Hi Lars,

The mats are a radar-absorbing material that was fitted to Sydney for the deployment to the Persian Gulf in the early 1990s as part of Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Her pennant number was also greyed out - the white was covered by a dark grey on the '03'. I also think Sydney never had the boat deck on the starboard waist, instead only the port waist. The US-built ships were supplied with USN-style boats, but at some point these were removed, and replaced by RHIB examples.

The Squirrel helicopter was used from these ships before the Seahawk was in common use - as Seahawk numbers increased, the use of Squirrel reduced. While Sea King might have landed on the FFGs they were never assigned to them - and I have not found a photo of a Sea King on an FFG in the RAN. I am not aware of any NH90s on FFGs - the NH90 entered RAN service in the mid-2010s, as the FFGs were departing the fleet.

If you're looking at differences between the RAN FFGs and the USN/Turkish examples I think it's best to select a timeframe and a hull, then go from there. That said, another major difference is that I can't find photos of RAN units with towed arrays - that said, both 05 and 06 had additional apertures fitted to their transom, but nothing as significant as the USN-style towed-array aperture.

Another change is the chaff launchers - as-built they had SRBOC but these fits were enhanced during the FFG Upgrade project.

The Seaforces.org website has a variety of useful photos of the FFGs and these can be enlarged to show some fine details.

Simon