Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0

[Morgo]

Brent talks for the local and international defence industry.

Excellence in maritime manufacturing - AIDN's Brent Clark on defence/SME engagement - Australian Manufacturing Forum

Today @AuManufacturing’s editorial series Excellence in maritime manufacturing turns to the involvement of Australian owned SMEs in defence contracts. Here Peter Roberts interviews Brent Clark, CEO of our largest SME defence body, the Australian Industry & Defence Network. @AuManufacturing: The...

www.aumanufacturing.com.au

While Brent talks about SME, the bigger contractors that are based in Australia, like BAE, Lockheed, Thales, Raytheon etc are also in agreement, because they are also reliant on SME to deliver. BAE may be the main contractor, but they need thousands of SME to actually deliver real stuff, they can't do it all. They don't own a glass factory, a semiconductor factory, a aluminium smelter, a steel works, a cable manufacturer etc.

What would it be like if Australia put things out to tender and nobody responded? Local or internationally. New OPV, nothing. New landing craft. Nothing. New destroyer, nothing. Or put something in on very unfavorable terms, overseas build, 4 times market rate and must accept once completed builder trials, no customer trials or warranty period. Back to buying off the shelf second hand items.

Canada nearly got their with their Canada class SSN (pissing off the US and the UK) and recently with the CSC, in which Alion challenged the decision, Odense Maritime (iver hutt/Type31) and Thyssenkrupp (F-125) did not bid. From the process Navantia weren't happy but didn't see the point in reviewing the decision.

It is easy to kill an industry through starvation. If local sovereign capability is unimportant, starve away.

What is the point of having joint facilities like Henderson and Osborne, if there are no companies there because they have all, all been driven head first into the ground, but chaotic, harmful and potentially illegal/immoral government decisions? They either go broke or shut down their military divisions or they are bought out. Sell it off, move people over seas etc. The end result is effectively the same.

• Trying to kill NVL and its local subcontractors by killing the OPV production part way through would put Australia on the euro shit list. We have already burnt the French and the Germans before on Subs.
• The Japanese also feel hurt on subs. Their industry already was highly suspect and tried to undermine their own bid.
• One would imagine, if we went back on the US submarines, we could even make the US shit list. At least on big stuff like subs. People act like AUKUS is a done deal, but more crazy Naval acquisition stuff from Australia could easily push it into the not in the US interest bin. The US has their own problems.

They aren't asking for a hand out, they are asking the government makes good on their promises, which arguably are in the national interests, but unfortunately, cost money and time. Rather than rush a decision last moment cutting out any chance of local contribution, open it up now.

We often get caught up on platforms. But often the specific platform isn't overtly important. Its the network that builds, develops and supports that platform, so it is capable, reliable and efficient. That is industry.

Defence doesn't do that. No industry, no toys for defence. No ships, no tanks, no helicopters, no missiles, no radios, no uniforms.

Unless the government wants to build its own mega corps and go back into having government ship yards, steel works, cable companies. But even socialist/communist countries don't do that anymore, even China/Russia is based around private companies delivering industry capability for defence. Part of what they have been doing is going around buying out Western Defence companies and hollowing them out. They don't have to do that in Australia, our government(s) do it for us.

Completely agree with all of the above. Shipbuilding in particular is very capital intensive and the supply chains take years to build and are very difficult to replace. There are huge cost and quality benefits available if Government provides certainty and a steady level of work, and I’m sure it’s been very frustrating for many.

My objection is much more to the attitude (or at least my perception of one) that any probate sector players are owed anything by the Government beyond what’s written in a contract. I remain convinced that there is significant waste in Australia’s Defence industry. This is borne out by the size of the Australian build premiums we have, and the huge sums spent on external contractors by Defence. I’m sure some (probably most) of this is a direct result uncertainty, lack of scale in production runs and high local labour costs. But I can’t see how there isn’t also a huge amount of inefficiency in there due to naive procurement decisions / bureaucratic arse covering by Defence and rent seeking from the private sector.

 

[Todjaeger]

My objection is much more to the attitude (or at least my perception of one) that any probate sector players are owed anything by the Government beyond what’s written in a contract. I remain convinced that there is significant waste in Australia’s Defence industry. This is borne out by the size of the Australian build premiums we have, and the huge sums spent on external contractors by Defence. I’m sure some (probably most) of this is a direct result uncertainty, lack of scale in production runs and high local labour costs. But I can’t see how there isn’t also a huge amount of inefficiency in there due to naive procurement decisions / bureaucratic arse covering by Defence and rent seeking from the private sector.

Can you provide some specific examples of the behaviors you are referring to so that others might look at the situation to see if they view it in a similar way?

From what I sit, it looks like a number of the manufacturing and supply concerns are worried about future orders because their (potential future orders) presence or absence could make or break many of these businesses and possibly even industrial sectors in Australia. If gov't gets things wrong, then some of Australia's industrial capacity could wither away, whilst other areas might adjust themselves to meet market demands and therefore be simply unavailable if and when gov't does start to make decisions and place orders.

As a side note, there certainly has been inefficiencies with Australian procurement of Defence kit, but why was this so, and what were the inefficiencies? I recall that the Hobart-class DDG builds were ordered slowed by gov't. IIRC this was done to reduce the specific, upfront cost p.a. during part of the build but as one of the negative outcomes significantly delayed delivery and ended up causing overall costs to balloon. I believe another side effect of this was that as part of the work slowdown, ASC had to stop recruiting and skilling up new yard workers, or at least in some areas. A side effect of this was that when ASC was getting setup to start the Hunter-class build, there was a shortage of enough personnel with the needed mix of skills, so more money and time was required in order to recruit personnel and then train them because the workforce had to be expanded in order to meet the volume of work expected for a nine frigate order at the planned build rate.

Now imagine what the situation could have been, had successive gov'ts not prevaricated with respect to ordering vessels and vessel construction. There was a roughly decade long gap between when SEA 4000 (the future Hobart-class DDG) commenced in 2007 with Second Pass approval, and when SEA 1180 (the Arafura-class OPV) received Second Pass approval in 2017, and nearly another year before SEA 5000 (Hunter-class) was given Second Pass approval. Whilst the Hobart-class DDG's were still being worked on when the SEA 1180 and SEA 5000 projects started, how many of the entities which participated in portions of the SEA 4000 project did not involve themselves in either the SEA 1180 or SEA 5000 projects? How many of those entities no longer exist?

One side effect of gov'ts having waited so longer to get things started is that the RAN has a number of aging vessels which need to remain in service for awhile longer yet, simply because there is nothing in service to replace them. Another side effect is that whilst the world security situation has declined, Australia's defence capabilities in some key areas has not grown to meet that decline. A third side effect is that Australia's ability to modernize and build up kit in order to grow defence capabilities to meet worsening strategic outlooks has also declined.

 

[spoz]

Completely agree with all of the above. Shipbuilding in particular is very capital intensive and the supply chains take years to build and are very difficult to replace. There are huge cost and quality benefits available if Government provides certainty and a steady level of work, and I’m sure it’s been very frustrating for many.

My objection is much more to the attitude (or at least my perception of one) that any probate sector players are owed anything by the Government beyond what’s written in a contract. I remain convinced that there is significant waste in Australia’s Defence industry. This is borne out by the size of the Australian build premiums we have, and the huge sums spent on external contractors by Defence. I’m sure some (probably most) of this is a direct result uncertainty, lack of scale in production runs and high local labour costs. But I can’t see how there isn’t also a huge amount of inefficiency in there due to naive procurement decisions / bureaucratic arse covering by Defence and rent seeking from the private sector.

Mate, I did Defence procurement for more than 40 years. I, and my colleagues, may have been stupid, but we are certainly not naive and we didn’t do any arse covering. If you had to ask me, the alliance structure of the DDG program, though flawed in some aspects of execution (it being the first one Defence had been involved in) was probably the best process yet. Unfortunately it had aspersions cast on it for political reasons which meant it couldn’t be repeated but despite some of the the problems all major programs can suffer from (that’s why they used to pay me what I couldn’t really describe as the big bucks) it, my 11th shipbuilding program, was the best I had been involved in.

 

[Morgo]

Mate, I did Defence procurement for more than 40 years. I, and my colleagues, may have been stupid, but we are certainly not naive and we didn’t do any arse covering. If you had to ask me, the alliance structure of the DDG program, though flawed in some aspects of execution (it being the first one Defence had been involved in) was probably the best process yet. Unfortunately it had aspersions cast on it for political reasons which meant it couldn’t be repeated but despite some of the the problems all major programs can suffer from (that’s why they used to pay me what I couldn’t really describe as the big bucks) it, my 11th shipbuilding program, was the best I had been involved in.

I absolutely did not mean that all APS folks use consultants etc as a crutch - apols if that's how it came across. The vast majority of APS or ex APS people I've dealt with are highly capable. But from what I understand, a big chunk of the billions per year that Defence spends with Big 4 / Accenture / McKinsey Bain BCG and similar is rubber stamping of existing decisions.

My point is that I have looked at multiple sources and honestly I'm still at a loss as to what value the taxpayer gets for the $15bn per year spent on consultants and contractors. It's madness, and looks to me to be a tremendous source of waste.

FWIW, as an outsider the DDG program did seem to just be hitting its strides and have all the kinks worked out as it ended. A real shame.

 

[Scott Elaurant]

Morgo

I do not work in Australian shipbuilding or defence, but have studied its economics. I must disagree with your comments on the industry. In my view the problems are all related to inconsistency in political decision making, and cuts to the defence bureaucracy resulting in a loss of internal technical skills within the ordering agency. This then leads to poor project specifications.

We have heard warnings of, and actual “valleys of death” with lack of work in Australian naval shipbuilding since the Howard era. There were large gaps with little work at the end of the Anzac, LPD and Hobart builds. That is fatal for cost efficiency, dooming the industry to a costly cycle of hire, train, employ, retrench, wait, then rehire somebody new. If you told Apple or Tesla that for each new product they must build a factory, make the product for five years, then close the factory for three years doing nothing, they would be inefficient too.

To illustrate the problem, the Arafura class OPVs were ordered as a class of 12, and the first 2 built as specified by ASC, largely on schedule and budget. Production of the following 10 was then transferred from Adelaide to Perth, to a shipyard with limited experience building steel hulled warships. The Adelaide workforce did not follow the order across the Nullabor. Sure enough, there were problems with the following 2 built in Perth. All this on top of the fact that the Arafuras were ordered with a tiny gun, limited combat system (or so I’m told?) and landing pad downgraded so it could not land a full load helicopter.

The adverse impact this has on cost and efficiency is huge. This is not a problem unique to Australia. When BAE restarted building SSNs in the 2000s, after a near ten year gap in the 1990s, the first Astute cost £2.1 billion (double budget), the second £1.65 billion, and the third £1.3 billion. They saved 35% per boat going from start up to an efficient, experienced production line.

Despite the rhetoric about “continuous national shipbuilding”, I would say the last time Australia had an efficient ship production line with a meaningful economy of scale was the Anzac class frigates.

 

[Morgo]

Can you provide some specific examples of the behaviors you are referring to so that others might look at the situation to see if they view it in a similar way?

It's not limited to Defence - the pharmacists, the doctors, Big 4 consultants, retailers, the property industry..... no shortage of businesses with their hands out for Government support, and Clark's quote about "tolerating" the Government taking their time struck me as being cut from a similar cloth. But I may be being unfair - if he means "tolerate" as in "endure," like a drought tolerant crop, that's fine, but it sounded more like tolerate as in "permit," which rubbed me the wrong way.

As for a few examples of I think the most egregious parts from a Defence specific perspective are the duplication of shipbuilding between SA and WA, and similarly with armoured vehicles between VIC and QLD. As a NSW based taxpayer it seems like a tremendous waste of money and potential scale to me.

 

[Scott Elaurant]

My point is that I have looked at multiple sources and honestly I'm still at a loss as to what value the taxpayer gets for the $15bn per year spent on consultants and contractors. It's madness, and looks to me to be a tremendous source of waste.

I understand this is the total for consultants across all departments, not just defence, and certainly not just shipbuilding. Despite being a consultant myself I agree it is wasteful, and the federal government would actually be more efficient hiring more internal ADF and Defence staff, and retaining more internal expertise. But this was due to a policy decision of the previous government to cap Federal PS headcount.

This one needs to be argued with the Federal Finance Minister, not defence or shipbuilders, who have zero control over it. The cap started with Simon Birmingham as finance minister. See

https://www.financeminister.gov.au/media-release/2023/05/06/aps-audit-employment-reveals-coalition-shadow-workforce

 

[Morgo]

Morgo

I do not work in Australian shipbuilding or defence, but have studied its economics. I must disagree with your comments on the industry. In my view the problems are all related to inconsistency in political decision making, and cuts to the defence bureaucracy resulting in a loss of internal technical skills within the ordering agency. This then leads to poor project specifications.

We have heard warnings of, and actual “valleys of death” with lack of work in Australian naval shipbuilding since the Howard era. There were large gaps with little work at the end of the Anzac, LPD and Hobart builds. That is fatal for cost efficiency, dooming the industry to a costly cycle of hire, train, employ, retrench, wait, then rehire somebody new. If you told Apple or Tesla that for each new product they must build a factory, make the product for five years, then close the factory for three years doing nothing, they would be inefficient too.

To illustrate the problem, the Arafura class OPVs were ordered as a class of 12, and the first 2 built as specified by ASC, largely on schedule and budget. Production of the following 10 was then transferred from Adelaide to Perth, to a shipyard with limited experience building steel hulled vessels. The Adelaide workforce did not follow the order across the Nullabor. Sure enough, there were problems with the following 2 built in Perth. All this on top of the fact that the Arafuras were ordered with a tiny gun, limited combat system (or so I’m told?) and landing pad downgraded so it could not land a full load helicopter.

The adverse impact this has on cost and efficiency is huge. This is not a problem unique to Australia. When BAE restarted building SSNs in the 2000s, after a virtual ten year gap in the 1990s, the first Astute cost £2.1 billion (double budget), the second £1.65 billion, and the third £1.3 billion. They saved 35% per boat going from start up to an efficient, experienced production line.

Despite the rhetoric about “continuous national shipbuilding”, I would say the last time Australia had an efficient ship production line with a meaningful economy of scale was the Anzac class frigates.

No issues with the above Scott, I agree. Clark's tone rubbed me the wrong way (see my last post) but I am very sympathetic to trying to make long term investment decisions when the plan changes and is delayed every few years.

 

[Morgo]

I understand this is the total for consultants across all departments, not just defence, and certainly not just shipbuilding. Despite being a consultant myself I agree it is wasteful, and the federal government would actually be more efficient hiring more internal ADF and Defence staff, and retaining more internal expertise. But this was due to a policy decision of the previous government to cap Federal PS headcount.

This one needs to be argued with the Federal Finance Minister, not defence or shipbuilders, who have zero control over it. The cap started with Simon Birmingham as finance minister. See

https://www.financeminister.gov.au/media-release/2023/05/06/aps-audit-employment-reveals-coalition-shadow-workforce

Unfortunately not - here's a link to my earlier post on the ADF thread:

ADF General discussion thread

The total spend across Government is $20bn+, but Defence makes up c. 75% of this. It's absolutely astonishing.

You are right however that I have no idea whether this is spent on shipbuilding or not as there is very limited transparency about what these consultants are all doing.

 

[StingrayOZ]

No issues with the above Scott, I agree. Clark's tone rubbed me the wrong way (see my last post) but I am very sympathetic to trying to make long term investment decisions when the plan changes and is delayed every few years.

I can get how it rubs people the wrong way, esp if you don't have the context of how and why.
I've heard politicians say exactly what you have said. So I am glad its in open discussion.

The same ones who have burnt suppliers. I've seen people being physically held back and kick chairs over in outrage, its blowing apart their businesses and their entire industry. Its not a secret. Indopacific 2019 Sydney in the sub briefing for suppliers, the online questions function was spammed by suppliers during the presentation. Then we cancelled that program. Not happy people were made, sure it got rid of the french, but now, nothing. Nothing clear and firm. More delays, more promises.

A lot of companies were encouraged to tool up, invest, they took out loans, on government encouragement and request. Under the banner of for Australia, for defending our country. Then the government doesn't come through on promises and even when it orders something, it then cancels its and further burns those involved.

As a side note, there certainly has been inefficiencies with Australian procurement of Defence kit, but why was this so, and what were the inefficiencies? I recall that the Hobart-class DDG builds were ordered slowed by gov't.

Yes, so the government saved money just in that financial year, but added to the cost of the project over all, and burnt more suppliers in the process. If you have $50m worth of gear for a defence project and you only get paid when you deliver, and they make you hold onto that for a year longer than scheduled, budgeted, it costs time, money, space, opportunity cost etc. To do it, not because the project is behind, but because the government thinks it can save money in just that year by doing it, burns a lot of good will and commitment. And cash reserves.

Imagine if the government decided it wasn't going to pay ADF members for 1 year to save money that financial year. Sure next year, you would get paid two years, but that doesn't help with cash flow for 12 months. How many serving personnel would be able to survive 12 months of no pay and do it joyfully? The government has the money, its even budgeted for it, but it thinks it can solve a political problem by using it elsewhere.

To make it more annoying. Most of the people who work in this sector are often ex-ADF in the first place. Those who are passionate about supporting Australia's defence capability are often those who served. When these companies get out of defence work, its these people that are laid off.

Australia needs ships. The Anzacs are literally falling apart and have had hard lives working while we did FFGUP, then their decommissioning and building the AWDs. They are also the wrong ships for the future. Its not as if its gold plating or ordering something we don't need. We need it more than oxygen and water. Soon we will have no ships, no industry, no sailors, no workers. Inevitably we will need, them, but it will cost a huge amount (money, time, political effort) to try to re-established what we let rot away through inaction, and it won't be as good.

 

[Volkodav]

Mate, I did Defence procurement for more than 40 years. I, and my colleagues, may have been stupid, but we are certainly not naive and we didn’t do any arse covering. If you had to ask me, the alliance structure of the DDG program, though flawed in some aspects of execution (it being the first one Defence had been involved in) was probably the best process yet. Unfortunately it had aspersions cast on it for political reasons which meant it couldn’t be repeated but despite some of the the problems all major programs can suffer from (that’s why they used to pay me what I couldn’t really describe as the big bucks) it, my 11th shipbuilding program, was the best I had been involved in.

100% on that.

It wasn't perfect but it was the best, nothing I've worked on since has come near. Most projects are full of self sabotaging silos, AWD bent over backwards to remove them.

I drive colleagues insane referring to how we did things and how much better it was. It was all about collaboration, putting the best person in the job, irrespective of who they worked for, or their seniority. Instead of holding people back, they lifted them and pulled them up. Everything was about working together to solve problems and move forward.

The only issue was the chosen design and the unrealistic expectations from government in terms of what a completely new enterprise, a new work force and a Greenfields shipyard could achieve in a stupidly tight schedule.

Compared to the unproductive "them and us" institutionalised backstabbing, the fear and uncertainty you see in contractors, on other projects, be they OEMs, primes or subies, the gleeful bad behaviours from little people given a little bit of power, the difference couldnt be more stark.

One of the biggest differences is CASG/NSSG culture, versus DMO. DMO was a professional organisation that tried to improve and treated people well. CASG is a cookie cutter APS circle jerk with excessive amounts of dead wood, narcissists, bullies, delusional Dunning Kruger case studies, institutionalised discrimination and silos.

Being consultative and collaborative, having relevant knowledge and experience, even having the required qualifications and intelligence to do the job counts less than the boss, who may be none of these things themselves, liking you. The only saving grace is the high quality, embedded uniform members and contractors.

The only thing that has prevented the last remaining decent APS from leaving is a 12 month restriction of trade. Even then, all that has done is ensure competent APS will leave the project, or possibly defence all together, instead of staying as contractors, when they can't handle the bs any more.

 

[hauritz]

I can get how it rubs people the wrong way, esp if you don't have the context of how and why.
I've heard politicians say exactly what you have said. So I am glad its in open discussion.

The same ones who have burnt suppliers. I've seen people being physically held back and kick chairs over in outrage, its blowing apart their businesses and their entire industry. Its not a secret. Indopacific 2019 Sydney in the sub briefing for suppliers, the online questions function was spammed by suppliers during the presentation. Then we cancelled that program. Not happy people were made, sure it got rid of the french, but now, nothing. Nothing clear and firm. More delays, more promises.

A lot of companies were encouraged to tool up, invest, they took out loans, on government encouragement and request. Under the banner of for Australia, for defending our country. Then the government doesn't come through on promises and even when it orders something, it then cancels its and further burns those involved.

Yes, so the government saved money just in that financial year, but added to the cost of the project over all, and burnt more suppliers in the process. If you have $50m worth of gear for a defence project and you only get paid when you deliver, and they make you hold onto that for a year longer than scheduled, budgeted, it costs time, money, space, opportunity cost etc. To do it, not because the project is behind, but because the government thinks it can save money in just that year by doing it, burns a lot of good will and commitment. And cash reserves.

Imagine if the government decided it wasn't going to pay ADF members for 1 year to save money that financial year. Sure next year, you would get paid two years, but that doesn't help with cash flow for 12 months. How many serving personnel would be able to survive 12 months of no pay and do it joyfully? The government has the money, its even budgeted for it, but it thinks it can solve a political problem by using it elsewhere.

To make it more annoying. Most of the people who work in this sector are often ex-ADF in the first place. Those who are passionate about supporting Australia's defence capability are often those who served. When these companies get out of defence work, its these people that are laid off.

Australia needs ships. The Anzacs are literally falling apart and have had hard lives working while we did FFGUP, then their decommissioning and building the AWDs. They are also the wrong ships for the future. Its not as if its gold plating or ordering something we don't need. We need it more than oxygen and water. Soon we will have no ships, no industry, no sailors, no workers. Inevitably we will need, them, but it will cost a huge amount (money, time, political effort) to try to re-established what we let rot away through inaction, and it won't be as good.

The irony is that the attempt to accelerate the introduction of new ships has done precisely nothing and in fact if anything may have slowed things down.

From the leaks I have read what is seems to suggest is that we will pivot production of the Hunter class to AWDs sometime over the next 20 years and will introduce a new class of corvette type vessel at some unspecified time in the future.

There seems to be no plan to speed anything up and if anything all they have done is slow progress on what we will already be building.

In fact if you go all the way back to the Rudd defence white paper in 2009 what you see are plans for a surface fleet of 8 frigates and 20 OCVs.

What we have now seem to be aiming for are 9 frigate/destroyers and a mix of up to 18 OPVs and corvettes. To be honest I am not seeing a lot of difference.

Hope those ANZACs can hold together for another 20 years.

 

[peterAustralia]

Is it just me, or looking at this from a distance, it appears a complete mess. I am totally confused, or should I say perplexed as to why the Navy is considering corvettes. As to the idea of two tiers,, OK that sounds OK,, assume the first tier at around 10,000 tonnes, that would be the Hunter class, as to the second tier,, maybe something in the 5000 tonne to 7000 tonne class. This corvette stuff, I just dont know where it is coming from. If we say a corvette is say 2000 tonne to 2500t tonne,, that is a lot smaller than the Meko 360 Anzac class at around 3500t.. And the Anzac class was found to be too small, thus by definition any corvette is going to be way too small.

The F100 class seems to be doing quite well, it may well be that for the second tier group of ships,, more F100 with an austere weapon fit would work,, or a similar sized hull.

Going back the last 50 years, the Vampire class, quite good for its day but a bit small
The Charles F Adamas class, good but with no helicopter capability
The Oliver Hazard Perry class,, worked out OK, but a bit small, aluminium superstructure, and no large gun,, no compartmental superstructure, thus liable to fire spreading
The Meko 360 Anzac class, work OK, but too small and getting old
The F100 class, work well, an older design, but only three built, and a somewhat cramped inside
Arafura class,, much better than a patrol boat,,but why no helicopter hangar,, is true they cannot land S60 helicopter? Possibly something a fraction larger would be better
Hunter class,, good on paper but very expensive

Of all seven class listed above, none appear to have been total success

 

[hauritz]

Is it just me, or looking at this from a distance, it appears a complete mess. I am totally confused, or should I say perplexed as to why the Navy is considering corvettes. As to the idea of two tiers,, OK that sounds OK,, assume the first tier at around 10,000 tonnes, that would be the Hunter class, as to the second tier,, maybe something in the 5000 tonne to 7000 tonne class. This corvette stuff, I just dont know where it is coming from. If we say a corvette is say 2000 tonne to 2500t tonne,, that is a lot smaller than the Meko 360 Anzac class at around 3500t.. And the Anzac class was found to be too small, thus by definition any corvette is going to be way too small.

The F100 class seems to be doing quite well, it may well be that for the second tier group of ships,, more F100 with an austere weapon fit would work,, or a similar sized hull.

Going back the last 50 years, the Vampire class, quite good for its day but a bit small
The Charles F Adamas class, good but with no helicopter capability
The Oliver Hazard Perry class,, worked out OK, but a bit small, aluminium superstructure, and no large gun,, no compartmental superstructure, thus liable to fire spreading
The Meko 360 Anzac class, work OK, but too small and getting old
The F100 class, work well, an older design, but only three built, and a somewhat cramped inside
Arafura class,, much better than a patrol boat,,but why no helicopter hangar,, is true they cannot land S60 helicopter? Possibly something a fraction larger would be better
Hunter class,, good on paper but very expensive

Of all seven class listed above, none appear to have been total success

It is like they aren't actually planning for the future. Basically they are fighting yesterdays wars. To my mind the Hunter class is a tier two ship in the making and we should already be preparing for AWDs in the 15k ton class. We can never hope to match the Chinese quantitively. Any number of corvettes we build will make little impression against the Chinese. Our best chance is to go with the only advantage the west really has which is qualitive.

It took us a long time to realise this with submarines but the lesson still doesn't seem to have learned as far as the surface fleet is concerned.

The Chinese are currently transferring its corvettes to the Coast Guard so they can concentrate on building more capable ships for the navy. That should tell you all you really need to know as far as small ships are concerned.

China Transferring Navy Type 056 Corvettes to the Coast Guard - Naval News

With increasing tensions in the first island chain, China has recently begun transferring Type 056 (NATO designation Jiangdao) corvettes from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy) to the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG).

www.navalnews.com

 

[Redlands18]

The Meko 360 Anzac class, work OK, but too small and getting old
The F100 class, work well, an older design, but only three built, and a somewhat cramped inside
Arafura class,, much better than a patrol boat,,but why no helicopter hangar,, is true they cannot land S60 helicopter? Possibly something a fraction larger would be better
Hunter class,, good on paper but very expensive

Of all seven class listed above, none appear to have been total success

MEKO - Wikipedia
Actually the Anzac is the MEKO 200 design not the earlier MEKO 360 (Argentine Almirante Brown class).

 

[Todjaeger]

Is it just me, or looking at this from a distance, it appears a complete mess. I am totally confused, or should I say perplexed as to why the Navy is considering corvettes. As to the idea of two tiers,, OK that sounds OK,, assume the first tier at around 10,000 tonnes, that would be the Hunter class, as to the second tier,, maybe something in the 5000 tonne to 7000 tonne class. This corvette stuff, I just dont know where it is coming from. If we say a corvette is say 2000 tonne to 2500t tonne,, that is a lot smaller than the Meko 360 Anzac class at around 3500t.. And the Anzac class was found to be too small, thus by definition any corvette is going to be way too small.

Is it really the RAN that is considering corvettes, or is that something which gov't is contemplating, following advocacy campaigns conducted by some of the defence 'talking heads' in Australia?

I have been under the impression that the RAN does not really want corvettes, for basically all the reasons why a number of us here have been opposed to them. However, articles have been submitted to defence-related publications and think tanks arguing for corvettes, using arguments that sound (too) good and coming from people who defence planning credentials, to lend some authority. Unfortunately, at least some of these articles look convincing if one does not already understand that smaller hulls have greater limitations in terms of their potential seakeeping as well as the trade off between range & endurance vs. weapons and sensor fitout with requisite gen sets. IIRC one of the more hyperbolic arguments seemed to suggest that a corvette could replace a future AUD$1 bil. warship and be a 'better' choice because it could do the same missions but for a fraction of the cost. The author of this piece is supposed to be an intelligent person with a doctorate (in something financial or economics) with an emphasis on defence. A problem I had with his writing on the subject was that he seemed to ignore engineering limitations in terms of space and displacement.

What I do hope, following advice from an ex-USN admiral, is that gov't will understand that having vessels start dropping below a certain size and displacement will end up delivering vessels not fit for Australian service either in terms of range/endurance or weapons/sensor fitout, or perhaps both. I also hope that the RAN does not end up getting directed to follow an unreasonable path like the USN was with the LCS programme.

 

[John Newman]

There seems to be no plan to speed anything up and if anything all they have done is slow progress on what we will already be building.

In fact if you go all the way back to the Rudd defence white paper in 2009 what you see are plans for a surface fleet of 8 frigates and 20 OCVs.

What we have now seem to be aiming for are 9 frigate/destroyers and a mix of up to 18 OPVs and corvettes. To be honest I am not seeing a lot of difference.

It’s a bit more complex than that, a bit more ‘up and down’ too.

Yes the 2009 Rudd DWP proposed 8 x FFG and 20 x OCV.

But.... let’s not forget the ‘forgettable’ 2013 Gillard DWP.

Gillard and Def Min Smith, yes they continued to propose 8 x FFG, but they also put the plan for the 20 x OCV on the back burner, the OCVs were pushed way into the future, Gillard/Smith instead proposed that another class of PB would replace the ACPBs, the OCVs would be ‘considered’ at a later date.

Let’s also not forget that somewhere between the 2009 and 2013 DWPs the option of the 4th AWD ‘disappeared’.

We then saw a change of Government from ALP to LNP.

The 2016 Turnbull (Abbott) DWP proposed increasing the FFG fleet from eight to nine (sort of makes up for the 4th AWD?).

The 2016 DWP partially re-instated the OCVs, with a plan for 12 x OPVs.

Which then brings us to the 2020 Morrison DSU, the 9 x FFG was still in place, the 12 x OPV was still in place, but there was also a plan to add another 8 x OPV, those ships to be used for Mine Warfare and Hydrographic roles.

On a side note the LNP Government ordered 10 x Cape class PB as a ‘gap’ filler between the retirement of the ACPBs and introduction of the Arafura class OPVs, to date seven have been delivered and three are under construction.

Then a change of Government again, from LNP to ALP.


This is where things get very foggy, how many FFG will be constructed (who knows?), will we see a new class of DDG (who knows?), what happens to the 12+8 Arafura class (who knows?), will there be a Corvette/light Frigate class (who knows?), will the 10 x CCPBs remain in service long enough to be replaced by a fleet of OPVs (who knows?).


Lots and lots of who knows at the moment, and probably well into next year too.

 

[Todjaeger]

I absolutely did not mean that all APS folks use consultants etc as a crutch - apols if that's how it came across. The vast majority of APS or ex APS people I've dealt with are highly capable. But from what I understand, a big chunk of the billions per year that Defence spends with Big 4 / Accenture / McKinsey Bain BCG and similar is rubber stamping of existing decisions.

My point is that I have looked at multiple sources and honestly I'm still at a loss as to what value the taxpayer gets for the $15bn per year spent on consultants and contractors. It's madness, and looks to me to be a tremendous source of waste.

FWIW, as an outsider the DDG program did seem to just be hitting its strides and have all the kinks worked out as it ended. A real shame.

Not sure which article was the one you were originally commenting about, but I would differentiate between monies spent on consultants vs. contractors, as well as monies needed by, spent on, and spent by defence industry.

A consultant will usually either be giving advice and opinions on a topic or situation, or be used to confirm recommendations provided by others.

Contractors will be doing work to fulfil a given contract, AFAIK this is often work involving providing a service (like maintenance and repairs for vessels or infrastructure, or even operating assets a la Surveillance Australia).

The monies industry would be looking for are a bit different, in that industry would be looking for orders to get placed so that industry can fill the orders with gov't and the ADF getting kit needed. Unfort with repeated changes in plans as well as long gaps between orders actually being placed keeps causing industry to get potentially burned.

 

[Todjaeger]

Let’s also not forget that somewhere between the 2009 and 2013 DWPs the option of the 4th AWD ‘disappeared’.

Slight point of correction here. The option for the 4th AWD expired in 2008, before the 2009 DWP. Theoretically new contracting could have been done to get a 4th or more AWD's ordered, but this would have likely been even more time consuming and expensive once the unexercised option expired in 2008. From a practical standpoint, once the contracted option expired, building additional AWD's was no longer possible.

 

[John Newman]

Slight point of correction here. The option for the 4th AWD expired in 2008, before the 2009 DWP. Theoretically new contracting could have been done to get a 4th or more AWD's ordered, but this would have likely been even more time consuming and expensive once the unexercised option expired in 2008. From a practical standpoint, once the contracted option expired, building additional AWD's was no longer possible.

Ok.

I should have been a bit more specific.

During the first term of the Rudd Government, just prior to the 2009 Rudd DWP.