I have found personally both there very best and very worst I have worked with are or were ADF. The difference is those who learn and embrace change ( more to the point improvement) and those who wear blinkers and resist change, or for that matter, independent thought.
Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
- Thread starter OPSSG
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I have also worked for both, and also private industry and for myself.
The very best manager I have ever had, was for Halliburton, in Australia. The next best were Army, also one of the worst was army.
Public service managers are a bit like a comedy act to be honest.
Public service is hugely hamstrung by delegations, where you can have a head of a department who is incapable of making simple decisions because he /she does not have the delegation to do so, which means passing the buck. A simple decision can then take days ,weeks ,months or never be made because of these stupid problems.
It is because of these delegations that incompetent people still have their jobs....because no one is allowed to fire them.
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
Attempting to keep a capability going, in case there is a wartime command economy, is really not worth it for Australia IMO. If there is a production capability that, due to the size of orders to meet ADF requirements plus whatever exports might be had, that it becomes a break even or near-break even cost, that is a rather different story.
Unfortunately, much of the production capacity for vehicles and aircraft can be done rather quickly in dedicated facilities designed for large scale production. When one factors in the relatively low production number demands for ADF service, with planned long service lives, then if one wishes some of this kit to be built in Australia, they either have to face a very long time to produce the desired number of kit, at very low production rates (think like the time to produce classics like handmade Rolls Royce or Bentley automobiles) or much shorter, faster production runs which then leaves a facility and workforce idle once Australian demand plus exports have been produced.
An obvious problem with going towards a VLRP model is that it would take years before sufficient examples of the new/replacement kit have been built before there would be sufficient numbers to replaced whatever Australian kit was to be retired. This is also not taking into account whatever costs there would be for building or modifying the production facilities and establishing the skilled workforce.
If the decision were to be made to go with a normal mass production line model, then it would likely that most kit could be produced in just a few years to fulfill Australian orders. However, if the kit in question is expected to serve for 20 to 30 years, this could leave a production facility and just as important, the workforce, idle for 15+ years. Also there is a very real elephant in the living with examples like the M113 in Australian service. These entered service starting in 1964 and are expected to start (FINALLY!?) being replaced ~2025, after up to 61 years in service... IMO it makes little sense to spend potentially hundreds of millions of dollars building a site, then raising and training a workforce which will then all be made redundant after a decade or less, only for the process to be repeated again a decade or two later.
Naval shipbuilding is a bit of a different creature in part because what is being built is a custom product which by the nature of it's sheer size is going to take significant time to build just one of. Outside some of the yards in China, S. Korea or Japan, there is not really a good way to engage in 'mass production' of naval vessels. TBH the best example I can recall of mass ship production would be the US efforts during WWII to produce cargo ships known as Liberty ships, however these were vessels specifically designed to be simple and easy to produce, with a targeted service life of ~five years and these were cargo vessels, not combatants. The immense size and costs involved with such vessels also means that major maintenance and upgrades are significantly more complicated and require more infrastructure and more from a workforce than from much smaller kit like aircraft or ground vehicles. For instance, the 1.1 tonne GT in an M1 Abrams tank was designed to be removable and swapped out using a hoist in about 15 minutes. The LM2500 GT's using in RAN frigates and destroyers are rather more complicated to remove and replace if/when required. Having a facility and workforce able to do such work, or other things like removing an existing ship mast and associated wiring and sensors to fit a new mast and sensor fitout is also worthwhile and needful. By having naval yards which actually build these vessels, that keeps much of the money spent on a naval build programme in Australia as much of the material and fittings can be sourced domestically (how many hundreds or thousands of tonnes of steel and/or aluminium went into the frigates and destroyers?) as well as the wages for the workforce, with much of that money then going back into local, state and the national economy. This is where a ~30% cost increase for Australian builds still ends up being a net benefit to Australia. As a side note, that figure of ~30% is nearing 20 years old at this point, so it is quite possible that the percentage has changed though in which direction and by how much are unknown to me.
By maintaining a naval yard which can construct such vessels, that also maintains a facility able to maintain, repair or modify these vessels and just as important, keeps around a workforce which is able to carry out such work.
Australia IMO has sufficient critical mass to sustain naval ship construction, there is enough demand to ensure a steady flow of work to sustain facilities and personnel, provided politics and stupidity do not overly interfere. Unfortunately, much of the same cannot be said for much of the kit used by Army or the RAAF, although there could be opportunities for Australian industry to make components which contribute to a global supply chain.
Scott Elaurant
Well-Known Member
I have no ideological view on manufacturing, but I think we should keep the cases of the Australian car and naval shipbuilding industries separate. They are not the same. One is a consumer good; the other is an essential service.
The car industry was heavily subsidised indirectly via tariffs up to the 1990s. As these were wound down it struggled to compete. Many of its overseas competitor, notably in Germany and Japan, were also subsidised, some even more so.
The case for having a local car manufacturing industry was mixed economically. We spend a lot buying cars. It was not as big an employer as claimed. Manufacturing employment has been steadily declining in Australia since the late 1970s. As manufacturing world wide becomes more mechanised, the job benefits also decline. The world car market is also fiercely competitive, and is now oversupplied, with many legacy ICE car manufacturers struggling to shift to EVs.
The situation is quite different with naval shipbuilding. The number of (friendly!) world competitors with spare capacity to replace local production is much less. With many countries having cut their shipbuilding capacity post cold war there is the opposite problem, especially in specialist areas like submarines. Most countries are now busy building warships for their own navy. If you accept we have a need for a navy, there is a case for having sufficient local shipbuilding capacity to ensure it can be built and maintained here.
Critics argue that Australian shipbuilding has not been cost competitive, and that is true. But the reasons have been inconsistency, not any lack of build quality or wage costs. The Rand report estimated local shipbuilding wage costs are +30% vs comparator countries. Yet the cost difference between a first-of class build and average cost for a large class is often >50%. In other words, if we had kept continuous shipbuilding going, the cost problem would have solved itself.
Inconsistencies in political decision making have driven “valleys of death” with insufficient work to maintain a skilled workforce. Naval shipbuilding is highly specialised and highly skilled and this collapse in workload has occurred at the end of each major naval class build in the past two decades. No industry can become or stay efficient in that situation. The UK SSN manufacturer in Barrow was in a hopeless state when the Astute class SSN construction was commenced in the late 90s. The first SSN HMS Astute, cost 58% more than the third, HMS Artful.
We don’t get to pick and choose when military threats might arise. So in my view we do need to maintain adequate local shipbuilding capability to supply the RAN whenever needed. That is unless we are confident there is another trusted source of warships that is politically friendly, technically capable, and has sufficient spare capacity that it can supply warships to us promptly, whenever we need them, in the quantity required, on top of supplying its own needs. With the complexity and time to construct modern warships increasing, I would argue that option does not exist.
In my opinion we should move towards a stable local industry based on continuous production. Lots of politicians say that but the planning nees to be more explicit. That means working backwards from the number of ships required, and their service life, to know what drumbeat of locally built ships we should achieve. So for example, if surface warships last 30 years, and we need 14-15 frigates or destroyers, that means one every two years, with the next class being designed while the current one is built. Same with submarines 8 to 10 lasting 30-35 years means a new SSN every 3 or 4 years. The same for patrol boats/OPVs. Ship types there is not a sufficient demand for to justify continuous build local production e.g LHD, AO, LST, are the ones we should be comfortable buying offshore. I know this is obvious to regular posters here but I am still concerned about the apparent lack of such a published long term plan.
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Scott Elaurant
Well-Known Member
Morgo
I know you are making multiple points here, but as an engineer economist who has worked in consulting firms, state and federal government, I have to say that I have encountered individuals, particularly project managers and financial managers when I worked in Canberra, who did seem to look down on technical specialists. They assumed that if you could not speak their financial language that you were uneducated, whereas they were barely comprehending technical terms. Likewise, I find many literate types assume that if you are numerate you must be illiterate, perhaps because many of them are literate but lousy at maths.
In my working lifetime (I’m 59) I have seen the management of many public sector organisations shift overwhelmingly from senior technical professionals in the relevant field, to non-technical people with MBAs or other management quals. This has been accompanied by a corresponding loss in emphasis on technical skills in those organisations. The new managers tend to focus on what they know.
I’m not saying that managers place no importance on STEM qualifications, but the relative priority has declined in my experience.
As stated on this site many times, a major benifit of the automotive industry was not so much the people on the production line but in the training of the engineering and design people.
As a side note (yes I know the tech was more basic) but which companys picked up the bulk of the US afv production in ww2.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
The industry also built a significant number of bombers during WW2 albeit that would be difficult today to duplicate. That being said, some support should still be possible.
A
At work there were three, now there's one PM who is actually good to work with. They asked questions, didn't assume, didn't jump to conclusions, listened and made suggestions. The rest basically slip into "bad cop" mode and crack heads, trashing relationships we then need to rebuild.
I'm a firm believer in diverse, multi talented teams and collaboration, working toward the best solution, this doesn't happen when you have a homogenous group of sycophantic decision makers. You end up with the "boss" saying this is what we are doing, and everyone else being forced to comply, even when he is wrong. Yes I said he because the bad ones are always blokes.
Senior colleague coined a term I love, clerical engineer. It's basically what you need to become to rise up the ranks. I see multiple engineers and techos studying PM, Contracts, Finance, Management, I see very few PMs, Contracts, Finance, Management, studying STEM.
At work there were three, now there's one PM who is actually good to work with. They asked questions, didn't assume, didn't jump to conclusions, listened and made suggestions. The rest basically slip into "bad cop" mode and crack heads, trashing relationships we then need to rebuild.
I'm a firm believer in diverse, multi talented teams and collaboration, working toward the best solution, this doesn't happen when you have a homogenous group of sycophantic decision makers. You end up with the "boss" saying this is what we are doing, and everyone else being forced to comply, even when he is wrong. Yes I said he because the bad ones are always blokes.
While I generally agree with most of what Scott and Volk have said, I have to point out that because you numerate it doesn't mean you're literate. I have spent way too many hours rewriting documents from techos who are challenged in getting their thoughts down in comprehensible English, before I even worry about the fact that to most of them "Grammar" seems to be a foreign word.Thank god for spell check.
A personal failing of mine is I know what I intended to write, so when I reread it I only see what I intended to put there, not what actually is there.
This I have always used proof readers when available.
Same with checking calcs. The saving grace there is when the answer looks wrong I know to look for an error.
I have worked with engineers and techos who virtually need a translator, but also some who are quite literally incapable of understanding anything technical outside of their domain, while being able to spot a grammatical error on someone else's screen from across the office.
So many don't understand risk, safety, certification, configuration management, requirements, ILS, I could go on.
I have found many warfare officers and dare I say it, pilots, are better at developing a working knowledge across multiple fields than most of the specialists.
I suppose the problem is blinkers, not even seeing anything outside of your field of knowledge, combined with a dash of exceptionallusm, i.e. I don't know / understand, therefore it doesn't matter.
In my last IT job I was the go-to person in my team for cleaning up documents. It turned out to be useful experience: I've been paid for proofreading & editing assorted documents translated from Japanese into English for the last few years. Just a part-time job, & now a modest supplement to my pensions, but every little helps, & it's mental exercise, which is good. Checked minutes of a group management reporting meeting this morning, for a manufacturer of automated medical diagnostic analysers.
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
Rolls-Royce announces expansion of reactor facility to support AUKUS subs - Defence Connect
Rolls-Royce have announced a doubling of the size of its Raynesway site to support the increase in demand for Reactors, from the current eleven every thirty or so years to up to twenty every thirty or so years.
Rolls-Royce have announced a doubling of the size of its Raynesway site to support the increase in demand for Reactors, from the current eleven every thirty or so years to up to twenty every thirty or so years.
Lolcake
Active Member
Pure madness as to how we can support the construction of nuclear subs and not a nuclear industry with the capacity to make our own reactors.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Unless Australia wants a significant commercial nuclear reactor program for power generation it simply isn’t worth having a naval reactor program for a 8 boat fleet when you have an AUKUS alternative. What is needed to start now is a program to train RAN personnel on operating and maintenance.
Jason_DBF
Member
The nuclear training pipeline started last year and will be expanding.
No way are the US and UK going to allow Australia manufacture naval nuclear power units. It is because of Article III(2) of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which all three AUKUS partners have ratified. To whit:
2. Each State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to provide: (a) source or special fissionable material, or (b) equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material, to any non-nuclear-weapon State for peaceful purposes, unless the source or special fissionable material shall be subject to the safeguards required by this Article.
FWIU, Naval nuclear reactors use a material that is special fissionable material, and as such is subject to the NPF Treaty.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Does this apply to French LEU naval reactors? IIRC they only use 20% enrichment.
Scott Elaurant
Well-Known Member
Good question. As far as I am aware LEU reactors do not trigger the NNPT and this was one of the reasons the French developed theirs. Brazil applied to the IAEA for permission to use LEU reactors in the nuclear subs it is starting to build and received no objection. Despite the difficulties with Naval in the Attack class project, in my view if Australia and France had agreed to switch from the Attack (diesel Barracuda class) to the Suffren (nuclear Barracuda class) it would have been feasible technically and would have solved many diplomatic and internal political problems. Probably 2/3 the price of SSN AUKUS, which would have meant less cuts to the rest of the ADF. I also don’t agree with the claims that French SSNs could not have been refuelled here, since the Suffrens were designed with a hatch to facilitate nuclear refueling. Still a huge learning curve, but it could have been done. Lucas Heights in Sydney is an LEU reactor, and has already been successfully refueled without incident.
France can help Albanese fix AUKUS | Lowy Institute
Labor faces a dilemma over nuclear-powered subs and the non-proliferation regime. An old partner might offer an answer.
www.lowyinstitute.org