Thanks for that gf, very interesting especially the Q&A at the end.

 

Ex O boat guys have told me similar previously, recruitment and retention were major issues and availability was shocking due to the lack of a domestic TLS capability.  People forget how bad industrial relations and project management used to be in Australia prior to the sub program being used to update the whole show.

Was Wooner involved with the project? I can't finding anything on the web other than references to the book he co-authored and his appointment at ANU.

 

Anyway, I'm not that impressed with this paper. He spins the stats on the Collins Class project to highlight it in the best possible light. For instance, the claim that the subs were "only" on average delivered 26 months late neglects the point that the first boat didn't have a fully operational combat system until 2004, more than 10 years after the Collins was launched.

 

The constant references to how other projects that have done worse doesn't impress me either. We've had two decades worth of f*ck ups in defence acquisitions because of the insistance of the ADF to Australianise everything and the insistance by the Government to involve local industry. Just because we may have f*cked up the Seasprites and Wedgetail more than we f*cked up the Collins Class doesn't make it an acceptable f*ck up.

 

This paragraph gets me:

Its only "spin" if you have already decided to the contrary and refuse to accept other accounts.

No, it is spin because he picks and chooses the facts he wants to present to show the project in the best possible light and glosses over the stuff ups. 

EB has a the 1:3:8 Law, i.e. what takes 1 hour in a module, will take 3 hours in an assembled hull and 8 hours in the water.  By not putting the Rockwell system out of our misery after boat one, when it was already clear it was NEVER going to work, the cost of rectification was blown out by a factor of 8 for the later boats.  This was government and RAN decision not ASC.

 

Buying from a foriegn company with a proven track record doesn't guarrantee that the project will be conducted perfectly, but it improves the odds over starting from scratch here. That is what risk management is about. The 212 is a reletively new design and one would expect a few teething troubles, but it remains to be seen whether there are anywhere near the sorts of problems that the Collins Class has had. I'd also have to know a bit more about the Greek problem, i.e. whether they had any specific specifications that added additional risks. The Upholders were a screw up but I'd argue that the Brits have less recent experience than the Germans in building DE subs, so we probably wouldn't buy from them anyway.

The highlighted section says it all.  Besides the class is approaching the middle of their life now and a major upgrade would have been expected anyway, which is why I am amazed so much time and money was wasted on Rockwells disaster when other cheaper option would have provided better performance and could have been incorporated during build.  The ANZAC's are even newer than the Collins, are far less sophisticated and are already begining their mid life updates.  Hulls last far longer than ships systems which is why they have regular upgrades and improvements. 

I don't thinWoolner was talking about mid-life upgrades. He was talking about correcting problems that happenned to improve capability as well. In any case the HMAS ANZAC was launched in 1994, a year after the HMAS Collins. If the ANZAC's are beginning their MLU's now they are doing a lot better than the Colins class which needed "capability enhancements" from the late 90's.

 

The Japanese take it even further with their submarines only having a life of type of 16 years.  They build one new boat a year and maintain a fleet of 16 effectively replacing their subs at what we would call the mid life point with a totally new hull to house the updated systems.  It is not actually that much more expensive to do it this way and provides a much more modern and sustainable fleet.  Greg Combet has mentioned the possibility of our twelve new boats being built in batches to create a more sustainable capability.

 

I don't think that is a bad idea at all.

They aren't within a bulls roar when the Collins Class have worked as advertised which cuts out the entire first decade of their service after the Collins was commissioned. We could have had 209's in operation doing an acceptable job over that entire time, with a follow on sub like the 212's or 214's for better performance coming into service during this decade. 

they were a cold war construct, for the types of missions that we were doing - and what we viewed as a future, smaller subs were not attractive for the mission set.  the canadians had a similar view.  as good as the 21nn's were/are, I still don't regard them as being suitable for our work.  as it was, collins was a mule for the swedes to develop gotland - and thats one of the things that irritates me more than anything at the engineering level.  they were designed around a doctrine set of reaching out, going far and snooping long and doing it on nuke duty cycles.  none of the smaller subs were remotely close.  we either changed the doctrine set or went with large blue water subs.  doctrine was heavily influenced by Govt - and was supported by both sides even though Moores motivation for fixing them was initially politically motivated

That of course would never have occurred to the mighty ADF, who will inevitably poo poo the idea of accepting a platform that does 80% of what they want but which works if there is an opportunity to buy a customised one that has all the bells and whistles but which is a decade late at vast expense. We do "punch above our weight" and all that you know.

you'd be surprised at how many military procurement decisions are done by govt.  there are 3-6 different reviewing groups at each sign off - Govt is the only one that can veto at any stage - and they have and done on kit that the public never gets to "discuss" - let alone major capital ones like this.

one of the stuff ups we have with the C17's is directly related to the Govt making decisions without absorbing consideration of the speed of purchase.  ditto with abrams, ditto with elements of shornet, ditto with some of the ewarfare decisions.

in procurement, every step is lockstepped by multiple stakeholders - no one can move forward on a whim except the govt if they elect to exercise veto privileges.

like Volk, I can give horror stories of what the prev and the current govt have done and which has been gilded.  blaming the  military for the development process is not always approp.

however, universally everyone is glad combet is in the job, it would be good to see him eventually get the prime job as faulkner 'aint in there for the long haul