Australia chooses Japanese Mogami frigates in its biggest-ever defense industry deal with Japan

*Event date: 2025-08-05*

Australia will buy 11 Mogami-class frigates from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in a deal worth about A$10 billion, according to Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles.

The agreement is more than a single procurement. As DW reported, Marles called it the biggest defence-industry agreement ever struck between Japan and Australia, and said the decision was made on the basis of capability. The Japanese bid beat Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems to supply the new frigates, marking a significant victory for Tokyo’s defence industry and a major shift in Australia’s naval planning.

The ships are part of Australia’s effort to reshape its fleet for a more dangerous Indo-Pacific environment. DW said Australia announced a military restructuring in 2023 that turned the country toward long-range strike capabilities, in part to respond to China’s military expansion. Canberra wants its major-warship fleet to grow from 11 to 26 over the next decade, and the frigate purchase is one piece of that expansion.

Marles described the Mogami-class as a next-generation vessel and said it was stealthy and equipped with 32 vertical launch cells capable of firing long-range missiles. That detail shows why the government favoured the Japanese design: the choice was not just about numbers, but about what kind of future warship the navy believes it needs.

The deal also carries symbolic weight for Japan. DW said it is Japan’s first warship export since before the Second World War and only its second major defence package sold abroad. That makes the contract unusual even by global arms-trade standards, especially given Japan’s limited history of exporting military hardware under the constraints of its pacifist postwar constitution.

Australia said the first three general-purpose frigates will be built offshore, with the remainder built in Western Australia. That split suggests Canberra wants an early delivery pathway while still building domestic industrial capacity over time. The report noted that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has never built warships in a foreign country, which adds execution risk to a deal of this size.

The wider strategic backdrop is clear. Australia’s major warship fleet expansion and the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS both point to a navy that is preparing for longer-range operations and higher-end conflict rather than coastal defence alone. In that context, the Japanese frigates are not an isolated purchase but part of a broader realignment of military priorities.

The political relationship with Japan also matters. Marles said Australia and Japan have a very close strategic alignment, and the deal reflects growing defence cooperation between two countries that share concerns about regional security. The procurement therefore helps bind together industrial policy, alliance politics and military planning in one move.

For now, the headline is the size of the contract. But the more important point is what it says about Australia’s assessment of its future security needs: stealth, missile capacity and regional interoperability now appear more important than the comfort of buying from a familiar European supplier.