t68
Well-Known Member
The problem with Australian shipbuilding is there is no plan, defence is held hostage to the whims of the ever changeling goverment views. We all saw this in the stark difference between the Rudd White Paper of 2009 and the Gillard White Paper of 2013 and that's between leaders in the same political party.The USGov has a shipbuilding plan that looks at forward projections of 30 years, we are large enough to sustain a plan of that caliber.
When the Anzac class frigates were being built the program was deliberately slowed by 2 years to take advantage to reduce working costs and maintain essential skills for the future Air Warfare Destroyer project, it's intersting to note that Tenex sold Williamstown to BAE and the BAE element was the workmanship was the underlining problem with the AWD build, but can you put the blame squarely with the workers? I think not it was a culmination of events.
When the Anzacs were being built key Australian staff were sent to work with Blohm+Voss in Hamburg for 3.5 years and gain a working knowledge of best practise to the Australian design with an office set up next to were all the work was, when you compare this to the AWD build we had never built as an Alliance before and one of the key aspects of the design was the passage of designs from Navantia, but Navantia was not part of the Alliance as this quote from the Auditor-General describes
"The non-inclusion of Navantia has detracted from the Alliance’s ability to collectively and collaboratively manage risks, which are among the main reasons for establishing such an arrangement; and there has been incomplete alignment of incentives for sharing of best practices and for reducing costs, from design conception through to shipbuilding and ship acceptance."
I believe that in the Goverments haste to divide up the work share for the AWD was not achievable with such a small number of ships being built and AWD has been a painfull lesson, these lessons can be mitigated with the next gen frigate. I believe Australia should settle on tech port for all defence shipbuilding needs and consolidate building to one location.
When the Anzac class frigates were being built the program was deliberately slowed by 2 years to take advantage to reduce working costs and maintain essential skills for the future Air Warfare Destroyer project, it's intersting to note that Tenex sold Williamstown to BAE and the BAE element was the workmanship was the underlining problem with the AWD build, but can you put the blame squarely with the workers? I think not it was a culmination of events.
When the Anzacs were being built key Australian staff were sent to work with Blohm+Voss in Hamburg for 3.5 years and gain a working knowledge of best practise to the Australian design with an office set up next to were all the work was, when you compare this to the AWD build we had never built as an Alliance before and one of the key aspects of the design was the passage of designs from Navantia, but Navantia was not part of the Alliance as this quote from the Auditor-General describes
"The non-inclusion of Navantia has detracted from the Alliance’s ability to collectively and collaboratively manage risks, which are among the main reasons for establishing such an arrangement; and there has been incomplete alignment of incentives for sharing of best practices and for reducing costs, from design conception through to shipbuilding and ship acceptance."
I believe that in the Goverments haste to divide up the work share for the AWD was not achievable with such a small number of ships being built and AWD has been a painfull lesson, these lessons can be mitigated with the next gen frigate. I believe Australia should settle on tech port for all defence shipbuilding needs and consolidate building to one location.