good god, I just read some more swill on future subs
latest piece from nicholas stuart in the canberra times:
there is so much wrong with this its not funny - sometimes I just wish somebody in future subs would get out and demolish these half witted comments
cut down version
Submarines come at a price
Nicholas
Stuart
The news snippet was so brief you could have almost missed it, but the import is huge. Enormous. Last week, as a subtle signal hinting at the chaos and grief accompanying our continuing downright failure to sort out what sort of new submarines we need, the federal government appointed a retired US admiral to take charge
of the project. Retired Rear Admiral Stephen Johnson, the man who once managed the American Seawolf program(which produced the second-most expensive submarine ever built) is taking over. Pardon?
This is the clearest signal yet that our enormous, $50 billion submarine building project is now completely off the rails. An entire decade's work and effort and patch-up compromises (including recruiting teams of other ‘‘international experts’’) now scrapped as a result of political bungling and secrecy and incompetence.
Building submarines can be as expensive and as complex as a space program, or as simple as a visit to the supermarket. The key is to look at what's on offer,work out how much you’re prepared to pay, and then spend the money to get it.What you won't achieve, though, is a breakfast banquet for the price of a single Weet-Bix. The problem is,until now, no politician has been prepared to level with us and tell the truth. Look at what happened the last time someone dared to tell the truth. Just a year ago, then defence minister David Johnston, suddenly exploded in the Senate and admitted he ‘‘wouldn’t trust [the Australian Submarine Corporation] to build a canoe’’. He was abruptly sacked for that outburst. It was un-Australian. He should have known better. It’s not possible to denigrate inefficient industry and incompetent bureaucrats even – perhaps especially –when what's being said is true.
Labor’s Penny Wong thought she’d triumphed. She moved the Senate motion that successfully censured Johnston, ensuring his demise. But Wong might have learnt much more and uncovered a story of much greater political import had she unpicked what was being said, instead of rigidly enforcing political correctness.
What Wong ignored is the story of the prolonged disaster with the potential to rip apart either the budget or the defence of the country. So let’s start at the beginning: Kevin Rudd's ridiculous, un-costed and strategically illiterate thought bubble of a rolling program building a dozen submarines in Adelaide.
The idea could make sense. Nevertheless, as when you peruse the menu for breakfast, it requires Compromises.You want world beating technology built here: fine,and now cough up the money.You want cheap: great; there’s a good Japanese off-the-shelf model – and now tell me how that works with South Australian voters. No politician has been prepared to admit building submarines requires simple decisions that will determine the eventual outcome. Imagine a piece of string. That’s your submarine.Now join the ends using straight lines, with one side representing the subs range, another stealth, the third the number of vessels in your fleet, the fourth innovative design and the fifth local manufacture. Fold the string wherever you want, but each angle represents a compromise somewhere else. Decide to add to the length of the string.Go on, you know you want to, and you think it will solve the problem. The only issue is that now you’ve got to add some other extra dimensions as well: either severely curtail numbers in the surface fleet, raise taxes or cut the number of hospital nurses. It’s all up to you.
The politicians have been pretending the line just kept expanding like amagic pudding, or bubble gum, but now the ever inflating project has suddenly popped and exploded in our faces. Rudd imagined we could have 12 long-range boats without paying for them. Julia Gillard wanted an Adelaide build yet kept putting it off into the never-never because of the cost to capability. Tony Abbott wanted to buy from Japan but wouldn’t admit it until his prime ministership was falling apart because of South Australian votes – and a very big thank you, in this respect, to Christopher Pyne, member for Sturt. All just playing let’s pretend.
Simple decisions need to be made and explained; the string’s not going to get any bigger while we stand around and engage in wishful thinking.Up until now though, nobody’s been prepared to explain these choices to the electorate or pay the political price of clearly delineating exactly what the tradeoffs are.
The only way to add to the range of choices is to do things differently. That’s why it’s so utterly brilliant that Lockheed, SAAB and Thales have jointly combined to develop a submarine research laboratory in Adelaide to push the boundaries of what's possible. The future of underwater warfare isn’t in welding and riveting; it’s in remotely operated mini-submersibles. This is the future.
