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.
There is nothing in service yet that will compare to the Type 26. It is the best design for anti-submarine warfare bar none, this has been the RN’s speciality since the cold war. they aren’t in service yet, but they are under construction, so the design is ready to begin construction. I’m pretty sure BAe Systems will have learned from the Type 45 engine issue, but to be fair, the MoD is partly at fault, because they didn’t specify this requirement and it was assumed when they were designed in the late 90s that they would be spending most of their time in the North Atlantic rather than in the warmer equatorial waters of the Middle East (contemporary planners wouldn’t have imagined that we’d be re-opening a Royal Navy Base in Qatar and moving back there).