How about instead of new frigates we build three Flight II AWDs and three Hyugas (adapted to use recycled and refurbished ANZAC ASMD systems) then make up numbers by recycling the ANZAC combat system into a new class of five perfectly good enough frigates (but very highly automated to reduce crew).
More than enough work to keep ASC, BAE and Forgacs, as well as an expanded domestic supply chain, going pretty much indefinitely. This would work even better if the government eventually replaces the entire PB force with OPVs (obviously nine or ten instead of fourteen though unless we return to the OCV concept and replace the MCM and survey vessels as well)
On submarines if you look at Japan, as John explained, they have two yards delivering one new boat every year with each boat them previously only serving sixteen years, so each yard is delivering one boat every two years. Australia has one yard, assuming one boat delivered every two years even a class of eight would take sixteen years to build, i.e. the expected lifespan of the class as designed. Go to twelve boats and that's twenty four years to build which would be a fair life span. Assuming the oldest pair of boats are used, one for along side and one for at sea training and perhaps one on each coast for ASW training with the fleet we could probably quite easily justify a fleet of twelve.
Stop and start the whole process over again? Scrap the plan for the OPV's and Future Frigates and build three new AWD's and three Hyugas?
Please, Noooooooooooooooooooo!!
The problem for the current Government (as I see it), is that it's caught between a rock and a hard place, a real Catch 22.
One the one hand there is pressure to provide jobs (and job certainty for industry), and on the hand provide the appropriate replacements for the current ships in a timely manner too.
The process that appears to have been in train for the last period of time is to make a selection on the OPV and Future Frigates (sooner than later) so that steel can start to be cut in 2018 (OPV's) and steel can start to be cut in 2020 (Future Frigates) and one would assume that steel to start cutting for the Collins replacement within a few years of the Future Frigates (somewhere in the early 2020's).
Could the above 'compressed' timeframe have been avoided? Probably yes.
For the sake of both industry (continuity of work) and the Navy (reasonable time to pick the right design), it would have taken the previous Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Governments to have made some decisions during the 2007-1013 period and potentially ordered that 4th AWD, etc, I think it's too late to start that again now.
If the 4th AWD had been ordered (and no doubt block work would be continuing for the next little while), it could have given the current Government a bit more time (maybe a couple of years?) to not rush the programs that it now appears to be rushing to have in place to satisfy industry! (Anyway, just my opinion of course!!).
On the question of Submarine production (assuming the Japanese boat is selected, I wrote a comment on this a few weeks back), I'm very interested to see what the Governments plan for the production on the replacement Collins class is.
Will it be a 24mth gap between boats? 18mths? or 12mths? (If we follow and replicate the Japanese current production model it will be 24mths).
The problem at 24mths is the time from the first boat to at least the sixth boat, it's 10 years, if it's 8 boats it's 14 years.
So how does that work in with ensuring there is no capability gap?
Lots of interesting questions, probably not a lot of answers until the new DWP and DCP!!!
