigation information to bridge and operations-room workstations and into the Aegis combat environment rather than maintaining navigation as a separate ship-control function. Rohde & Schwarz Australia supplies the NAVICS Multi-Level Security integrated communications system, while the ship uses twin configurable communications masts adapted from the Type 26 arrangement.

The engineering burden is consequently not limited to installing Australian equipment into available compartments. Radar tracks, navigation information, communications, electronic interfaces, weapon control, fire control data and tactical displays have to function through Aegis and 9LV as one integrated combat system before the ship can conduct missile engagements or coordinate submarine prosecutions. The mission bay adds another measurable difference between the Hunter-class and more conventionally configured frigates. The Rolls-Royce Mission Bay Handling System supports alternative payloads including a second MH-60R, four 11 m RHIBs, ten 20-foot ISO containers, UAVs and UUVs. Ten 20-foot containers represent 200 ft, or 61 m, of combined nominal container length, although the usable arrangement depends on securing points, access, handling equipment, and the payload carried inside each container.

A separate starboard boat bay accommodates one 9.5 m RHIB, so routine boat operations do not necessarily consume the flexible mission-space allocation. The enclosed hangar supports the standard MH-60R aviation detachment, while the flight deck can accept a CH-47 Chinook for landing, personnel transfer, or cargo movement even though the heavy helicopter is not permanently embarked. The important limitation is that the mission-bay figures are alternative capacities. A second MH-60R requires aviation support equipment, maintenance access, fuel, and weapons-handling arrangements that reduce the area available for containers or boats. Four 11 m RHIBs similarly occupy handling and stowage space that cannot simultaneously be filled with ten ISO containers. UUV operations require more than the vehicle itself, because batteries, chargers, control consoles, spares, recovery gear and maintenance equipment consume additional volume.

The Hunter-class can therefore be configured differently for ASW, maritime security, unmanned system operations or logistic support, but mission modularity does not increase the fixed number of missiles, sonar systems or hulls available to the fleet. For a navy operating across the Indian Ocean, South Pacific and approaches to northern Australia, that distinction is material: one Hunter may carry more mission equipment than an Anzac, but it can still occupy only one geographic position at a time. The reduction from nine Hunters to six therefore has effects that can be measured beyond the loss of three hull numbers. At 32 Mk 41 cells per ship, the reduction removes 96 future VLS cells. At one normally embarked MH-60R per ship, it removes three simultaneous helicopter embarkation positions.

It also removes three sets of S2150 hull sonar, Sonar 2087/CAPTAS-4, CODLOG acoustic propulsion, mission-bay capacity, and command facilities that would otherwise have been available for independent ASW deployments. Using a nominal complement of 180, nine ships would require about 1,620 shipboard positions before shore, training and rotation requirements, while six require roughly 1,080, a difference of about 540 shipboard billets at the simplest hull-complement level. Canberra's replacement for those three Hunters is not another high-end ASW class. The revised force structure instead calls for at least seven and potentially 11 general-purpose frigates of roughly 6,200 tonnes, based on a Japanese Upgraded-Mogami class design path, with the first vessel expected around 2030 and subsequent building shifting to Henderson in Western Australia.

These ships are intended to carry out undersea warfare, escort, strike, force protection and independent operations without reproducing the full cost, size and acoustic specialization of the Hunter. Australia also plans six large optionally crewed surface vessels with vertical launch capability. This produces a different fleet logic from the original three-Hobart plus nine-Hunter model: expensive specialized ASW capacity is capped at six Hunter hulls, routine surface combatant numbers move to the general-purpose frigates, and part of the future missile magazine requirement moves to optionally crewed vessels.

If all currently planned categories are delivered, the future Royal Australian Navy surface combatant force would comprise three Hobart-class destroyers, six Hunter-class frigates, up to 11 Upgraded Mogami general-purpose frigates and six large optionally crewed surface vessels, or as many as 26 combatant hulls across those four groups. That represents more hulls than the earlier model of three Hobarts and nine Hunters, but not more Hunters, and the increase comes from distributing functions across ships of different size, crew requirements and cost. Hobart will remain the fleet's principal high-end air and missile defense ship with 48 Mk 41 cells per hull.

Moreover, its A$4.29 billion Destroyer Capability Enhancement introduces Aegis Baseline 9 and supports weapons including SM-6 and Tomahawk without increasing the physical 48-cell magazine. Hunter contributes 32 cells per hull but concentrates the fleet's highest-end surface ASW architecture through S2150, Sonar 2087, electric propulsion, and MH-60R integration. The general-purpose frigates are intended to supply hull numbers so that routine escort, patrol, and independent missions do not consume one of only nine Hobart/Hunter Tier 1 ships, while the six optionally crewed vessels are intended to add VLS capacity without duplicating the roughly 180-person complement and full aviation and sonar suite of a Hunter.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.

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