OPINION: "JAUKUS" by frigate: the Mogami-class stealth ships as an $11 billion accelerator

Australia’s impending $11 billion general purpose frigate decision is about more than which nation’s frigate design is best. It’s also about what each nation and its defence industry can mean for Australian and regional security if a particular frigate is chosen.

"It provides a unique opportunity to bring Japan right into the middle of AUKUS, not as a partner with anything to do with nuclear submarines, but in everything that makes a warship capable."

Spanish, German and South Korean companies have sold systems to Australia’s military and are well-practised marketers and sellers of defence equipment internationally.

Japan is not a defence exporter and is offering the Mogami-class frigate because it sees real value in deepening the Australia–Japan military and technological partnership given our shared region and its dangers. Australia missed the earlier opportunity to realise this strategic and industrial partnership when we chose not to acquire Japanese Soryu-class subs back in the 2010s, so we are fortunate to have another chance at an even more critical time for our region’s security.

Only the Japanese frigate option comes from a nation with which Australia has a deep reciprocal defence and government-to-government strategic relationship that is enabled by treaty level arrangements that can fast-track cooperation not just on the ships themselves but with all the training and operational level work to turn the ships and their crews into real military power fast.

And the weapons and other systems that Japan’s Mogami-class brings provide a funded, focused path for practical technology cooperation beyond the ships themselves, in key areas where the AUKUS Pillar 2 cooperation is failing to deliver.

So, the general purpose frigate project provides a unique opportunity to bring Japan right into the middle of AUKUS, not as a partner with anything to do with nuclear submarines, but in everything that makes a warship capable and in all the technologies that AUKUS’ forgotten Pillar 2 is meant to be providing to Australian, US and UK militaries but isn’t. “JAUKUS” is likely to be far more successful and far faster than AUKUS outside the area of nuclear submarines.

If the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) becomes the Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN) new warship partner, this navy-to-navy partnership will also come wrapped up with a rapid defence industrial partnership to deliver the ships and associated weapons, all enabled by the strategic government-to-government relationship that Australia and Japan have built over the last four decades.

"The general purpose frigate project has a real budget being devoted to acquiring actual ships and missiles."

A previous thought that adding a fourth partner to AUKUS would slow and complicate things, but given how AUKUS Pillar 2 is being implemented, that just isn’t true.

Ironically, Japan becoming a core defence technology partner through the frigate project will provide a funded path for Australia and Japan to cooperate in and deliver military technologies relevant to war at sea much faster than the almost paralysed AUKUS Pillar 2 seems capable of between the original three AUKUS nations.

That’s because unlike Pillar 2 cooperation, which is notionally about things like missiles, autonomous systems, hypersonics and electronic warfare, the general purpose frigate project has a real budget being devoted to acquiring actual ships and missiles and even unmanned underwater vehicles that modern warships like Japan’s Mogami frigates use.

Pillar 2 of AUKUS, in contrast, seems primarily about spawning continually multiplying three way government-to-government-to-government bureaucratic working groups, with no funding devoted to any of them to do more than travel, meet, run technology demonstrations and write briefing notes to and about each other.

Australian–Japanese cooperation on the frigates, on the other hand, would have a specific focus, a timetable and a budget, all three of which are required ingredients for results.

Japan’s Mogami frigates are equipped with vertical launch systems to fire anti-ship, anti-air, and even anti-submarine missiles, and Japanese defence companies – notably Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – make very capable Japanese-designed missiles to fire from these and other launch systems. Japanese defence companies are also co-producing American missiles that the Australian Navy also uses, like the SM family of weapons.

At the moment, they share their indigenous missile technology with no one and only produce the Japanese-designed missiles for their own military. So, Australia, as the second user of Mogami frigates, can become Japanese industry’s priority to equip with missiles in addition to its home nation’s forces.

That is unlikely to be the case with any of the other nations whose companies are contending for the frigate program. A big advantage here is that Japanese production lines for their indigenous missiles have separate supply chains to those used to produce US missiles.

And Japanese missiles provide different defensive problems to a potential adversary who might otherwise already have researched vulnerabilities of US designs.

Moving beyond the deep, funded and fast technological cooperation that the frigate program can bring, Japan winning the frigate project would also mean that the Australian Navy would have an existing treaty framework to use to fast-track crew training and navy-to-navy cooperation so that the new frigates and their crews become operationally capable as rapidly as possible.

This is because of the Reciprocal Access Arrangement treaty Australia signed with Japan after over a decade of negotiation. Australia has no similar treaty with any of the other potential contenders, despite the country’s positive defence relationships with each.

The treaty can enable an AUKUS-subs like training program between the RAN and the JMSDF, where Australia naval officers and sailors train with Japanese naval personnel, including on Japan’s own Mogami-class frigates.

JAUKUS might be just what the doctor ordered for the Australian Navy to get capable warships, and even the missiles and autonomous systems to operate from them, with Japanese and Australian companies building these in the two nations.

A decades-long relationship can now accelerate to the benefit of both nations’ security and add to the deterrent balance so desperately needed in our dangerous region.

The author is not retained by any of the bidders for the General Purpose Frigate program.

This article is reposted here with the permission of Strategic Analysis Australia.