Australian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

[Jura The idiot]

the Collins-replacement news from
DSEI: Australia’s Future Sub Program Back On Track As Industry Rivals Finalize Bids

Years of political wrangling over a design and build strategy for the Royal Australian Navy’s future submarines may at last be nearing a conclusion, according to the country’s former submarines procurement chief.

David Gould, who was general manager of submarines at Australia’s Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) from 2012 until this July, said he hoped a design partner would be selected “by the end of the first quarter of 2016”.

Three shipbuilders are vying to lead the program to replace the RAN’s six Collins-class submarines – DCNS of France, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems from Germany, and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – and are currently submitting detailed bids under a competitive evaluation process. Data collection should be completed by the end of November, Gould told an audience at the DSEI defense exhibition in London this week.

Planning for a new class of 12 diesel-electric submarines under the SEA 1000 program – what will be Australia’s biggest military procurement program to date – began as early as 2007. In 2009 the government said the base design would be chosen in 2013 and that detailed design work would be finalized by 2016, allowing the state-owned ASC yard in South Australia to complete the first boat before the Collins class begins decommissioning in 2025.

However, with politicians seemingly terrified of repeating the technical problems that have blighted the existing submarines, which entered service from 1996 to 2003, decision-making on SEA 1000 has been tortuously slow or even non-existent. As a result, a white paper slated for release in November is expected to reduce the number of new boats from 12 to eight, with the first of them unlikely to enter service before 2030.

Since 2013, however, the DMO has made some progress. The program developed the engineering tools, design brief and an illustrative pre-concept design for the future submarine, Gould said. And two key components – the U.S.-designed AN/BYG-1 combat management system and Mk 48 heavyweight torpedo – have been agreed on.

Gould, who is now a consultant, said SEA 1000 should aim to achieve the range and endurance specifications that the Collins class was intended to meet, without pushing it any further. With the new boats expected to serve into the 2070s, future-proofing will require sensor performance and stealth characteristics that are superior to Collins.

“We also need something that is a lot more maintainable and a lot more reliable” than Collins, he said. Measuring 254 feet in length and displacing 3,100 tons (surfaced), the existing boat is an enlarged and heavily modified version of the Vastergotland-class Type 471 submarine – only 160 feet and 1,100 tons – that was designed by Swedish shipbuilder Kockums in the early 1980s.

The vastness of the oceans surrounding Australia means that the operating profile of RAN submarines is of a different order of magnitude to the diesel-electric boats that equip most European navies.

A typical deployment will require a RAN submarine to “basically disappear for 55 days or so. … That is not far from what you’d expect an SSN to be doing, so it’s quite a big engineering challenge,” Gould said.
“For that length of mission you need a bigger crew, and that’s a further addition to the challenge.”

Although the new submarine would have to displace at least 3,000 tons, experience with Collins has shown that up-scaling brings its own problems.

“A particular one is surface stability, something that was just not understood by the Swedish designers,” Gould said.
“Operating in the Southern Ocean [is] not like operating in the Baltic; when you’re near the surface life is going to be very uncomfortable if [the submarine] hasn’t been designed properly.”

“You need to bear in mind, particularly if you’re used to designing submarines for a low salinity, low temperature Baltic or north Atlantic, that tropical conditions do funny things to steel, and that’s one of the reasons why Collins has been particularly difficult to maintain,” he added.

DCNS, TKMS and Mitsubishi were selected for the competitive evaluation process “because they have a continuous history of submarine design and build, uninterrupted”, he said. “If you interrupt the process of design and build, even for 10 years, you forget what it was you didn’t know, and you relearn it when you do the next submarine, and that can lead to a lot of trouble,” Gould said.
“We’ve had an enormous amount of help from the U.K. and U.S., but neither would commit their industry to being the design and build partner for Australia’s future submarine.”

The question of where to build the new submarines is also vexing politicians, conscious of the need to maximize employment opportunities for Australians. Three options are on the table: overseas build at the designer’s own yard; all-Australian build; and a hybrid solution, with boats built onshore and overseas.

“I would envisage that whoever [is selected as] design partner will also carry through as the build partner and the prime contractor,” Gould said.
“But under any option this has to be an Australian submarine, not a French, German or Japanese submarine. It’s an Australian submarine that’s finished in Australia, tested in Australia, put through its operational trials in Australia and maintained in Australia.”

“I think we have a robust and resilient way forward now for SEA 1000,” he continued.
“I think it’s resilient to most political change, [but] unless there’s significant Australian industrial participation, maintaining strong political support over the length of a program like this could be really difficult.”

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[asif iqbal]

3 x DDG and 2 x LHD and now more SSK

Aussies doing good with their navy

 

[Blitzo]

This part made my mouth drop:

As a result, a white paper slated for release in November is expected to reduce the number of new boats from 12 to eight, with the first of them unlikely to enter service before 2030.

That's one and a half decades away.... is it a typo?

 

[Blitzo]

This part made my mouth drop:



That's one and a half decades away.... is it a typo?

Hmm a quick bit of research says they expect the first submarine to finish construction around 2025... which makes a 2030 service date very plausible, especially accounting for likely delays.

Dang, the entire western pacific might look really different by 2030.

 

[Blackstone]

Once again, Hugh White wrote a thought provoking analysis on why Australia is wasting money building next gen frigates at home.

Naval shipbuilding in South Australia wastes money just to buy votes for the government
The Abbott government is set to squander millions of dollars on useless warships that will do nothing to protect Australia. Why? So it can buy votes.

There are many different ways to waste money on defence equipment. You can pay higher prices to build things here that could be bought more cheaply overseas. You can mismanage the project so that the costs blow out even further, and perhaps never deliver a workable system at all. Above all, you can commit tens of billions of dollars on capabilities which we do not need because they will not be able to fight in the only circumstances in which they'd be needed.

The government's recently-announced decisions on naval shipbuilding in South Australia put it on track to make all of these mistakes at once. It has decided to build ships in Australia which we could buy much more cheaply overseas. It has decided to manage this in a way that almost guarantees the same screw-ups that have plagued the ill-fated Air Warfare Destroyer project. And most of the money will be spent on big and complex warships which are irrelevant to Australia's key operational priorities and would be fatally vulnerable in the kind of high-intensity conflict for which they are designed.

It would not be hard for ministers to see these mistakes and avoid them, if they were really serious about making sure that Australia gets the most strategically cost-effective military capabilities as cheaply as possible. But there seems little doubt that such considerations hardly impinged on these decisions. Their aim was to announce big projects delivering lots of jobs and hence lots of votes in marginal seats in South Australia.

And no one seems to mind very much about that. There is something shocking about the casual cynicism with which the rest of us apparently accept that so many billions of dollars are being wasted, and Australia's future military capability compromised, to buy votes for the government. We ought to be asking some hard questions, even if ministers do not.

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The first question is why do we need to build our warships here in Australia? After all, we are happy to buy our combat aircraft overseas, and there is no strategic or operational reason that ships are any different. Australia's requirements are not unique, and the argument that we need to build them here in order to maintain and operate them effectively is demonstratively false. We have operated foreign-built warships for generations. And the savings are potentially huge. We could have bought brand new Air Warfare Destroyers from the United States for less the one third of the price we are likely to pay to have them built in South Australia.

The second question is why build them this way? If we are going to build warships here, it is essential to manage the projects in a way that minimises the all-too-familiar delays, technical problems and cost blowouts. This is not too hard, if you get the discipline of the market working in your favour. That means a fully-competitive, highly-detailed tender process to select a prime contractor to take complete responsibility for delivering the final product for a fixed price. That's how we built the very successful Anzac ships.

The government's plans for a continuous build program of new warships envisages just the opposite. It will establish a monopoly supplier that is guaranteed billions in government work indefinitely, and which is therefore absolutely certain to be extremely inefficient. And designs will be selected on the basis of what the government calls a "competitive evaluation process" which means a decision based on preliminary sketch designs and with no firm prices. This is a certain recipe for technical problems and massive cost overruns.

And the third question is whether we need these ships anyway. This is the most important issue of all, though it gets the least attention. It is little comfort to build new ships efficiently if the ships themselves turn out to be useless. Of course Australia does need highly-capable maritime forces, and that includes some surface warships. But the kind of ships we need depends crucially on the role they can play in maritime warfare today and in the future, and that raises some very big issues which our navy and our government are doing their best to ignore.

The problem is simply that vast improvements in surveillance and precision strike have made warships extremely vulnerable in any high-intensity conflict. These are not new trends, indeed some of them date back over a century. But they are now accelerating faster than ever, and this is driving a revolution in the way we have to think about naval warfare.

Sensors and weapons which were once best mounted on surface ships must now be carried in submarines, aircraft or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, because the chances of a surface warship surviving in any waters contested by a highly-capable adversary are disappearing fast. Even the US Navy now recognises that its big warships would be easy targets for China's anti-ship forces.

And yet the heart of the government's new shipbuilding policy is a project to build a big fleet of large warships – twice the size of the ships they are replacing – designed and equipped for the kind of high-intensity naval warfare in which they would have no serious chance of surviving. This is a truly momentous strategic error, like investing in cavalry in the 1930s.

But we can be pretty sure that the minsters of the Abbott government didn't give any of this much thought when they set their policy on naval shipbuilding. They were not thinking about Australia's defence at all. And who can blame them? None of this will matter, because we will never find ourselves facing a high-intensity maritime conflict – unless our strategic circumstances deteriorate as tensions rise between Asia's major powers. And who could imagine that happening?

 

[Blackstone]

You know Hugh White got under the Australian Defense Ministry's skin when it posted an official response on its website. The exchange is very interesting and well worth the reading! Whether one agrees or disagrees with Mr. White, the Australian defense establishment and military-industrial complex take him seriously. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for more of his writings.

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20 August 2015

Hugh White claims that the Government’s plan to invest in appropriately capable maritime forces is a mistake and part of a cynical vote buying exercise. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As the Chief of Navy said on 4 August 2015, “This (continuous shipbuilding plan) provides certainty for not just the naval shipbuilding side of things but it also provides certainty for planning, not just within Navy, but within the Australian Defence Force”.

His concerns appear to be threefold: that the Government will be building ships here that could be bought much cheaper overseas; that the management of the projects will follow the same course as the troubled Air Warfare Destroyer program; and that spending money on warships is irrelevant to Australia’s key operational priorities. Let me respond to each of these claims, one by one.

When it comes to making decisions on Defence capability, the needs of the Australian Defence Force must – and will always – come first. The forthcoming Defence White Paper will set out an integrated investment programme that is underpinned by a force structure review. Given this, the Government will acquire Defence capability that supports ADF requirements first.

Australian industry has a very significant role to play in this process. However, the only way Australia can continue to have a naval ship building industry is if the industry is properly structured to drive efficiencies and improve productivity and reduce the domestic build premium. A key factor in previous poor productivity in the Australian industry has been the limited and stop-start demand for shipbuilding work which has significantly and adversely impacted productivity. That’s why the Government’s shipbuilding plan is based on a continuous build strategy of major and minor naval surface vessels to ensure the most efficient and effective mechanism for Australian shipbuilding.

Moreover, the Government has adopted a set of robust principles to drive a productive shipbuilding industry. This will include preferring mature designs that can be built in Australian shipyards, limiting the amount of design changes for ‘unique’ Australian requirements, developing a close relationship between designer and builder, contracting to ensure the designer has incentives to make the shipbuilder succeed, and having an Australian shipbuilder take overall responsibility for the ship class.

The Government also knows that addressing the serious cost overruns, delays and productivity problems affecting the Air Warfare Destroyer programme is essential to restore public confidence in Australian naval shipbuilding and ensure future projects deliver world-class capabilities for the Defence Force and value for taxpayers.

Building on significant improvements made through the recent interim phase of reforms, the Government is acting decisively to reform the AWD programme. By the end of October 2015 substantial additional shipbuilding management expertise will be inserted into the AWD programme.

The Government will also undertake further reform of ASC to ensure Australian shipbuilding is best structured to support a continuous build programme and future naval projects are delivered on time and on budget.

But Professor White’s major concern appears to be questioning whether we need the Future Frigate in the first place.

Australia’s national security and economy rely on the unencumbered use of the sea. Seventy per cent of Australia’s exported goods and services, by value, travel by sea, an export trade worth more than $220 billion in 2012-13. We are a maritime nation and we need maritime security, and maritime security requires a robust surface force capability.

The ANZAC class frigates were originally designed as a low intensity patrol frigate but their role has expanded over time. They have been significantly upgraded and have become the ‘workhorse’ for the Navy, operating across a range of peacetime and military roles. This required successive investments in new capabilities for the ANZAC fleet to keep pace with their expanding roles. At a maximum displacement of 3,900 tonnes, the ships are approaching their weight and stability limits, restricting any further upgrades.

In light of this, the Future Frigates are expected to face more demanding operational requirements and will need to be more capable than the ANZAC class. They will be required to conduct a range of missions, from low-level constabulary roles through to regional conflict, but with a particular focus on anti-submarine warfare and theatre-level anti-submarine operations. By 2030 about half of the world’s submarines will be in Australia’s broader strategic region.

Operating along Australia’s coastline, northern approaches and throughout the Indo-Pacific will require the Future Frigate to have the range, endurance, sea-keeping qualities, survivability and weapons load-out to support prolonged operations throughout our substantial region and, when called to do so, globally.

The nature of the threat environment will require the vessels to be equipped with a range of offensive, defensive and self-protection systems. They need to be of adequate displacement to facilitate a growth path for future weapons system and sensors. That’s one of the reasons why there is a global trend among most navies towards larger-sized frigates.

Upgrading the Royal Australian Navy fleet in this way is the best way to reinforce Australia’s strategic edge in our region and the wider global maritime environment.

 

[Blackstone]

And speaking of Hugh White, here's his response to Australian Defense Minister's retort. What I get out of the exchanges is there are heated debates in Australia on its strategic position in Asia, during and post reemergence of China. It also show just how incredibly strong China's gravitational pull is with all countries in and around the Indo-Pacific.

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Both Kevin Andrews, the Defence Minister, and David Feeney, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence, were kind enough to respond to my criticisms of the Government’s naval shipbuilding program in

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, and especially its plans for the Future Frigate. In a striking display of bipartisanship, they both offer very much the same defence of the Government’s plans. Alas, I think they also make very much the same mistakes.

First, both gentlemen seem sure that building our own warships in Australia is strategically essential. Supposedly that’s because it’s much easier to operate and maintain locally built ships. But is this advantage real, and if so, is it big enough to balance the extra cost and risk of a local build?

Experience suggests not. For example, the Oberon submarines were built overseas, but we maintained and upgraded them effectively here in Australia. The Collins were built here and we have struggled to keep them at sea. And the cost and risk difference between local and overseas builds can be huge, as the AWD project shows. We could have bought Arleigh Burkes off the US production line for not much more than US$1 billion each, and we would have them at sea by now. The AWDs are coming in at US$3 billion each and counting, and delivery is still years away.

The Government’s enthusiasm for buying our new submarines overseas shows that they understand this perfectly well. But if there’s no overriding strategic imperative to build our own submarines, why must we build our own warships? Well, we all know the reason, and it has nothing to do with Australia’s defence.

Both Mr Andrews and Mr Feeney are relaxed about this because they say the ANZAC project shows we can build warships competitively here in Australia. But the acquisition strategy for the ANZACs was different from the one the Government has announced for SEA 5000.

The ANZAC project involved stringent competition, with an exhaustive, competitive Project Definition phase between teams of designers and builders leading to fully-detailed tenders for a fixed price contract to a prime contractor solely responsible for delivering the agreed product at the contract price.

Compare this with the AWDs, where the builder was selected before the design, the design was selected before it was fully developed, and responsibility for delivery was entrusted to a committee with no one clearly in charge, and almost all the risks falling on the Commonwealth. That’s why it’s gone pear-shaped.

And yet the plans outlined for SEA 5000 resemble the AWD project much more than the ANZACs. The Government will give the job to ASC, they will select the design from a perfunctory ‘Competitive Evaluation Process’ before it’s been fully developed and before the costs and risks are known, and they will end up with a project managed by a committee, and with the Commonwealth again wearing all the risk.

And don’t imagine that a ‘continuous build’ will solve all these problems. More likely it will compound them. So if we do want to build the future frigates in Australia, we shouldn’t build them the way the Government now intends to.

But the most important question is whether we need the Future Frigate at all. That depends on whether we should build our maritime forces to achieve sea control against highly capable adversaries. Both Mr Andrews and Mr Feeney think we should.

There are two reasons why they are wrong. First, we can’t do it. As Andrew Davies and Mark Thomson

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, defending ships is hard and getting harder as they become easier to find and to hit. This reflects technological trends that began in the late 19th century and are much more likely to accelerate than abate.

This doesn’t mean warships can’t be defended, but it does mean that the costs of trying and the chances of failing both rise to the point that it’s not worth the effort. No matter how much we spend on warships, Australia won’t be able to achieve strategically significant degrees of sea control against any of the highly capable maritime forces now evolving in Asia. So it’s a waste of money to try.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that with careful investment we can turn these tables and deny sea control even to very capable adversaries. All the factors that make our ships so hard to defend make it relatively easy for us to attack an adversary’s.

The second reason we’d be wrong to set our sights on sea control against capable adversaries is that we don’t need it. With effective sea denial we can defend our own territory, help prevent the intrusion of hostile forces into our neighbourhood, and support our allies in the wider Asian region. We couldn’t project land power by sea—but our land forces will always be too small to achieve any serious strategic effects against any major power anyway. So that’s no loss.

Some say we need sea control to protect our trade. But against whom? Not our principle customers, surely? Interdependence and mutual vulnerability mean that the kind of ‘trade wars’ which have framed naval thinking for centuries disappeared long ago. No major power has tried to interdict another’s maritime trade for 200 years, except in the two world wars.

And how could we defend our trade anyway? A dozen frigates couldn’t defend even a fraction of our massive trade flows. A far better way to prevent attacks on our trade would be to threaten retaliation against the trade of our adversary—for which we need sea denial forces, rather than sea control.

Of course warships remain invaluable for operations in uncontested waters, so we need a good-sized fleet of modestly-sized and equipped ships just like the old ANZACs. Let’s build more of those, and build them the way the ANZACs were built. And spend the money we save on more submarines. And if we get the acquisition strategy right, we might even be able to build them competitively in Australia.

 

[Jeff Head]

Hugh White tends to postulate and form his opinion based on Australia being completely alone in the world and having to do all of this by themselves.

But the most important question is whether we need the Future Frigate at all. That depends on whether we should build our maritime forces to achieve sea control against highly capable adversaries. Both Mr Andrews and Mr Feeney think we should.

There are two reasons why they are wrong. First, we can’t do it. As Andrew Davies and Mark Thomson

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, defending ships is hard and getting harder as they become easier to find and to hit. This reflects technological trends that began in the late 19th century and are much more likely to accelerate than abate.

This doesn’t mean warships can’t be defended, but it does mean that the costs of trying and the chances of failing both rise to the point that it’s not worth the effort. No matter how much we spend on warships, Australia won’t be able to achieve strategically significant degrees of sea control against any of the highly capable maritime forces now evolving in Asia. So it’s a waste of money to try.

Of course...it is not the case that Australia would be doing all of this alone. Forgetting...or neglecting...that critical data point makes all of the difference.

When considered in concert with allies like the US, Japan, a rising relationship with India, and others, every bit that Australia can add to the whole is critical.

I am sure White would discount these relationships if asked...and probably counter and retort something about that they cannot be relied upon. Of curse historically he would be proven wrong on that point too.

 

[Blitzo]

Hugh White tends to postulate and form his opinion based on Australia being completely alone in the world and having to do all of this by themselves.



Of course...it is not the case that Australia would be doing all of this alone. Forgetting...or neglecting...that critical data point makes all of the difference.

When considered in concert with allies like the US, Japan, a rising relationship with India, and others, every bit that Australia can add to the whole is critical.

I am sure White would discount these relationships if asked...and probably counter and retort something about that they cannot be relied upon. Of curse historically he would be proven wrong on that point too.

I agree with you, but I also think he makes a good point in effectively suggesting that Australia needs to seriously assess what kind of strategy it wants, and against whom.

I feel like Hugh White, in his write ups, is effectively begging the Australian govt to just outright say China so they can have a proper debate about what kinds of weapons they need...

 

[Blackstone]

Hugh White tends to postulate and form his opinion based on Australia being completely alone in the world and having to do all of this by themselves.



Of course...it is not the case that Australia would be doing all of this alone. Forgetting...or neglecting...that critical data point makes all of the difference.

When considered in concert with allies like the US, Japan, a rising relationship with India, and others, every bit that Australia can add to the whole is critical.

I am sure White would discount these relationships if asked...and probably counter and retort something about that they cannot be relied upon. Of curse historically he would be proven wrong on that point too.

One thing White understands is just how serious China is about its security interests, and given what's bantered about in the US media, it's doubtful most US politicians appreciate that. In fact if you listen to warhawks like John McCain and plethora of right wing think tanks, you get the sense they urgently want US to "get tough with China," as if that would magically make China back down and accept US primacy et infinitum. In all likelihood, Hugh White's right about Obama not willing to risk war to sustain primacy in Asia.

The notion Australia would go to war with China over some rocks in the SCS isn't realistic. Reason is majority of Australia's trade through the SCS is with China, and it's decidedly unlikely Canberra would risk conflicts with China to protect the interests of Philippines and Vietnam, thousands of miles from Australian shores. Quite frankly, I can't even see US risking war with China to protect national interests of the Philippines, let alone Vietnam.