Chronically over-budget, significantly delayed and lacking firepower – that’s the expert assessment of a major warship project they say should be scrapped.

The Hunter Class frigate project is already seven years behind schedule and many billions of dollars more expensive than initially anticipated.

In 2018, British company BAE Systems won a $35 billion tender to build nine frigates, or $3.8 billion each, with the first scheduled to be in service by 2027.

By 2020 the price tag had blown out to $45 billion or $5 billion a piece, and Defence is now estimating it will cost $27 billion to build just frigates, or $9 billion each, with the first to be in service by 2034 – seven years late.

BAE Systems is the company that will build Australia’s AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.

Strategic Analysis Australia director Michael Shoebridge said the Hunter Class project was the “high point of decadence” in Defence decision-making.

He said Defence adjusted the original BAE British design with a series of add-ons, including different combat and radar systems – which made it massively more expensive.

“That frigate program is beyond scandalous – It’s entered ludicrous mode for a wasteful use of taxpayer money and a very slow, small contribution to Australian military power,” Shoebridge said.

He said the Hunter had just 32 missiles, which was a third of the weaponry of the Chinese cruiser that circumnavigated Australia in March.

“We’re in a very dangerous world and a very dangerous period in the world, and waiting to the mid-2030s and into the 2040s for three frigates for this amount of money, makes no sense.

“We could go to the Japanese or the South Koreans and get a properly armed cruiser much faster than BAE is delivering this program.”

Defence analyst Dr Marcus Hellyer was equally scathing of the Hunter frigate, saying Navy’s adjustments to the design had not only significantly increased its cost, but the frigate’s weight, taking it from 8000 tonnes to more than 10,000 tonnes, making it slower.

“It is monstrously expensive,” Hellyer said. “And I would say, if you’re in a hole, stop digging.

“The government itself has decided it can’t wait for the Hunter Class frigate, so it has kicked off a new frigate program and it is considering a competition between a German design and a Japanese design.

“So the government itself has pretty much said we need to do something different – in a sense, they’re halfway there already.”

Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said the Hunter frigate project would not be cut despite its problems.

“I wish I had a time machine to go back to 2016 and avoid the mistakes that the Coalition government made, but we’ve moved on,” Conroy said.

“We’ve got the project on track. Steel is being cut right now, we’ve signed the contract, there are about 2500 people working on this project right now.

“The fastest way of delivering new capability for the Royal Australian Navy, is following through on this, building this project, now that we’ve fixed up many of the mistakes the Coalition government made.”