Some of the components will be built in Austrailia, Canada and the UK, and many of the components in these country’s Type 26 are already built in the US, including the Mk45 5 inch naval gun. There is also an economy of scale that will bring the price down because 32 are already being built. This is to be encouraged. All 4 countries are close allies and not even the US has an unlimited budget so closer cooperation on the design and manufacture of weapons systems to deal with threats such as the rise of China is to be encouraged, everybody will benefit from this and it will be the best anti-sub ship on the market, bar none. Anti submarine warfare has been the Royal Navy’s speciality since the cold war and our ship designers and sonar manufacturers know what they’re doing.
The Type 26 isn’t in service yet. And there’s another good reason to not buy a British design that’s not yet in service - they STILL haven’t gotten the overheating and propulsion problems out of the Type 45 yet!
The requirement that whatever is proposed already be in service elsewhere is a good one. We’ve dumped enough money down unproven designs to the point where we need the FFG(X) to fix the huge capability gap we induced in our own Navy. We do not need someone else’s boondoggle and we don’t have time to be someone else’s beta tester.