Thanks very much for the post
A bit to unpack.
In broad terms what do you believe would work for a FIFO concept?
Cheers S
Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
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A bit to unpack.
In broad terms what do you believe would work for a FIFO concept?
Cheers S
Thanks for the post
Challenges for sure, but I'd suspect these could be over come if we could justify the investment.
Justify the investment is what I'm navigating.
There was probably a time when building an airstrip was deemed excessive but WW11 put that priority in place with both bombers and fighters deployed..
Not saying that we send 75 Sqn there but it does highlight the significance of the geography.
As a peace time asset we could look at its holistic potential.
Cheers
Oh absolutely, I’m well aware of the water depth issues and navigational charts for Cocos. Any such facilities would require some very clever (and in turn, expensive) engineering.
My main concern is both presence and response time in asserting our sovereignty, and responding to maritime security issues.
For example, if a small flotilla of illegal fishing boats are spotted in the Cocos or CI EEZ’s via air, radar or other surveillance means, with our current posture how long would it reasonably take for a vessel to actually intercept them? If we’re talking days, they could be long gone, and you then essentially encourage a repeat of such behaviour.
You’re right that there’s no easy solutions, that’s for sure!
buffy9
Well-Known Member
Liberals criticise federal government's decision to close Naval Shipbuilding College in Adelaide
The South Australian opposition questions why the state's Naval Shipbuilding College will be closed without a replacement lined up.
www.abc.net.au
The Naval Shipbuilding College is set to close going forward. I'm not familiar with the naval shipbuilding scene, so I'm not sure what to make it, though comments in the article appear to indicate that a more direct relationship is desired from the contractors, rather than going through the College.
Considering fairly recent commitments to AUKUS and the likely need to build a significant portion of any SSN locally, on top of the Hunter program, it seems unlikely to be related to a major reduction in naval shipbuilding. I am not sure, tbh, however.
To be honest I'm not really sure what the NSC actually did. I don't think they were an actual training provider, they seemed to be more of a networking thing, encouraging kids, putting candidates in touch with employers and actual educational institutions.
Liberals criticise federal government's decision to close Naval Shipbuilding College in Adelaide
The South Australian opposition questions why the state's Naval Shipbuilding College will be closed without a replacement lined up.
The Naval Shipbuilding College is set to close going forward. I'm not familiar with the naval shipbuilding scene, so I'm not sure what to make it, though comments in the article appear to indicate that a more direct relationship is desired from the contractors, rather than going through the College.
Considering fairly recent commitments to AUKUS and the likely need to build a significant portion of any SSN locally, on top of the Hunter program, it seems unlikely to be related to a major reduction in naval shipbuilding. I am not sure, tbh, however.
A lot of it seemed like ineffectual paper shuffling, a bit like the old Job Network, paid to do stuff that made no real difference. I know quite a few people, very experienced qualified people, they sent off to do training that was like an introductory course in what they had been doing for over a decade.
I hope I'm wrong but I get the feeling the whole this was a feel good political sham. If they want a work force start training more apprentices, and offer paid traineeships/cadetships for technical officers, designers, drafters and engineers. Maybe get rid of Engineer$ Au$tralia$ hold over the profession and start assessing competence and recognising skills.
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
From the article provided by @buffy9
The college, which opened in 2018, analyses anticipated workforce demand across shipbuilding and maintains a register of people with relevant skills, but does not provide teaching.
Why would you teach anyone? Teaching is for losers! Firstly you have to find people who are able to be taught and interested in working in that field as a career. Then you have to find people who are skilled and willing to teach them, like lots of each of those two groups, then it takes years for the teaching to happen. way longer than a government cycle! Plus there is a shortage of those type of people, most of the teaching part are old and not interested in taking on new challenges. And young people don't see a future in it.
What we need is more forums and networking events. That is how you build and operate a nuclear submarine fleet! Spend 50% on media and event organising. Not engineers and trades!
Here is a crazy idea. Put teaching institutions (universities and TAFEs), defence and employers directly in contact with each other. I know all three hate that, but it has to happen.
Also all universities. There is this mindset that either that are all going to come from South Australia or from UNSW. Which is again, bullshit. USNW students don't move, typically come from high socioeconomic backgrounds (or international from asia), aren't interested in being in uniform (other than the ADFA stream which is a different animal entirely and has its own issues), a lot of those actually doing things at ANSTO aren't UNSW. South Australian cohorts are located in South Australia, often not able or interested in relocating to the East/West coast for a uniform career, and South Australia doesn't have any nuclear reactors or Nuclear physics or Nuclear chemistry or nuclear courses. This is one thing where we need to look nationally for the talent of students and teachers. It should be able to be facilitated to any institution. It is not a money making enterprise, it can't be commercially motivated. So you will literally have to hold a gun up to vice chancellors to agree to it.
I am also not sure if the traditional break down between trades and universities works in this space. Its advanced stuff and students and teachers need deep knowledge. Its not something everyone can teach, you can't just throw an undergrad or an international masters student in front of a class and say teach this.
Someone needs to be held accountable for this stuff. Because it will derail the entire enterprise. Anyone who spoke to the Naval College or Naval group and now the AUKUS stuff and the Aukus forum will know things are very soft. They never seem to get traction and become the pipeline they need to become.
I came across a paper recently on the history of the professionisation of engineering in Australia. It was pretty confronting and illustrated multiple failed attempts until the ultimately successful efforts began in the late 50s, with it final fruition in the 90s.
Basically the increasing minority of university educated engineers, with four year engineering degrees, successfully campaigned to have a four year engineering degree from a university be the only way to be recognised as a professional engineer.
This was primarily intended to reduce the number of people who could be employed an engineer's, creating a shortage and driving up salaries of the lucky few.
The paper went on ranting about technical officers and technologists being admitted to Engineers Australia ( in their own lower categories). It ranted about competency based assessment and boards because they undermine professionalism by recognising non engineers and questioning actual engineers.
The sad thing is, in its discussion of the history of engineering, the paper highlighted how a great many engineers up until as late as the 70s, had qualified through cadetships, and pupillage. That is, they basically did apprenticeships in engineering and sat boards to demonstrate their competence.
I wonder if it is time to reject pompous elitism, and the policy of exclusion, to return to a competency based system that recognises skills and experience, identifies gaps and provides pathways.
We can no longer afford to pay top dollar for an elite few.
Personally I think it is a terrible idea using the Arafura as the basis of any new class of Minehunter and Survey vessel. The RAN and other Western navies have long been criticised for not taking mine warfare seriously and this really just reinforces that perception. When the original idea for Offshore Combat vessels was put forward it was envisioned that these ships would actually move ahead of the the fleet clearing minefields and carrying out survey work for amphibious units. Now days with the advent of unmanned vessels capable of laying minefields these roles would be even more vital.
Regardless of the rumours around a new class of corvette I would suggest that the next generation of MCM and Survey vessels would need to be much more capable vessels than the Arafura class.
I would also argue it has hardly done any good on the project output side, with many projects having issues and cost blowouts. The Building industry has now made everyone responsible not just the licenced builder. Perhaps a similar change needs to happen to engineering ship building and engineering projects in general.
There is a huge disconnect between people at the coal face of a project and those overseeing it. Those whom often oversee it have very little understanding or ability to control the project.
Inevitably a lot of comfy positions are created for marketing and publicity types. See Aukus and things like the AUKUS forums. We are literally going to repeat the Naval College with Aukus and the Aukus Forum. We spend the money meant for actually doing something, instead creating a conference for HR and marketing people. It will be Naval group all over again, where the sovereignty of money on the project is spent on pizza, chinese food and HR/legal related functions while everything else happens elsewhere.
Arafura is a very low end OPV. It can perform OPV duties, at the low end of the spectrum. Anything requiring any sort of speed, growth potential, weapons, flexibility, embarking of people and forces, combat capability, advanced sensors, ice cream, am/fm radio, we need to look at a more capable platform. We went with the least capable design for an OPV for this class. Then under spec'd on other areas. Addressing these would be redesigning the entire ship but with the constraints to make it look like the current one. Even Lurrsen has more capable OPV designs than what we went with. Brunei selected it, after rejecting the British OPV (see Nakhoda Ragam class which are now the Bung Tomo class). So we specifically chose a design that was selected by another nation specifically as not a corvette or corvette type capabilities.
Scott Elaurant
Well-Known Member
Volkodav I should declare a bias in this one. I am a Professional Civil Engineer (Bachelor of Engineering QUT, 1986) and work in infrastructure planning (a little bit of marine work), with zero experience in shipbuilding, let alone nuclear submarines. I would also agree with many of your criticisms of the evolution of the engineering profession in Australia, though not all.
I don’t think it is as simple as saying engineers sought to exclude those without degrees. Some did try that, but mainly it is a result of government policy.
The original (British) Civil Engineering institution was established in the 1810s (Thomas Telford) and set three year degree requirements. Isambard Kingdom Brunel completed a three year engineering degree in 1822, followed by a one year cadetship. When I started as a young engineer in a government department in the 1980s several of my bosses started as cadets, which I agree was a great way to learn. But they also did a full four year degree, usually part time, before they were fully qualified to act as engineer in design or construction. So the four year requirement has been around a long time, but sadly a lot of the more gradual pathways to it have been lost as unis were expanded. The loss of cadetships is a huge loss.
Australia is a signatory to various treaties that both allow people from other countries with engineering qualifications to be recognised here, and set benchmarks for our degrees and qualifications in return. I see no way around that, for better or worse.
In my working lifetime (since 1985) I would identify several unfortunate trends which have damaged technical skill development in engineers and technicians.
1. government technical organisations with technical focus were largely disbanded and replaced by outsourcing to private firms, who spend far less on training engineers or trade/technical staff. I learnt most of my technical skills after uni in a government department that had a thorough graduate training and rotation program in the 80s and early 90s. That was all gone by the end of 1990s cost cutting.
2. the growth of large engineering (and defense) prime contractors has taken the emphasis away from technical skills towards managerial, sales and financial skills. I don’t defend this but please don’t blame engineers for it. Often they are run by lawyers or corporate suits, not engineers.
3. increasing litigiousness in contracting has led to “credentialism” IMO. For some people, having someone with a particular qualification doing something eliminates risk, rather than checking if they can do the task.
4. the gradual reduction in funding for TAFE skills training.
So despite being an Engineer, I wish this would all change as much as you do. The first foreman I worked with on construction taught me a lot.
Recent events, both economic and political/military, give me hope things might change. They will have to if AUKUS is to succeed. In terms of defense I support Australia building SSNs (our deployment distances are too great) and it is clear that neither UK nor US has sufficient spare shipyard capacity to build them for us. I believe though, that if UK or US (or France) will supply the reactor modules, we could build the rest of an SSN at ASC and assemble it using modular techniques similar to those used on AWDs.
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We seem to be pretty much on the same page on most of it.
I was initially heading down another track at uni when pretty much all employment opportunities disappeared. I looked at other study options before deciding on an apprenticeship, where I studied mech eng at night school concurrently.
One thing I realised early on was if the individual was any good, by the time they had been working a decade or so, you couldn't tell if they started at uni or Tafe. There were a lot who weren't that good, but plenty of options for people with the brains who put in the work
I wouldn't have minded doing a degree but I didn't actually need one as there were quality career paths for technical people across a range of specialities.
As it was I was always studying something, increasing knowledge and skills, starting my master's in 2011/2.
An unintended consequence of the professionalism of engineering was the "wankification" of technical and trade qualifications. This in turn left to the need to put engineers into technical roles that the actual technical people were no longer being suitably qualified to do.
The old farts like me are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Our quals that were once known to be equivalent to the first couple of years of an engineering degree, due to their near identical content, are now confused with the "diplomas" being handed out to anyone who completes a three day auditing, risk management, or improvement course and is walked through an assignment after.
Professionalisation of engineers has devalued para professionals to the point that I have literally worked alongside truck drivers, flight attendants, storemen, shop assistants etc. who have been employed into technical roles and are seen as equivalent to me. They aren't, things get stuffed up, so they react by using junior engineers instead.
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Redlands18
Well-Known Member
Being Navy ships, that would have to be Rum and RaisinThere is room for ice cream but its restricted to only one flavour.
S
peterAustralia
Member
This is my first post in a long while, and just goes into some thoughts I have
Most are aware that the Armidale class patrol boats are too small and have issues. Now being replaced by Arafura class. Armidale class are now being built for Border Force, perhaps Border Force uses them more softly and the structural issues will not resurface. Recently I became aware of a class of vessels called the medium endurance cutter for the US Coast Guard, a subset of this class is the Reliance class cutter from the early 1960s. These vessels are about 1100t, 64m long and have a flight deck capable of landing a Sea King helicopter. Overall these vessels have proven quite successful, we may speculate that this is because they are quite simple with less to go wrong. Of similar layout is the Tenix Patrol Boat bought be the Philippines Coast Guard but only 600t. There is the Sirio class OPV by Italy at around 1200t, that one has a telescoping helicopter hangar. My point is that longer term Border Force may find the Armidale class too small and prefer a larger simpler vessel, something like the Reliance class cutter equipped with a drone helicopter, something like a Fire scout.
There was an Australian Pilot that wrote a book called Fighter Pilot, He may have gone to Libya afterwards, not sure. In the book he relates as to how he did a practice exercise against Australian Navy surface ships. He led a small number of FA18s against the surface ships and achieved complete surprise. This would tend to indicate that ship based radars not always detect small fast moving jets/missiles at low level. It has puzzled me for years as to why Australia does not have some ship-borne AEW system. The off the shelf answer is Hawkeye, but Australia does not have a carrier that can launch that. Another answer it to put a radar under a helicopter as the British and Russians have done. Yet this has limitations in terms to endurance, ceiling and operating cost and complexity. Logic suggests a medium sized drone fitted with an AEW radar. Something like a Predator drone at say 70 percent scale. This type of drone has high altitude, long endurance and low landing speeds. How to launch and how to recover I hear you ask? Launching should be relatively easy up the ramp of the Canberra class. According to the gold standard to information, Wikipedia, the Predator has a stall speed to 54 knots. If the ship is sailing at 25 knots then the aircraft only needs 30 or so knots to fly, something possible with a quite short takeoff run. Obviously take off speed is higher than stall speed, additionally any breeze can be used to assist takeoff/landing by sailing upwind makes things easier
How to land? There is a small fixed wing drone that lands by flying into an array or many vertical rubber bands, creating a soft stopping. Something like this fixed to the stern of a Canberra class should work, obviously it would have to be scaled up, but there is nothing spectacular about the entire idea. The other way is to go to a hybrid power plant like a Prius, use a turbine engine to power a generator that creates electricity to power motors. The advantage of this setup is that it allows the use of a number of small two bladed propellers that create lift, and are only used in takeoff and landing. In normal flight the propellers and fixed fore and aft to create minimal drag. A few simple drones like this would greatly improve the all around situational awareness by having a radar up at 30000 feet, versus 80 ft when on a ship.
My final point regards the N Subs. I am not a fan, but I am not the decision maker. My suspicion is that these subs will be superseded by simpler cheaper drones with all electric lithium battery propulsion. Note that South Korea is currently building submarines that are completely battery powered and around 1000t in size. It is true that Korea has a much lower range requirement. However a drone submarine can eliminate a huge amount to space weight safety systems that crew require, in this space more batteries can be fitted. Fire risk from Lithium batteries is much less of an issue in unmanned systems. Thus an unmanned submarine of say 700t powered by Lithium batteries might be very useful and cost effective. The decision making is done via AI. Occasionally the drone floats a buoy to the surface and communicates with home base, information like,, who can I shoot, who cant I shoot, are we are war? where is the enemy etc. The downside of a fairly small drone is lower range. It should be reasonably simple to have a smaller drone sub meet a larger drone sub Milk Cow on the ocean floor and recharge. The Milch Cow would be very simple, just a tube, batteries and a propeller. To recharge underwater I assume there would have to be probe and a receiving unit.. I am sure you get the picture, on this topic the less details the better. The vessels meet at a predetermined place on the seabed at a set time. The larger vessel recharges the smaller one, the smaller one then travels onwards to hazardous waters, the larger one slowly slowly makes it way back to base.
I know all this seems quite far fetched, but it was only last year that surface drones, using a star-link communication system were attacking Russian surface ships in Crimea. Maybe all these ideas are in development already but is not in public domain?
@peterAustralia
This is a long post repleat with errors. I certainly support your need to contribute but getting basic fact right and at least doing some research on some of your propositions.
Examples
We encourage robust and knowledgible debate but the majority of your post is an opinion piece that requires factual justification. I suggest you will struggle there.
Can I please request you do a bit of reading.
alexsa
Most are aware that the Armidale class patrol boats are too small and have issues. Now being replaced by Arafura class. Armidale class are now being built for Border Force, perhaps Border Force uses them more softly and the structural issues will not resurface. Recently I became aware of a class of vessels called the medium endurance cutter for the US Coast Guard, a subset of this class is the Reliance class cutter from the early 1960s. These vessels are about 1100t, 64m long and have a flight deck capable of landing a Sea King helicopter. Overall these vessels have proven quite successful, we may speculate that this is because they are quite simple with less to go wrong. Of similar layout is the Tenix Patrol Boat bought be the Philippines Coast Guard but only 600t. There is the Sirio class OPV by Italy at around 1200t, that one has a telescoping helicopter hangar. My point is that longer term Border Force may find the Armidale class too small and prefer a larger simpler vessel, something like the Reliance class cutter equipped with a drone helicopter, something like a Fire scout.
There was an Australian Pilot that wrote a book called Fighter Pilot, He may have gone to Libya afterwards, not sure. In the book he relates as to how he did a practice exercise against Australian Navy surface ships. He led a small number of FA18s against the surface ships and achieved complete surprise. This would tend to indicate that ship based radars not always detect small fast moving jets/missiles at low level. It has puzzled me for years as to why Australia does not have some ship-borne AEW system. The off the shelf answer is Hawkeye, but Australia does not have a carrier that can launch that. Another answer it to put a radar under a helicopter as the British and Russians have done. Yet this has limitations in terms to endurance, ceiling and operating cost and complexity. Logic suggests a medium sized drone fitted with an AEW radar. Something like a Predator drone at say 70 percent scale. This type of drone has high altitude, long endurance and low landing speeds. How to launch and how to recover I hear you ask? Launching should be relatively easy up the ramp of the Canberra class. According to the gold standard to information, Wikipedia, the Predator has a stall speed to 54 knots. If the ship is sailing at 25 knots then the aircraft only needs 30 or so knots to fly, something possible with a quite short takeoff run. Obviously take off speed is higher than stall speed, additionally any breeze can be used to assist takeoff/landing by sailing upwind makes things easier
How to land? There is a small fixed wing drone that lands by flying into an array or many vertical rubber bands, creating a soft stopping. Something like this fixed to the stern of a Canberra class should work, obviously it would have to be scaled up, but there is nothing spectacular about the entire idea. The other way is to go to a hybrid power plant like a Prius, use a turbine engine to power a generator that creates electricity to power motors. The advantage of this setup is that it allows the use of a number of small two bladed propellers that create lift, and are only used in takeoff and landing. In normal flight the propellers and fixed fore and aft to create minimal drag. A few simple drones like this would greatly improve the all around situational awareness by having a radar up at 30000 feet, versus 80 ft when on a ship.
My final point regards the N Subs. I am not a fan, but I am not the decision maker. My suspicion is that these subs will be superseded by simpler cheaper drones with all electric lithium battery propulsion. Note that South Korea is currently building submarines that are completely battery powered and around 1000t in size. It is true that Korea has a much lower range requirement. However a drone submarine can eliminate a huge amount to space weight safety systems that crew require, in this space more batteries can be fitted. Fire risk from Lithium batteries is much less of an issue in unmanned systems. Thus an unmanned submarine of say 700t powered by Lithium batteries might be very useful and cost effective. The decision making is done via AI. Occasionally the drone floats a buoy to the surface and communicates with home base, information like,, who can I shoot, who cant I shoot, are we are war? where is the enemy etc. The downside of a fairly small drone is lower range. It should be reasonably simple to have a smaller drone sub meet a larger drone sub Milk Cow on the ocean floor and recharge. The Milch Cow would be very simple, just a tube, batteries and a propeller. To recharge underwater I assume there would have to be probe and a receiving unit.. I am sure you get the picture, on this topic the less details the better. The vessels meet at a predetermined place on the seabed at a set time. The larger vessel recharges the smaller one, the smaller one then travels onwards to hazardous waters, the larger one slowly slowly makes it way back to base.
I know all this seems quite far fetched, but it was only last year that surface drones, using a star-link communication system were attacking Russian surface ships in Crimea. Maybe all these ideas are in development already but is not in public domain?
@peterAustralia
This is a long post repleat with errors. I certainly support your need to contribute but getting basic fact right and at least doing some research on some of your propositions.
Examples
- Border Force use the Cape Class .... this shares some of the hull form of the Armidale. The RAN are purchasing evolved Capes and a stop gap between the Armidale and the delivery of the Arafura Class OPV
- You state the the 57m Armidale is too small but propose a 64m vessel with a flight deck
- Submarines will be replaced by drones. These things are relatively small and need to be controlled. There has been a lot of discussion this on this forum and I recommend you go back and read it.
We encourage robust and knowledgible debate but the majority of your post is an opinion piece that requires factual justification. I suggest you will struggle there.
Can I please request you do a bit of reading.
alexsa
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peterAustralia
Member
OK understand,
I will try and be polite, do a little clarifying and be concise. Yes I am aware that Border Force uses Cape class, in my mind they are slightly modified Armidale class, I was just being a little lazy, my apologies for that
There is an ideal size for a ship, obviously you can go larger say Arafura class, or small Cape class, I am just suggesting that longer term, the ideal size might be around 1100t, which is about four times the displacement of what Border Force uses.
With regards to drones, I dont think I explained it fully. My thoughts were that technology progresses to such an extent, that once the drone sub is set, it operates independently without regards to communicating with home. Technology is progressing so fast that it should be possible for Artificial Intelligence to detect an enemy, determine what ship it is and sink it all without need to communicate. Obviously this requires a very strong and robust software package, so that once the sub is unleashed it torpedoes only the enemy and gets it right every time. Although some have their doubts as of now, in decades to come this is how things will work.
I will try and be polite, do a little clarifying and be concise. Yes I am aware that Border Force uses Cape class, in my mind they are slightly modified Armidale class, I was just being a little lazy, my apologies for that
There is an ideal size for a ship, obviously you can go larger say Arafura class, or small Cape class, I am just suggesting that longer term, the ideal size might be around 1100t, which is about four times the displacement of what Border Force uses.
With regards to drones, I dont think I explained it fully. My thoughts were that technology progresses to such an extent, that once the drone sub is set, it operates independently without regards to communicating with home. Technology is progressing so fast that it should be possible for Artificial Intelligence to detect an enemy, determine what ship it is and sink it all without need to communicate. Obviously this requires a very strong and robust software package, so that once the sub is unleashed it torpedoes only the enemy and gets it right every time. Although some have their doubts as of now, in decades to come this is how things will work.
There are drones available that the ADF cancelled Sky guardian!
I hope the ADF and marles revisits this late minute cancellation and purchased the Sea guardian drone. They would be able to be launched and recovers from the Canberra class with foldable wings and extra lift they would give a long range strike option and can use their radar for detection and targeting.
That with F-35b’s to form air defence for ran fleet I think would only give the navy the reach it truely desires and needs.
I hope the ADF and marles revisits this late minute cancellation and purchased the Sea guardian drone. They would be able to be launched and recovers from the Canberra class with foldable wings and extra lift they would give a long range strike option and can use their radar for detection and targeting.
That with F-35b’s to form air defence for ran fleet I think would only give the navy the reach it truely desires and needs.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Hard to say how reliable and accurate an autonomous kill machine will be in 10-20 years (likely very good) but taking the the human out of the kill decision presents huge legal and political challenges. These challenges could very well disappear though as the geopolitical situation worsens.