Japan has beat a German company to win a contract for 11 frigates in what will be its biggest-ever postwar foreign defense contract.
Australia will upgrade its navy with 11 frigates from Japan, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Tuesday.
“This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever been struck between Japan and Australia,” Marles said.
The 10 billion Australian dollar ($6.5 billion or €5.6 billion) deal saw Mitsubishi Heavy Industries awarded the tender to supply Mogami-class warships, beating out Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.
A generation earlier and the RSL would have been pig-biting mad at this. (Which is probably why Japan wasn’t considered as a supplier of submarines.)