Say that again? We spent millions of $$$ on a ship to pretty it up before it’s decommissioned?
I get that it is a significant vessel for multiple reasons, but does this strike anyone else as misplaced spending? Surely millions isn’t correct?
Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
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I get that it is a significant vessel for multiple reasons, but does this strike anyone else as misplaced spending? Surely millions isn’t correct?
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
I readily admit to knowing essentially nothing about decommissioning a vessel, and a warship in particular, but I could readily believe that it might cost millions to decommission a vessel 'properly'. I would imagine that part of the decommissioning process would involve going through a vessel and seeing which bits of kit can be removed and/or re-used, either aboard sister ships or in new vessels. I suspect that it would also include taken steps to contain, clean up or seal potential HazMat sources within a vessel. Having something like ship's diesel leaking would present health, safety and environmental issues no matter how a decommissioned vessel finally gets disposed of, whether it becomes a museum ship, sent off to a ship breaker, on sold to another country, or sunk in a sinkex or to become an artificial reef.
However things end up going, there is almost certainly going to be costs associated with getting a ship into whatever state it needs to be in for decommissioning.
For that matter, I would imagine that there was at least some costs associated with getting the ex-RAAF F-111's into an appropriate condition to where they could be buried. I would imagine that at least some of the avionics would have been pulled from the airframes, as even if they were not going to be re-used by the RAAF, I doubt that Australia or the US would want someone to be able to dig up and potentially pull avionics from combat aircraft. Also I suspect that there would have been health, safety and environmental concerns about the fuel tanks and possible residual fuel leakage.
Now if the funding was just to 'dress her up' that would seem to be at least somewhat wasteful, unless she was intended to be preserved as a museum ship. In that case it might make a bit more sense, at least to some degree anyway.
All that was spent on getting Anzac back in the water was making sure she was still water tight & that her main fire fighting systems were working. She may have got a pretty coat of paint straight over the rust & tyre marks after she was dragged back to Stirling last Monday. I decommissioned both Adelaide & Canberra FFG's back in the day. All we did was make the side facing the wharf look pretty for the decommissioning ceremony.