Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates

[rockitten]

Last time, the F100 and Cantabria paid a visit to Australia and won the bid and now:

The Maritime Self-Defense Force's Soryu will have a joint exercise with RAN off Jervis Bay.......

Japanese submarine to take part in Australian military drills | The Japan Times

Can I assume it is a clear sign about who's the winner of SEA1000?

 

[StingrayOZ]

Has been pointed out in the past that such rectifications are not such a difficult task for such ships so more then likely any Australian offering would have come with a larger JP-5 capacity.

As to the F-35B we wont be getting them for the Canberra's, It has been ruled out by every one from government for cost reasons to the military as it would be a capability gained at the sacrifice of it's intended role, They are dead and dusted.

You don't need F-35B's to put a large JP-5 requirement. Operating 6 V-22 off each LHD would put a similar load as a small F-35B carrier. Or more realistically supporting a USMC amphib (even at light tempo), or JSDF flat top destroyer. Certainly in the future (10 years) aviation assets will be even more valuable (faster, longer range, thirstier, bigger but still VTOL). Even things like future LCAC may need JP-5.

IMO Aegir is laughably short on JP-5, which while I think can be easily corrected the onus would be on Australia specing out with lots of thought what is required. Cantabria is kind of all sorted for us a bit better with probably everything we want in a low risk format we are very familiar with.

That said personally get 2 well speced Aegir's.
Then I would get another LHD to replace the LCH, Choules, logistics ships. The LHD can do RAS fuel and stores (would easily be able to tend to multiple OPV's and the like). Obviously vertical replenishment are going to be easy. Sure it would need more sailors than Choules, but training and logistics would be smoother with 3 x LHD's. The LCM's and crews can be shared across the three of them. For anything else then you just get roro's/HSC/containers as you need them. You don't have to use all of its capability and would probably go reduced fitout to cut costs. I know it won't happen, but I do think it worth sitting down from a price/crewing/capability concern and look whats possible. Im not sure another new build Choules (or some other orphan) is the ultimate answer.

 

[Jezza]

RAN acquires Damen vessel for aviation training

Ridzwan Rahmat, Singapore - IHS Jane's Navy International

17 March 2014
The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is to acquire a 90 m vessel, built by Damen Shipyards, for naval aviation training.

Speaking to IHS Jane's at the Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) Asia Pacific 2014 conference on 17 March, Piet van Rooij, Damen's manager for Design and Proposal, Offshore and Transport, said that the vessel will be based on the company's OPV 2400 platform.

The full-functional vessel is expected to be used for training RAN aviators on rotary aircraft such as the MH-60R.

A contract with Australian company Defence Maritime Services, which will manage the acquisition for the RAN, is expected to be signed towards the end of March.

Question, What happened to this ? Did RAN sign for the vessel or did it get scrapped quietly.?

 

[gf0012-aust]

Last time, the F100 and Cantabria paid a visit to Australia and won the bid and now:

The Maritime Self-Defense Force's Soryu will have a joint exercise with RAN off Jervis Bay.......

Japanese submarine to take part in Australian military drills | The Japan Times

Can I assume it is a clear sign about who's the winner of SEA1000?

are you serious?

I'd say that the visits to france and spain when their builds were underway was a bit more important

do you really believe that the acquisition teams make up their minds based on port visits?

the major obvious benefit is that it underlines and reinforces the fact that the japanese have a real working sub to offer rather than a paper sub

as has been said on here many many many times before

 

[hauritz]

RAN acquires Damen vessel for aviation training

Ridzwan Rahmat, Singapore - IHS Jane's Navy International

17 March 2014
The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is to acquire a 90 m vessel, built by Damen Shipyards, for naval aviation training.

Speaking to IHS Jane's at the Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) Asia Pacific 2014 conference on 17 March, Piet van Rooij, Damen's manager for Design and Proposal, Offshore and Transport, said that the vessel will be based on the company's OPV 2400 platform.

The full-functional vessel is expected to be used for training RAN aviators on rotary aircraft such as the MH-60R.

A contract with Australian company Defence Maritime Services, which will manage the acquisition for the RAN, is expected to be signed towards the end of March.

Question, What happened to this ? Did RAN sign for the vessel or did it get scrapped quietly.?

I don't know what happened with it ... but to be honest I never understood the point of this ship. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of ships that helicopter pilots could train off.

It may be more useful as a fill in patrol ship until the new OPVs start entering service.

 

[40 deg south]

As for the Spanish ship, I really don't like the deal. With how often our ships support other nations and those nations support ships sustaining ours having so called commanality is hardly a major requirement. Looking at the cost factor compared to the British deal I don't think we are getting that big a bargain, $700m for 2 ships (Assuming there black hole won't cause cost over runs) compared to just north of $850m for 4 larger more capable ships.

Trying to compare publicly released contract prices is always a nightmare, as it's often not possible to determine what is included/excluded. From memory, the figures being tossed around for Norway's Aegir were in the $230-250 million range.

That's a fair bit less than the $350 mil per Cantabria quoted in the link above. I suspect an 'apples with apples' comparison would show a much lower difference, or Daewoo would have won the order.

 

[t68]

RAN acquires Damen vessel for aviation training

Ridzwan Rahmat, Singapore - IHS Jane's Navy International

17 March 2014
The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is to acquire a 90 m vessel, built by Damen Shipyards, for naval aviation training.

Speaking to IHS Jane's at the Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) Asia Pacific 2014 conference on 17 March, Piet van Rooij, Damen's manager for Design and Proposal, Offshore and Transport, said that the vessel will be based on the company's OPV 2400 platform.

The full-functional vessel is expected to be used for training RAN aviators on rotary aircraft such as the MH-60R.

A contract with Australian company Defence Maritime Services, which will manage the acquisition for the RAN, is expected to be signed towards the end of March.

Question, What happened to this ? Did RAN sign for the vessel or did it get scrapped quietly.?

As far as I am awere it being quietly built in Vietnam, and not being a commission ship of the RAN it is slipping under the radar.

 

[Volkodav]

I don't know what happened with it ... but to be honest I never understood the point of this ship. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of ships that helicopter pilots could train off.

It may be more useful as a fill in patrol ship until the new OPVs start entering service.

Its a dedicated training asset that takes the load of the fleet. What many don't realise is in the late Noughties, when the tail to teeth rebalance, otherwise known as the hollowing out of the RANs engineering capability, really started to bite two ANZACs were assigned to HMAS Cerberus as training platforms. So of a fleet of eight, one or two were in refit, one was assigned to border protection and of the remaining five one was assigned to along side training and another to sea training at Cerberus. This left three plus Adelaide and Canberra (which had been dropped from FFGUP which had tied up the remaining four in an unusable uncertified state) along with one, sometimes two Collins as our active combat fleet.

This was culmination of decades of abuse that had seen replacements delayed or cancelled, unsuitable commercial designs adapted, semi commercial designs leased, existing ships pushed harder and maintained by commercial entities to a price, as well as many dedicated training assets retired. It was the point where a couple of decades of cost cutting was just about to flip from saving expenditure to everything falling over at once and not enough suitably qualified and experienced people to even warn of what was about to happen, let alone stop it.

 

[Redlands18]

Is the Damen 2400 vessel going to be a commissioned ship of the RAN or civilian owned, operated and contracted to the RAN for Aviation trg. I could never work that out, either way it will be cheaper than using up the life of billion dollar plus Warships for the job.

 

[Todjaeger]

Is the Damen 2400 vessel going to be a commissioned ship of the RAN or civilian owned, operated and contracted to the RAN for Aviation trg. I could never work that out, either way it will be cheaper than using up the life of billion dollar plus Warships for the job.

Alexsa could explain it much better, but IIRC the vessel will be owned/operated under Australian commercial (might not be the correct term) rules, vs. naval rules, and will have a civilian crew operating under contract to the RAN.

 

[Redlands18]

Alexsa could explain it much better, but IIRC the vessel will be owned/operated under Australian commercial (might not be the correct term) rules, vs. naval rules, and will have a civilian crew operating under contract to the RAN.

Thanks Tod i was pretty sure that was the case, just needed confirmation. Any idea when it will enter service?

 

[Volkodav]

Alexsa could explain it much better, but IIRC the vessel will be owned/operated under Australian commercial (might not be the correct term) rules, vs. naval rules, and will have a civilian crew operating under contract to the RAN.

Yep, DMS even contracted the build in Damens Vietnam facility. They will crew it and operate it for the RAN at it will likely be trouble free and profitable, like most of their contracts with the CoA. The only bad contract they had was the ACPBs, makes you wonder how it would have gone if they had gone with a designer /builder other than Austal.

 

[Todjaeger]

Yep, DMS even contracted the build in Damens Vietnam facility. They will crew it and operate it for the RAN at it will likely be trouble free and profitable, like most of their contracts with the CoA. The only bad contract they had was the ACPBs, makes you wonder how it would have gone if they had gone with a designer /builder other than Austal.

As a tie-in, how much better would it be for the RAN, ADF and CoA as a whole, if more of then ship support, engineering, and maintenance were brought back into the RAN?

As I understand it, one (out of the many) issue with the ACPB's is that under the contract, much of the maintenance had to be left for the contractor to do, instead of RAN engineers. This resulted in less practical experience for serving RAN engineers, as well as requiring maintenance and repairs to be done when the boats were in port. Given the frenetic pace of their deployments, this meant problems for the ACPB's being available for the contractors to work on them, as well as RAN personnel being unable due to lack of experience and/or authorization, to perform needed repairs when on deployment.

This situation does sort of make me wonder what the case would have been, if had one of the ACPB's been damaged due to 'hostile' action during one of the Pacific Island deployments. Unfortunately I cannot recall whether it was to the Solomons as part of RAMSI, PNG, or on a different op to stabilize a neighbouring country.

 

[John Newman]

Is the Damen 2400 vessel going to be a commissioned ship of the RAN or civilian owned, operated and contracted to the RAN for Aviation trg. I could never work that out, either way it will be cheaper than using up the life of billion dollar plus Warships for the job.

Here's a list of vessels currently operated by DMS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Defence_Maritime_Services_vessels

No mentioned of the Aviation Training Ship yet in that list (from what I can see).

 

[Volkodav]

As a tie-in, how much better would it be for the RAN, ADF and CoA as a whole, if more of then ship support, engineering, and maintenance were brought back into the RAN?

As I understand it, one (out of the many) issue with the ACPB's is that under the contract, much of the maintenance had to be left for the contractor to do, instead of RAN engineers. This resulted in less practical experience for serving RAN engineers, as well as requiring maintenance and repairs to be done when the boats were in port. Given the frenetic pace of their deployments, this meant problems for the ACPB's being available for the contractors to work on them, as well as RAN personnel being unable due to lack of experience and/or authorization, to perform needed repairs when on deployment.

This situation does sort of make me wonder what the case would have been, if had one of the ACPB's been damaged due to 'hostile' action during one of the Pacific Island deployments. Unfortunately I cannot recall whether it was to the Solomons as part of RAMSI, PNG, or on a different op to stabilize a neighbouring country.

Rizzo review examined and made recommendations on this very topic, worth a read
http://www.defence.gov.au/minister/2011/Rizzo Review Media Release Final.doc

 

[gf0012-aust]

there are a number of vessels currently being built which are not RAN vessels but will have RAN control

they don't appear in things like the DWP as they are not a Defence asset

its been discussed before on here

Alexsa can add further ruminations

 

[gf0012-aust]

Cantabria is the provisional choice - and to be built offshore

 

[Joe Black]

Yep, DMS even contracted the build in Damens Vietnam facility. They will crew it and operate it for the RAN at it will likely be trouble free and profitable, like most of their contracts with the CoA. The only bad contract they had was the ACPBs, makes you wonder how it would have gone if they had gone with a designer /builder other than Austal.

Come'on Volk, I know Austal is not all saints, but enough of bashing them ok. I'm bias as I am a west aussie, so I still kinda like Austal , and look at our shipbuilding capabilities with the Bae upgrading the ANZAC class, one word comes across my mind, impressive! On time, on budget, and first class!

Afterall, they are the first ship building company from down under that have successfully penetrated into the US market building ships for USN. Don't see ASC, Tenix, Incat or Forgacs doing that

 

[Joe Black]

Cantabria is the provisional choice - and to be built offshore

Expected, nothing new to see, move along. DefMin, let's hear more about SEA 1180.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Come'on Volk, I know Austal is not all saints, but enough of bashing them ok. I'm bias as I am a west aussie, so I still kinda like Austal , and look at our shipbuilding capabilities with the Bae upgrading the ANZAC class, one word comes across my mind, impressive! On time, on budget, and first class!

Afterall, they are the first ship building company from down under that have successfully penetrated into the US market building ships for USN. Don't see ASC, Tenix, Incat or Forgacs doing that

1) boat availability rates after accepted into service
2) types and frequency of recurring maintenance
3) Incat is in the US and has ocean going twincats purchased by the US Army
4) the others don't compete in the US as the market req was for alloy hulls - Incat does and Incat competes.

Its not Austal bashing - its about pruning the BS that comes with some who think that Austal is the answer for vessels that its incapable of building in the first place