Big article by Brendan Nicholson in the Australian today on the coming White Paper.
A nicely placed leak, I would say.
According to the article, the focus of the WP will be on the RAN and saving the shipbuilding industry. OPVs of a "corvette" class get a mention, along with submarines of course.
"Saving the shipbuilding industry" is an interesting choice of words.
There is strong emphasis that the Valley of Death is upon us and that orders needed to be placed around three years ago.
So it's not a case of saving the shipbuilding industry, but a case of re-building the ship building industry.
Cue the outrage from Adelaide.
Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian
In case someone can't by-pass the subscription..........
"Defence white paper to focus on jobs rescue
The Australian
July 28, 2015 12:00AM
Air Chief Marshall Mark Binskin. Source: News Corp Australia
A detailed plan to re-equip the Royal Australian Navy and to save the naval shipbuilding industry will be the centrepiece of the coming defence white paper.
In a joint interview, Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson and Defence Force chief Mark Binskin told The Australian it was too late to bridge the “valley of death” shipbuilders faced when current projects run out. To avoid job *losses, the previous government would have had to have placed orders for ships at least three years ago and probably much earlier, they said.
But the forthcoming white paper, expected late next month or in early September, would be designed to place the industry on a sustainable footing to avoid a jobs crisis.
“While it is too late to avoid the valley of death, you can take decisions now to minimise its impact and to put the industry on a long-term basis,” Mr Richardson said.
Air Chief Marshal Binskin and Mr Richardson said after completion of the two giant landing ships and three Air Warfare *Destroyers, to rush a project to the steel-cutting stage would leave *insufficient planning time and *increase the risk of mistakes.
Hundreds of shipbuilding workers have lost their jobs *already and many more losses are expected. “Everyone’s got their own quick-fix solution to it but the long and short of it is if you’re looking to avoid the valley of death, the point of no return *occurred some years back,” Mr Richardson said.
“A decision on a project or a program would have had to have been made back then so that you could make the transition from the current projects to the next,” Air Chief Marshal Binskin said.
Mr Richardson said the “big decisions and the big capital *expenditure” in the white paper — the strategic blueprint for Australia’s defence over the next two decades — would be related to *re-equipping the navy.
The Royal Australian Air Force was well set up and the key decisions about aircraft had been made, he said, and a major project was under way to re-equip the army with vehicles.
“This white paper will do for the navy what decisions over the past 15 years have done for the RAAF,” Mr Richardson said.
The white paper and naval shipbuilding plan went together, he said, and the shipbuilding strategy would not be “doom and gloom … but a story of reform”.
The two Defence leaders said building a ship fell into three broad stages: design, cutting of metal and then fitting out the hull.
For a “continuous build” process to work, different sections of the workforce had to overlap. By the time the fitting out was nearing completion, the workers who cut the original steel might not still be around.
“The workforce you’ll have at the front end of a shipbuilding program is not the same as the workforce you’ll have at the back end,” Mr Richardson said.
As well, a submarine workforce would have very different skills from that building surface ships.
Air Chief Marshal Binskin said the continuous build process did not mean the same type of ship would be turned out ad infinitum. “But you have the design teams and the workforce established and while you build a block of three or four ships, you are planning and working on designs for the next program,” he said.
“So you are not having to re-*establish the workforce. You know what you need to feed that workforce with skilled labour — understanding your design needs, capability needs, how you are going to train and sustain the workforce required to keep that going.”
Mr Richardson said he believed the white paper process was the most meticulous ever.
Cabinet’s national security committee had considered about 10 submissions.
The two Defence heads defended the competitive evaluation process set up to select the navy’s new submarines, which is looking at three options from Germany, France and Japan.
There are plans to build the boats abroad, to build in Australia or to build some abroad and some in Australia.
“Believe it or not, what you see in that process is what you get,” Mr Richardson said. “There’s no smoke and mirrors. The notion that a deal has been done is simply not true.”
Air Chief Marshal Binskin said that because no submarines were being built in Australia at present, no shipyard workers would lose their jobs if the decision were made to build them overseas.
If the boats were built in Australia, the workforce would be rebuilt; even if they were built off*shore, considerable work would be done fitting them out in Australia, Mr Richardson said.
He said the submarines would be maintained in Australia.
Air Chief Marshal Binskin said the white paper would consider the need for new offshore patrol vessels in the “corvette” class, larger than the current patrol boats but smaller than frigates.
To meet the government’s promise for the white paper to be “fully costed”, it would have unprecedented detail on spending with all costings independently verified, Mr Richardson said.
Air Chief Marshal Binskin said its investment plan would include not just the cost of an item but all other elements including personnel, facilities and IT."
Most acquisition of our air force in the last 15 years are through FMS and not local manufacturing..........
