RAN Dreamland Thread

[gf0012-aust]

I think the concerns the Japanese raised was around the high tensile steel wielding experience ASC current has.

No, its a mterials science release issue - its got almost zero to do with an ability to work with their steel solution

the germans had the same problem with australia and compound armour - they even flew people out to manage and secure the test samples as they refused to leave it unattended

the hand wringing in the press was that we didn't have enough skilled people to work with that compound armour solution and build it around complex shapes.

it was absolute rot - we retrained platics welders to do the job - the reason why we retrained plastic welders was that the germans identified at the same time as us that the primary skillset was eye/hand control - and plastic welders were time and time again more accurate in the tests

a lot of the noise coming out of the pollies as to what the japanese can or can't do and what the french and/or germans can do better is just trite nonsense

 

[Volkodav]

I don't 100% agree with that as I have seen some totally incompetent Australians screw industry over in my time, to an extent that the one profitable company collapsed into oblivion all because of the ego of one person who would not listen to the lower rank and file who foresaw the outcome.

Try reading it again then and you will see I was mostly critical of some Australian management and leadership. They are the ones with the cultural cringe who believe our technical people and workers aren't up to the job, if it wasn't for them we wouldn't have many of the problems we do.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Try reading it again then and you will see I was mostly critical of some Australian management and leadership. They are the ones with the cultural cring who believe our technical people and workers aren't up to the job, if it wasn't for them we wouldn't have many of the problems we do.

+1 + a gazillion

and we're seeing the rinse wash repeat cycle already kicking and we haven't even released specs on the sub requirements

 

[Volkodav]

My reference in my earlier post was specifically to the alleged comment from the"senior Japanese submarine commander" that Australians would not be capable of welding the steel required as Japanese yards found it challenging. I may be wrong but it struck me as a yet another ill-informed, parochial comment from a biased non technical person. Being a former submarine commander does not mean he is also a materials or welding engineer, let alone a metallurgist, being an expert in one field doesn't make you an expert in everything.

I should add I have worked for a Japanese company and was frustrated when they often disregarded the input of us "dumb" Aussies and failed to address problems we advised them of. A colleague who spent some time working with them in Japan and was horrified when the people he was working with tried to set him up.

 

[gf0012-aust]

My reference was specifically to the alleged comment from the"senior Japanese submarine commander" that Australians would not be capable of welding the steel required as Japanese yards found it challenging. I may be wrong but it struck me as a yet another ill-informed, parochial comment from a biased non technical person. Being a former submarine commander does not mean he is also a materials or welding engineer, let alone a metallurgist, being an expert in one field doesn't make you an expert in everything.

and one needs to look at his motivation...

when I was dealing with sig mgt the Oyashios were regarded as the only conventional fleet sub that could dive to nuke depths and take the fight to the nukes - some of the more favourite "public" ascot park runners were nowhere near the ability to fight and manouvre at the same depth

my reading of the sub commanders comments were that his sole interest was to protect their material science advancements with the hull metallurgy - and didn't want anyone to get access to the tech.in fact some of those ex submariners are clearly horrified and are worried that the tech won't be secured - let alone countries like Oz getting access to it. Some of them forget what Toshiba did to the USN

in the broader wash up - the japanese aren't the only ones with those reservations - but the others are holding their counsel.

 

[t68]

It is often a challenge to pick the Australian accent at senior levels in anything being directed by government and it is often the imported egos that screw things up with local subordinates having to step up and fix things, only to be sidelined and replaced by another imported"expert".

.

My apologies, I thought you meant that the head of these multi-nationals like BAE and ASC here in Australia are headed by overseas guru's and those whom I thought you rant was about.

 

[vonnoobie]

Knowing it is impossible to do so now, Still quite curious.. had we gone for the Burke's Flight IIA as in the past some wanted.. And which from reading on here ASC was set up to build better then the Hobart's.. How would we have gone in manning them? With them having a crew 50% larger give or take, Would we have been to man 3 of them? let alone the 6 that the 1992 force revue pushed for.

This is just purely a question to narrow down fact's, Not a proposal/wish to acquire them. Just something snuck it's way into my mind.

 

[rockitten]

and one needs to look at his motivation...

when I was dealing with sig mgt the Oyashios were regarded as the only conventional fleet sub that could dive to nuke depths and take the fight to the nukes - some of the more favourite "public" ascot park runners were nowhere near the ability to fight and manouvre at the same depth

my reading of the sub commanders comments were that his sole interest was to protect their material science advancements with the hull metallurgy - and didn't want anyone to get access to the tech.in fact some of those ex submariners are clearly horrified and are worried that the tech won't be secured - let alone countries like Oz getting access to it. Some of them forget what Toshiba did to the USN

in the broader wash up - the japanese aren't the only ones with those reservations - but the others are holding their counsel.

And the Japanese has developed their own torpedo with much superior operating depth to take the fight to the nukes. Yet, believe me or not, lots of Aussie suppose the German sub is superior because it is "the best seller".......

The whole Soryu export is an idea from their prime minister (Shinzo Abe). the indistry were (initially) not interested about it as "it is too much a hassle for such a small deal", and the bureaucrat were against it (both too much work to do and potential leaks of technical secrets). So when TKMS and DCNS treat SEA1000 as a business (and juicy profit), the Japanese treats it as a mission (in a bureaucratic way). If any Aussie read Japanese's newspaper, you will be amazed how little attention to this submarine export, and if any, usually consider the Aussie get the better part of the deal. Have the team Japan get half the motivation (and PR efforts) they have when selling high speed trains in Thailand and Indonesia, they won't catch up so hard now.

To be fair though, the Toshiba submarine scandal was the work of individuals (a KGB hot chick and a Japanese manager), the "business practice" of Germany and France is a national/government level.

France has been well know to strike an arms sale deal to any rogue states who pays well and had been bidding to lift the arms embargo to china. Even more worse, when Taiwan bought the Mirage jet and stealth frigate from France, guess what, the French sold the same technology (the frigate's combat system, RCS reduction...etc) and the technical secrets on the Mirage jet to China as a compensation. Not to mention the French took RAAF's works on integrating sidewinder missiles with Mirage III and resell it to other nations such as Pakistan WITHOUT PAYING AUSSIE THE IP.

And the German have their dark history too. They have openly sold submarine diesel engines to China (in fact, it is well published in chinese media that chinese engineers solved some technical issues on the engine and German bought the IP back). And, some rumor suggested the chinese's Stirling engine technology was sourced from Germany.

 

[Volkodav]

Knowing it is impossible to do so now, Still quite curious.. had we gone for the Burke's Flight IIA as in the past some wanted.. And which from reading on here ASC was set up to build better then the Hobart's.. How would we have gone in manning them? With them having a crew 50% larger give or take, Would we have been to man 3 of them? let alone the 6 that the 1992 force revue pushed for.

This is just purely a question to narrow down fact's, Not a proposal/wish to acquire them. Just something snuck it's way into my mind.

The governments preferred option was six stretched ANZACs that would likely have been fitted with an evolution of the USNs NTU as deployed on the Kidds and many upgraded cruisers. The RANs prefered option was one for one replacement of the Perths with Flight II Burkes, either FMS or license produced and even years later when the AF-100 was selected over G&C International Frigate (which had grown to almost Flight II Burke size and capability) the RAN again requested the Burke instead.

There are a stack of incremental improvements to the design of the Burke, some of which have been adopted, others not. There's a hybrid electric drive that allows the ships to use their GT generators for propulsion at speeds of up to 12 kts, replacement of hp air starters on generators with electric, saving weight, complexity and maintenance loads. Add these many small improvements and there is a noticeable reduction in crew size as well as operating costs.

 

[vonnoobie]

The governments preferred option was six stretched ANZACs that would likely have been fitted with an evolution of the USNs NTU as deployed on the Kidds and many upgraded cruisers. The RANs prefered option was one for one replacement of the Perths with Flight II Burkes, either FMS or license produced and even years later when the AF-100 was selected over G&C International Frigate (which had grown to almost Flight II Burke size and capability) the RAN again requested the Burke instead.

There are a stack of incremental improvements to the design of the Burke, some of which have been adopted, others not. There's a hybrid electric drive that allows the ships to use their GT generators for propulsion at speeds of up to 12 kts, replacement of hp air starters on generators with electric, saving weight, complexity and maintenance loads. Add these many small improvements and there is a noticeable reduction in crew size as well as operating costs.

So if the government had listened to the Navy and we had ended up with the Burke's our's may possibly have ended up being fitted the various changes to reduce crewing requirements. Thanks for that Volk.

Now I can be properly informed while being pissed at our government/s for trying to take the cheapest route and still end up paying same cost or more for a less capable asset

One more quick question, Looking at past number's and what was to be replaced etc.. The 3 Perth's and 4 oldest Adelaide's were to be replaced by 6 Destroyers, What was to happen with the final 2 Adelaide's? Or where they being replaced in part by the expanded Anzac fleet? 8 Anzac's replacing 6 River's.

 

[John Fedup]

Some of them forget what Toshiba did to the USN

One can't help but wonder how much that incident influenced the no-export rule for the Raptor.

 

[Todjaeger]

Knowing it is impossible to do so now, Still quite curious.. had we gone for the Burke's Flight IIA as in the past some wanted.. And which from reading on here ASC was set up to build better then the Hobart's.. How would we have gone in manning them? With them having a crew 50% larger give or take, Would we have been to man 3 of them? let alone the 6 that the 1992 force revue pushed for.

This is just purely a question to narrow down fact's, Not a proposal/wish to acquire them. Just something snuck it's way into my mind.

Something to keep in mind when looking at the crew complement of USN warships. The USN has a different conops when crewing a vessel from other navies, specifically involving damage control. Some crew members aboard a USN warship will be part of dedicated damage control parties.

An easy way to see this would be to compare the crew complement of a USN Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFG, with that of a RAN Adelaide-class FFG, which is the Australianized version. The USN FFG has a crew of ~198 enlisted and 17 officers, while the RAN crew has ~169 enlisted and 15 officers. This is not including the aircrews and aircraft maintainers and support for either naval vessel.

With that in mind, it is almost certain that an Arleigh Burke-class DDG in RAN service would have a similarly smaller crew.

 

[hairyman]

We seem willing to pay $3b plus each for our AWD's. Maybe we should order a D1000 Zumwaldt for that amount. Slightly better value.

 

[rockitten]

One can't help but wonder how much that incident influenced the no-export rule for the Raptor.

Probably not much, F-22 is not for export and Japanese wanted to built them in Japan. So it won't happen regardless if the scandle happened or not.

From Japanese articles, to compensate for the scandle, Japanese government had to pay the bills for allies (NATO and Aussie) to upgrade their ASW capabilities such.

 

[vonnoobie]

We seem willing to pay $3b plus each for our AWD's. Maybe we should order a D1000 Zumwaldt for that amount. Slightly better value.

Don't make the mistake that Abbott and other's have made that the program cost must be divided by the amount of platforms purchased and that is the cost. Has been pointed out previously on the RAN thread that we cost our acquisitions different to that of say the US, Were they only account for the vessel up until being commissioned we account for the next 30 or so years of maintenance and/or operations (At least from memory, Correct me if I'm wrong).

The program cost also included a number of acquisitions and upgrades to various ship yards that will be of use and benefit to future programs both civil and military.

Cost thing set aside, On paper the DDG1000 looks great, But it still is yet to be proven and we simply did not and still don't have the time to be playing around with a new ship design when those it is replacing are getting too old too fast.

 

[Bonza]

France has been well know to strike an arms sale deal to any rogue states who pays well and had been bidding to lift the arms embargo to china. Even more worse, when Taiwan bought the Mirage jet and stealth frigate from France, guess what, the French sold the same technology (the frigate's combat system, RCS reduction...etc) and the technical secrets on the Mirage jet to China as a compensation. Not to mention the French took RAAF's works on integrating sidewinder missiles with Mirage III and resell it to other nations such as Pakistan WITHOUT PAYING AUSSIE THE IP.

And they had the gall, if I remember correctly, to play politics during the Vietnam War and deny the RAAF the capability to operate Mirage there (which as the Israelis showed was a good match up with the MiGs of the era) via not supporting engine replacements. Is that correct? Some of the more well informed guys will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it was an engine-related issue, manufactured (the issue that is) entirely by France, to deny RAAF Mirage deployment. With Sidewinders and a pair of 30mm DEFA they would have done well compared to the early gunless Phantom variants, perhaps better than the Crusader too (I love the aircraft but its guns had a bad habit of jamming under G-load). I don't pretend to know what would have happened there if the RAAF could have provided more support but it is an interesting could-have-been.

I've also heard from a talk given by a USAF Colonel that France during the Gulf War would fly "local sorties" meaning "soaking up all the radar data from every platform they could and returning to base"...

EDIT: Needless flaming.

 

[StobieWan]

We seem willing to pay $3b plus each for our AWD's. Maybe we should order a D1000 Zumwaldt for that amount. Slightly better value.

Well, the DDG1000 only just trended down to that price recently and there was a lot of debate about what content would go in there. Additionally, the DDG uses the Total Ship Computing Environment which is I believe proprietary, whereas the AWD uses Open Aegis which at least the RAN can tinker with if they find funds.

Also, that price is the production price from a yard that's already building them as opposed to setting up a new build.

Not quite comparable.

 

[rockitten]

And they had the gall, if I remember correctly, to play politics during the Vietnam War and deny the RAAF the capability to operate Mirage there (which as the Israelis showed was a good match up with the MiGs of the era) via not supporting engine replacements. Is that correct? Some of the more well informed guys will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it was an engine-related issue, manufactured (the issue that is) entirely by France, to deny RAAF Mirage deployment. With Sidewinders and a pair of 30mm DEFA they would have done well compared to the early gunless Phantom variants, perhaps better than the Crusader too (I love the aircraft but its guns had a bad habit of jamming under G-load). I don't pretend to know what would have happened there if the RAAF could have provided more support but it is an interesting could-have-been.

I've also heard from a talk given by a USAF Colonel that France during the Gulf War would fly "local sorties" meaning "soaking up all the radar data from every platform they could and returning to base"...

In any case, don't trust the French in defence matters further than you can kick a Rafale.

From some Israel pilot's biography and books from Osprey, IAF didn't prefer French jet. In fact, they considered French military technology as "2nd tier" when compare with those from US (and UK). If they have a choice, they would rather fighting the Arab AFs on a Saber, centuries series/Hawker Hunter or a Phantom. For the Mirage III as an example, the avionics and Atar engines were nowhere as good as the US products ( such as the F15 radar and J-79 on F-104G). If the Hugues Aim-4 Falcon was a piece of joke, the Matra R530 was even more pathetic. In short,the success of Mirage III in IAF was mostly contributed by the pilots from both side, not the Mirage jet.

For a potential "Mirage IIIO in Vietnam", the first thing that came to my mind is the lack of critical avionics such as ECM on Mirage III (at that time) and we were unable to tap on those gears from USAF/USN (it is a French jet). Flying into downtown Hanoi (the most extensive soviet doctrine air defence network at that time) on a jet without ECM sounds like a suicide.

Okay, back to navy stuff. For the submarine industry some faction really want to "save". What if, ASC take orders from USN for 8 US designed SSK as "ASW platform". And a few years later, those SSK will be "on loan" to Taiwan? In that way, ASC got the job, US fulfilled the promise, and pressure from Chain was "contained".

 

[gf0012-aust]

Okay, back to navy stuff. For the submarine industry some faction really want to "save". What if, ASC take orders from USN for 8 US designed SSK as "ASW platform". And a few years later, those SSK will be "on loan" to Taiwan? In that way, ASC got the job, US fulfilled the promise, and pressure from Chain was "contained".

was never going to happen

I know that the taiwanese tried buying subs from 4 countries - all of them - including multiple unofficial approaches to ex RN and RAN sub commanders in LO roles) failed

 

[ASSAIL]

And they had the gall, if I remember correctly, to play politics during the Vietnam War and deny the RAAF the capability to operate Mirage there (which as the Israelis showed was a good match up with the MiGs of the era) via not supporting engine replacements. Is that correct? Some of the more well informed guys will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it was an engine-related issue, manufactured (the issue that is) entirely by France, to deny RAAF Mirage deployment. With Sidewinders and a pair of 30mm DEFA they would have done well compared to the early gunless Phantom variants, perhaps better than the Crusader too (I love the aircraft but its guns had a bad habit of jamming under G-load). I don't pretend to know what would have happened there if the RAAF could have provided more support but it is an interesting could-have-been.

I've also heard from a talk given by a USAF Colonel that France during the Gulf War would fly "local sorties" meaning "soaking up all the radar data from every platform they could and returning to base"...

In any case, don't trust the French in defence matters further than you can kick a Rafale.

In 1970? we were taken on a tour of Fisherman's Bend and I am almost certain that we were shown a Mirage engine being made. They were so proud because all the machining was computer controlled.
Hope someone has a more substantive recall