Australia and Japan signed contracts on Saturday to deliver the first three of a 10 billion Australian dollar ($6.5 billion) fleet of Japanese-designed warships, with the first due for delivery in three years. The deal is a clean look at how state power and military industry move together: public money, military strategy, and industrial expansion all locked into one expensive machine while ordinary people are told it is all for “security.”
Who Gets the Contracts
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will build the first three Mogami-class frigates in Japan. Australia plans to build another eight in a shipyard in Western Australia state. The first three ships are the opening pieces of a much larger fleet plan, and the arrangement splits production between Japanese and Australian shipyards while keeping the whole project inside the defense apparatus.
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and his Australian counterpart Richard Marles attended a signing ceremony aboard the Mogami-class frigate JS Kumano, which is part of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, docked off the Australian city of Melbourne. The setting said plenty without needing a speech: ministers, warship, dockside ceremony, and a contract for more hardware. The Kumano had taken part in the recent Exercise Kakadu, biennial multinational maritime drills hosted by Australia.
Australia announced in August last year that the Japanese bid had won the contract to provide Australia’s next generation of general purpose frigates over Germany’s MEKO A-200 from Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems. The competition was not about public need in any ordinary sense; it was a contest between military suppliers for a state order. The Japanese-designed fleet will replace Australia’s ageing ANZAC-class frigates that are considered increasingly vulnerable to modern missile and drone attack.
The Military Budget Keeps Growing
Marles said the Japanese frigates were a major step toward delivering Australia with a larger and more lethal surface combat fleet. The first of the Mogami-class frigates is due to arrive in Australia in 2029. “The timeframe that we’ve announced is the fastest acquisition of a surface combatant into service in the Royal Australian Navy ever, and so this is a very rapid timeframe,” Marles told reporters.
That “rapid timeframe” is being sold as efficiency, but it is really the speed of state rearmament. Australia’s new defense strategy announced this week adds AU$53 billion ($38 million) to the defense budget over a decade. The money flows upward into the military system while the language of necessity is used to normalize the buildup.
Japan has been accelerating its military buildup while expanding its defense ties beyond its only treaty ally, the United States. It now considers Australia to be a semi-ally. Koizumi said that the introduction of Japanese vessels into the Australian navy meant “a major step is finally being taken to elevate our bilateral defense cooperation to a greater height.” He said Japan continued to be Australia’s “indispensable partner” in the new Australian defense strategy.
What the Bosses Call Partnership
Marles said Australia welcomed Japan’s relaxation of export controls on defense equipment and technology with “trusted partners like Australia.” “Japan is an industrial powerhouse and it offers so much opportunity for Australia and the development of our own defense industry as the Mogami project represents,” Marles said. That is the familiar language of industrial policy wrapped around weapons production: opportunity for the state, contracts for the firms, and a more lethal fleet for the navy.
Koizumi said a “decisive factor” in Australia choosing the Japanese frigate was that it could be operated with just 90 personnel, around half the crew of Australia’s current ANZAC-class version. Australia says its Mogami-class frigates will be equipped with surface-to-air and anti-shipping missiles and could operate combat helicopters. They will be crewed by 92 sailors and officers.
The deal gave a major boost to Japan’s still-underdeveloped defense industry after it lost out on Australia’s submarine contract to a French company in 2016. The whole arrangement is a reminder that the arms market is not some neutral field of engineering excellence. It is a competition among states and military firms to secure contracts, expand influence, and replace older weapons with newer ones, all while the public is left to foot the bill and live under the consequences.