Australian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

At PACIFIC 2015, the international maritime exposition held recently in Sydney, most shipyards or shipbuilding groups attending the event unveiled the design of their proposal for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) SEA5000 program. SEA5000 calls for the replacement of the RAN ANZAC class frigates. The Future Frigate is expected to have anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities and the CEAFAR2 radar currently in development by CEA.

CEA would not comment on CEAFAR2 at the show by Navy Recognition understands it will be a tri-band (S, X, L) radar with plannar arrays on an integrated mast. It will be developped (as part of SEA1448 Ph4B) to be agnostic to the ship design chosen for SEA5000. At PACIFIC 2015, the new generation active phased array radar could be seen fitted on almost all the SEA5000 contenders (on scale models or in CGI).

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At PACIFIC 2015, the international maritime exposition held recently in Sydney, DCNS was showcasing for the first time a scale model of its proposal for the Australian SEA1000 submarine design and procurement program. Based on the French Navy Barracuda SSN currently in final stage of construction, the Shorfin Barracuda is 3 meters shorter (94 meters) and 200 tons lighter (4,500 tons).

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navyreco said:

PACIFIC 2015: Pictures of the Contenders for the Australian Navy SEA5000 ASW Frigate Program

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Jura said:

the Collins-replacement news ...

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Although it is no longer in the race to supply Australia’s future submarine, Saab Kockums is proposing an upgrade to a number of the Royal Australian Navy’s Collins-class boats, based on Sweden’s Gotland-class midlife upgrade.

Speaking at the Pacific 2015 Maritime Exhibition in Sydney last week, a Saab senior executive said the company respected the Australian government’s decision to exclude it from the Collins replacement program but saw a Collins midlife upgrade as a cost-effective measure to maintain capability in the interim.

“In Australia, you have decided on a new submarine program, which is fantastic, but it’s not going to be here for a number of years and it is a very big undertaking,” said Gunilla Fransson, Saab’s senior vice president, Security & Defence Solutions.

“I think there is an opportunity to make sure that the Collins is as close to a modern and new submarine that you can get, by increasing its capability and delivering a cost-effective solution for your underwater capabilities.”

Australia is looking to acquire up to 12 new conventional submarines under Project Sea 1000, but has a tight timeline if it wishes to avoid further full cycle docking overhauls, which will need to be performed on at least two submarines if the Collins needs extending beyond 2030.

There is no off-the-shelf solution that will meet Australia’s requirements for a larger (greater than 4,000 tons) conventional submarine and a competitive evaluation process (CEP) is underway to evaluate proposed designs from DCNS of France, TKMS of Germany and a submarine design from Japan.

However, the slow progress of the program is causing concern that the submarines cannot be designed, selected and built in time to avoid a Collins life extension.

The CEP is due to be concluded at the end of November, with a decision on whether the evaluation will move forward with one or two designs. Each of the bidders has to provide three alternative proposals for the construction of the new submarines, ranging from an offshore build, a hybrid construction model (where the first boats are built in the manufacturer's own yard before transitioning to local construction), to full construction in Australia.

“The CEP for the future submarine project is woefully inadequate as a vehicle for collecting data and it won’t produce sufficiently detailed information for a well-informed value-for-money decision,” Andrew Davies, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said on Oct. 8.

“The agreement on that point is so strong across the board. We note Warren King [the previous head of Australia’s military equipment procurement and sustainment agency, the Defence Materiel Organisation] today calling for an extra year in the CEP.”

The Collins-class boats were built by the Australian Submarine Corp. (now ASC) in South Australia and although the yard today supports fleet sustainment, including full cycle docking overhauls, submarine construction in Australia finished with the delivery of the sixth and final boat in early 2003.

Davies warned that if delays to the already tight introduction of the Sea 1000 submarine occur, the resultant full cycle docking (FCD) work to extend the Collins boats to avoid a capability gap will not be easy.

“A further FCD wouldn't be more of the same because it is taking the boats beyond their design life and a significant technological refresh would be needed to keep them competitive until late next decade,” he said.

“The engineering work to plan for that really should be underway now. We know studies have been done and that there are no show stoppers, but I don't think any serious work has been done. It really needs to start now, and the FCD of the remaining boats could benefit from it as well.”

The Collins submarine was designed by Kockums (now Saab Kockums) and developed in parallel with Sweden’s Gotland-class boats so the two share a similar heritage.

In late June, Sweden’s Defense Materiel Administration signed a contract with Saab Kockums for the midlife upgrade of the Swedish Navy’s three Gotland submarines, to be completed in the 2018-2019 time frame, while simultaneously committing to building the new A26 class boats.

“The Gotland is a ‘cousin’ of the Collins class and it’s been a quality submarine that the customer has been very happy with,” Fransson said.

“And I think that the [midlife upgrade] is very much in line with the necessity for the Collins class. In my view you have an opportunity here to not only sustain Collins but to upgrade it to a submarine that is modern and new, like we are doing with Gotland.”

Fransson said that if Saab’s proposal for a Collins midlife upgrade is accepted, the work would be undertaken in Australia

“You sustain the Collins boats here in Australia and I don’t see any reason why you could not upgrade them here,” she said.

“Saab would certainly like to position ourselves to support Australia in an extended Collins life of type. You have a very capable local submarine company in ASC, which certainly has the capability to perform the work, together with Saab Kockums and other local Australian companies.”

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The consortium building three air warfare destroyers (AWDs) for the Royal Australian Navy has provided an update on the construction of the ships, as well as an overview on the lessons learned from the delays and cost overruns that have plagued the program.

Speaking at a conference on the sidelines of the Pacific 2015 International Maritime Exposition in Sydney, Australia, Rod Equid, chief executive officer of the AWD Alliance, also touted steady progress on the remaining two ships even as the lead ship, HMAS Hobart nears completion.

The ships were ordered as part of Australia’s SEA 4000 program for a new class of AWDs to replace the Royal Australian Navy’s Adelaide-class (Oliver Hazard Perry) frigates and its stopgap air warfare capability with the Raytheon SM-2 surface-to-air missile as part of requirements outlined in the 2000 Australian Defense White Paper.

Australia’s Hobart-class AWDs are based on a Spanish Navantia F100 frigate hull modified to Australian requirements, chief of which is a Lockheed-Martin Aegis combat system. Navantia’s design won selection as the hull-form for the AWD in 2007, despite U.S naval company Gibbs and Cox having previously been considered the favorite with an offer of an evolved design based on scaled-down variant of the Arleigh-Burke Flight II-class design.

The AWD Alliance is a contract arrangement between the Commonwealth of Australia represented by the Capabilities and Sustainment Group (formerly the Defense Matériel Organization) as owner-participant, ASC and Raytheon Australia. Navantia, for its part, declined to be part of the alliance, instead opting to sign a platform system design contract with the Alliance.

Soon after construction on the AWDs began in 2010 with the fabrication of pre-fabricated hull blocks at three widely-distributed locations in Australia, reports began emerging of challenges facing the process. These reportedly were primarily related to workforce inexperience with Equid estimating that 95 percent of the workforce was new hires who needed to be trained in the specialized roles they were working in, but also because of issues with drawings available for the alliance to work with.

These resulted in construction delays from the block subcontractors at an early stage of the construction phase, which were exacerbated by the typical “Ship One” issues and the high level of concurrency, which had the effect delivering changes to production throughout construction. The level of engineering effort was underestimated from the start, with project schedules turning out to be too optimistic.

Overall, it was estimated that the construction schedule for the lead AWD, Hobart, has slipped by approximately 30 months, with Equid confirming that costs had overrun to the tune of $870 million. He also touted improvements as the alliance gains experience from ship to ship, citing a 30 percent improvement in second AWD (Brisbane) over the first, with a further 20 percent improvement seen in the construction in the third ship, Sydney.

The schedule was now more realistic and on plan, with the Hobart now in the water since May 2015 with the ship then 76 percent complete. Hobart will commence sea trials in Sept 2016, with delivery to the RAN scheduled for July 2017. Brisbane is now 68 percent complete and close to achieving the construction milestone of completing hull integration with a planned delivery date of September 2018.

Moving on to lessons learned, Equid cited the age-old points of having a realistic plan that matched the complexity of the undertaking and the need to better manage concurrency of design-design maturity issues. The problems with having a transactional relationship with Navantia, where the Spanish shipyard opted out of the alliance and instead signed a relatively low-value contract providing services was cited, but deemed “unavoidable” by Equid.

A 2014 Australian National Audit Office report explained this situation, saying that “there was limited incentive for Navantia to put its own profit share at risk by entering an alliance agreement with a new shipbuilder, and taking part in a pain-share gain-share regime it imposed on (its) potential profit,” with the result of this was that it detracted the ability of the alliance to collectively and collaboratively manage risk.

A recent plan to advance the schedule for building frigates and offshore patrol vessels under Projects SEA 5000 and SEA 1180 respectively and to emphasize domestic production effectively commits the government to a permanent naval shipbuilding industry in Australia, and would hopefully see the skilled labor issues that bedevilled the early construction stages of the AWD program not be repeated in future Australian naval shipbuilding programs.

However, although that decision was made before Australia’s recent prime ministerial changes, with current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull not having committed to the continuous-build plan since taking office in September.

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Jura said:

I pull from it this:
as a moment ago
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/australian-military-news-reports-data-etc.t5727/page-78#post-369044
I realized how ... very special "the Hobart baseline" was:
Industry Confirms Australia’s Hobart Class Destroyers $870 Million Over Budget, Lead Ship 30 Months Late

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Brumby said:

The Hobart is a basket case in local shipbuilding. It is the main reason why the Abbot government was not keen to build the submarine locally. The concern it would be a repeat except in more gigantic terms.

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Jeff Head said:

...

She looks good despite those issues.

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Jeff Head said:

Yes...there are severe budgeting and scheduling problems...basically program management problems.

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Jura said:

Jeff am getting here "This photo is no longer available" (flickr) ...

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