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Navantia’s new F110 Flight II transforms an anti-submarine warfare frigate into a substantially more capable integrated air and missile defence platform, highlighting the importance of magazine depth, sensor growth and future-proofing as Australia modernises its Hobart Class DDGs.
Spanish shipbuilder Navantia has unveiled a significantly enhanced F110 Flight II frigate, providing a striking example of how an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) platform can be evolved into a much more capable integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) combatant.
The design, showcased at the DALO Industry Days in Denmark, retains the core F110 architecture but adds substantial growth in air defence capacity. Navantia’s concept reportedly increases vertical launch system (VLS) capacity from the baseline F110’s 16 cells to 64 Mk 41 cells, arranged with 48 strike length cells forward and another 16 tactical length cells further aft.
The ship is also around five metres longer, displaces about 6,700 tonnes and is designed to reach up to 29 knots, however, the most important change is not simply the additional missile cells.
The Flight II is being positioned explicitly as an IAMD platform, incorporating an enhanced SPY-7 radar architecture and greater capacity to engage increasingly sophisticated air and missile threats. Navantia has already demonstrated the integration of SPY-7 with its SCOMBA combat system, while the baseline F110 is designed as a multi-purpose escort combining ASW, anti-surface and anti-air warfare.
For Australia, the development should prompt a closer examination of the future Hobart Class destroyer fleet.
The three Hobarts remain the Royal Australian Navy’s principal air warfare combatants, combining Aegis with the SPY-1D(V) radar and Standard Missile family. Their ongoing Destroyer Capability Enhancement program is already moving the ships from Aegis Baseline 8 to Baseline 9, while integrating Saab’s Australian Interface and the Tomahawk Weapon System.
Australia is also progressively introducing SM-6 aboard the Hobarts, adding a major long-range air and missile defence capability. But Navantia’s approach highlights a critical lesson: sensors and software are only part of the equation, but ultimately magazine depth matters.
A Hobart with modernised Aegis, SM-6 and improved networking may be considerably more capable than the ships that entered service, but the physical number of missiles available for sustained operations remains finite.
That is increasingly significant in an Indo-Pacific environment characterised by massed cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, aircraft and increasingly sophisticated uncrewed systems.
The F110 Flight II demonstrates one possible answer: deliberately creating additional hull volume, electrical and combat-system capacity and VLS space before the ship enters service, rather than attempting to retrofit growth later.
For Australia, the immediate implication is not that the Hobarts should be rebuilt into F110s, their architecture is fundamentally different.
Instead, the lesson is that the Hobart upgrade should be treated as a bridge to a more heavily armed, sensor-rich future surface fleet, and that future Australian destroyers and frigates should be designed from the keel up with considerably more growth margin from the outset.
In that respect, Navantia’s latest F110 may ultimately prove less important as a competitor than as a warning: future-proofing a warship means leaving room for the threats that have not yet arrived.
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