Actually thinking on my previous post the shipbuilding black hole was significantly longer as the ANZACs and Collins were both contracted in the late 80s under Hawke, the replacement project for the DDGs and first four FFGs was deferred under Keating and the FFG upgrade for Melbourne and Newcastle was expanded to all six to fill the gap until a new generation of designs underdevelopment became available. So rather than an eight and eleven year gap it was actually a fifteen-sixteen year gap to the Armidales and a eighteen to nineteen year gap to the AWDs and LHDs WTF? Completely blows the current governments argument about labor not ordering a single ship in six years away, they need to add a decade to reach the record of the "prime minister of defence"
It had been pretty much assumed that Transfields proposal replacing the FFGs Mk-13 with a Mk-41 VLS for SM-2 and ESSM and significant combat systems would get up but ADI won instead (rumour has it to make the entity more valuable for sale). The project for a new naval helicopter had kicked off to provide a missile armed helicopter for the Corvettes and ANZACs instead of buying additional Seahawks as had been initially planned and consideration was being given to acquiring the four recently upgraded (NTU) Kidd Class Destroyer from the USN and only upgrading four instead of six FFGS. There would actually be more local upgrade work locally as it was assumed the Kidds would be progressively further upgraded with Mk-41 and new features to reduce crew size, i.e. electrics replacing pneumatics and hydraulics where possible.
So the new ships that needed to be ordered in the mid and late 90s were not ordered until a decade later, the planned eight tier 1 (DDGS/FFGs), eight tier 2 (PFs/FFGH) and 10-12 tier 3 (corvettes/OPC) became four upgraded FFGs, eight only now being upgraded FFGHs and 14 (now 13) coke cans. The new AOR that needed to be ordered in the early 2000s became a converted tanker that was never fit for purpose, the replacement for Success that needed to be ordered in the mid to late 2000s has only just been ordered a decade later. Of the ships ordered only the LHDs are actually in service and fit for purpose, the DDGs are late and over budget, while the coke cans need to be remediated so they will maybe last long enough to be replaced early.
I know everyone has there political filters, most are inherited but some are evolved from experience, mine come from what happened to shipbuilding specifically but also the automotive industry, manufacturing, science and innovation from the mid 90s onwards. I have always been a technologist/technocrat by nature as such my political filters are coloured by the deliberate policies that saw Australia, despite the immense amount of talent and experience here, turned around and forced back down the road of relying on primary industries, resources and services, or as I refer to it, classic dumb_uckery. Anti technology, anti industry, anti innovation policies resulting from short sighted, selfishness, and greed, have done a better job of de-industrialising Australia than the Greens ever could have done, but without the sole advantage of the Greens policies of actually reducing pollution and environmental destruction which has increased.
