What, exactly is the hold up with these?
Two in the water and more on the way, but none in service.
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MB
Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
- Thread starter OPSSG
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Two in the water and more on the way, but none in service.
?
MB
The thing about minimum manning is that that minimum sized ship’s company still has to do all the things warships do; but with less people to do it. So evolutions like RAS, which in the old days didn’t require a clear lower deck now do. And that’s true for many evolutions and exercises. And it means that off watch personnel and day workers get rooted out in the middle of the night, or the middle of their day work, to do those activities. Which means that they either get sleep deprived or their daywork doesn’t get done; and there are less people to do it anyway. Sort of a vicious circle which doesn’t help retention. Add that to steaming around in Defence Watches when that isn’t really necessary, having to wear heavy protective constantly at sea (we used to wear shorts and sandals and I’m not convinced we had any more injuries than they do today), and repetitive deployments to such high spots as the Persian Gulf; and people vote with their feet.
Minimum manning still requires suitably qualified and experienced personnel. This means we need the personnel pipeline to produce the same number of experienced, qualified people from a lower volume of junior people
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Minimum manning, an important feature for the USN’s LCS…didn’t work out so well albeit the design failures certainly placed more strain on the limited crew resources especially for the Freedom class.
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Brissy1982
Active Member
Amen to this @spoz - you are absolutely spot-on. One of the things that concerns me somewhat about the new Tier 2 frigates is that crew sizes of 90-100, while no doubt attractive in some ways, might not be sufficient in a shooting war - if the ship gets hit and there are people killed and wounded, there might not be enough people left for effective damage control. Smaller crews will also make it harder to keep up a high operational tempo for long periods. Increased automation might help to some extent, but evolutions like RAS would definitely require the whole ship's company. Close-formation evolutions such as RAS become increasingly dangerous when you have sleep-deprived people on watch for long periods - one momentary loss of concentration by one person could mean they or someone else gets injured or killed and/or the ship being damaged or even lost.
I'm someone who voted with their feet - after years of constantly being asked to ever more tasks with never enough people and aging ships and equipment, I got out of the RAN. It was a bitter pill to swallow as I loved the Navy and still do.
Sleep deprivation while on long deployments was a real problem - I did two deployments to the MEAO and no matter how hard everyone tried, human beings simply can't function effectively and safely after weeks of inadequate sleep. On my first MEAO deployment I recall the ship acting as plane guard for a US CVN, then doing a RAS, then being tasked with chasing down and investigating a formation of suspected pirate vessels (it turned out they were just fishing boats), then being called back to plane guard duties for the CVN, all in one 24 hour period - I don't think anyone got a chance to sleep. And that was after weeks of people not getting any more than 4 hours of sleep (and usually less) in any 24 hour period.
Sleep-deprived people become a danger to themselves, their shipmates, and other ships and their crews. And the RAN's solution wasn't to change procedures to address the problem, but rather to subject sailors who made mistakes out of utter exhaustion to disciplinary action. In each of my MEAO deployments I had a good, committed sailor in my division make an error that they would never have made if they hadn't been completely exhausted. I went in to bat for both of them as their divisional officer and pointed out that they were very competent and their mistakes were the result of systemic and procedural issues, but I was made to feel like I was committing heresy by questioning the way things were being done.
With a culture like that, no wonder there is a retention problem. I know plenty of people who left the RAN because they felt betrayed by Navy leadership and successive governments - I'm one of them.
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I often wonder if they would have fewer recruitment problems if they increased crew size. It seemed to help on submarines.
I wouldn't bother using the LCS as an example except in what not to do for a program. Start of the program for it plan was literally, Order one of each, iron out the kinks, choose the best one for entirety of remaining build.... that plan lasted a not long at all and went down hill from there.
Brissy1982
Active Member
As the saying goes, "many hands make for lighter work". The problem with increasing crew sizes in the short term is that the RAN doesn't have enough people as it is, and the recruitment process seems to be so drawn-out that good, capable applicants become discouraged and decide to pursue opportunities elsewhere - that's another piece of the puzzle of increasing the RAN's fleet size that is going to have to be dealt with, and quickly.
If crew size (or blue and gold crews) increases retention rate then the recruitment problem becomes smaller.
If there are 10,000 sailors and the retention rate is 95% per annum then about 2200 need to be replaced within 5 years. If the retention rate is 98% then about 1000 need to be replaced.
Let’s assume the first (95% retention) force assigns 200 sailors to crew and maintain and support each vessel and the second (98%) 220 per vessel (averaged across large and small vessels). At the start of the 5 year period the first force can run 50 vessels and the second 45. At the end of the 5 year period the first force can run 39 vessels and the second 41 (yes of course both can recruit but the first force is the one with the crisis).
Of course we don’t know that increasing staffing numbers by 10% would cut the separation rate so significantly but the compounding effects occur over a period much longer than 5 years.
Any major plan has to be able to survive several changes of government. In Australia’s case not just our own government but those of our major allies. Nobody will really be sure about the future of AUKUS for example after the next US election. This is the advantage totalitarian governments have over democracies. While we dither and play political games China just keeps pushing ahead with its policies.
In Australia’s case we talk about a bipartisan approach to defence but really if it was truly bipartisan we probably would have seen more progress in equipping our armed forces than we have.
Anyway it is probably relevant to look at the shadow defence minister’s response to the current government’s navy review.
GP frigates put to tender in 2026?
Why? Is there no way to accelerate the process?
Is it a case of using money in other areas until 2026. Obviously defence is no where near as urgent as the media or government tell us.
Fear mongering, or real threat treated with a good dose of apathy and politics?
Why? Is there no way to accelerate the process?
Is it a case of using money in other areas until 2026. Obviously defence is no where near as urgent as the media or government tell us.
Fear mongering, or real threat treated with a good dose of apathy and politics?
In other news, NUSHIP Arafura has been fitted with her gun mount and is "getting ready" for sea trials.
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
Thought they said, decision announced in 2025, build commence in 2026, first vessel delivered before the end of the decade and 4 by 2034.
Lots of fair questions re the need for capability improvement prior to the first new vessel arriving in the early 2030s.
As for concrete examples from the opposition for defence.
Well limited response.
What I want to hear is not so much the criticism , but rather concrete tangible examples of what the coalition would do this decade.
I know it's politics , but politics is also about providing a different path when called for.
If not its just games.
Cheers S
Changes of government can also stop bad plans or remediate deficiencies.
Attack Class was a bad plan (in my view). It would have survived if the PM survived though.
AUKUS ( a good plan in my view) survived a change of Aus government, but as you correctly point out, may not survive a change of US government.
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
If the current fleet plan survives to full fruition, it will be the first RAN fleet plan to do so since 1911, when it was 1 Battlecruiser, 4 Light Cruisers and 6 Destroyers.
Not to forget the 2 Subs.
To be fair we will never know if the Attack Class were a good or bad plan.
Winner for right or wrong of three contenders for a conventional submarine.
Cancelled in the very early phase of the build for a very different class of vessel.
A nuclear powered sub.
Taking the politics out of it, Im lead to believe the Attack Class was not all the dramatic doom and gloom it was bad out to be.
Reality is we will never know.
Only a few years in the project was really in its infancy.
AUKUS is now the focus and the challenge.
Cheers S