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.
I had no idea Japan had a warship industry, advanced or not. Guess Mitsubishi never totally got out of the game!
For those not in the know, the Nagasaki bomb was meant to take out Mitsubishi’s war machine. Mitsubishi made the Zeros that bombed my dad.
Japan makes DDGs that are more or less comparable with the USN’s Arleigh Burke class. They are quite good. They also build some pretty advanced non-nuclear AIP submarines too, iirc.
The civilians were just a bonus