Scott Elaurant
Well-Known Member
Further to Alexsa’s comments we need to remember that the original reason for building Collins (and Sea1000) in Australia in the first place was not to create local jobs or save money. It was so that we would have the skills to sustain complex state of the art submarines available locally. It was about capability. That meant we could keep operating them reliably. Oberons were great boats in the 1970s but they suffered terribly from being out of service for long periods to have any major work done.
SSNs are far more complex than Oberons and these issues apply doubly so now. ASC won’t be building reactor compartments here but everything else - pressure hull, turbines, battery, accommodation, command, comms and weapons systems - should be built here, so that we can maintain and if needed repair them here. That capability to maintain and repair is valuable and will lead to US and possibly UK basing SSNs here as well. Look at the backlog in sub maintenance for both the RN and the USN SSNs to see how critical this is. Some US boats have been tied up for a couple of years.
Seen in this light, in my view anything that avoidably delays ASC from learning how to build SSNs is a distraction. The same applies to getting old second hand SSNs we don’t know how to maintain. The LOTE work on Collins is needed but after that is should be all hands on deck to build SSNs. If we can get a UK made Astute or US made Virginia as a starter boat that would be useful to begin working up crews and maintenance teams, but only in the context of being a “first in class”. That was how the Germans helped start the Korean sub building program by building the first two boats in Germany then the following six of the same design in Korea. Since then the Koreans have gone from strength to strength with a continuous build of their own boats to a gradually improving local design.
So whichever SSN design Australia selects, I’d say pick one and stick to it, and learn to build and maintain as much of it as possible locally as fast as possible. Personally I do hope it is a “batch 2 Astute” for many reasons, but whichever design we choose, I hope we do it properly and know how to back those boats up locally. No point getting state of the art Virginia block Vs if we can’t maintain the VLS tubes or repair the fancy optronic masts locally.
This is an engineers view of the world, not a submarine sailors’, but I think it is important In this case.
SSNs are far more complex than Oberons and these issues apply doubly so now. ASC won’t be building reactor compartments here but everything else - pressure hull, turbines, battery, accommodation, command, comms and weapons systems - should be built here, so that we can maintain and if needed repair them here. That capability to maintain and repair is valuable and will lead to US and possibly UK basing SSNs here as well. Look at the backlog in sub maintenance for both the RN and the USN SSNs to see how critical this is. Some US boats have been tied up for a couple of years.
Seen in this light, in my view anything that avoidably delays ASC from learning how to build SSNs is a distraction. The same applies to getting old second hand SSNs we don’t know how to maintain. The LOTE work on Collins is needed but after that is should be all hands on deck to build SSNs. If we can get a UK made Astute or US made Virginia as a starter boat that would be useful to begin working up crews and maintenance teams, but only in the context of being a “first in class”. That was how the Germans helped start the Korean sub building program by building the first two boats in Germany then the following six of the same design in Korea. Since then the Koreans have gone from strength to strength with a continuous build of their own boats to a gradually improving local design.
So whichever SSN design Australia selects, I’d say pick one and stick to it, and learn to build and maintain as much of it as possible locally as fast as possible. Personally I do hope it is a “batch 2 Astute” for many reasons, but whichever design we choose, I hope we do it properly and know how to back those boats up locally. No point getting state of the art Virginia block Vs if we can’t maintain the VLS tubes or repair the fancy optronic masts locally.
This is an engineers view of the world, not a submarine sailors’, but I think it is important In this case.
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. Who ever got to the boat first did their bit first, leading to dead straight easy cable runs and pipe fitter having to work around.
