It would be very interesting to see how this has been done. Perhaps BAE always intended to increase the beam dimensions for future classes so the Aussies ended up with a T26/T83 hybrid.Caribbean wrote: ↑30 Aug 2022, 08:31 The thought drifts across my mind that, as this seems to have been accomplished fairly "easily" (I'm sure it wasn't as easy as they make it sound), the Hunter class design variant might yet become the basis for the T83, perhaps with a further bit of "fattening up" (i.e. beam and draft) and a bit of a stretch, pushing it into the > 10k < 12k tonne region
I was expecting the T83 to end up in the 22m to 23m range. A second 600mm to 800mm increase may indeed be possible if it has been planned in advance but perhaps the T83 beam dimension was always going to be 21.4m.
Conversely, it is entirely possible the Hunter Class is now just a T26 Batch 2 and completely unconnected to whatever the T83 ultimately becomes.