Another I hate Australia thread
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AdelaideNow: Collins Class a Triumph
DEREK WOOLNER
May 12, 2008 12:15am
PEOPLE in the street and some sections of the media dismiss the navy's Adelaide-built Collins Class submarines as monumental duds.
In stark contrast, most insiders we interviewed, as the authors of the history of the project, consider them a naval engineering triumph and a monument of Australian nation-building.
From its inception in 1978 the project was seldom far from controversy and it was mercilessly attacked by the media and the Howard government for a myriad of technical failings – real, exaggerated and imagined.
It is widely believed to have been a financial disaster, yet it is one of the few military purchases where the original budget was still relevant at the end of the project.
Further, Australian industry responded successfully to the challenge of building submarines in this country, an achievement widely believed to be beyond Australian capabilities and one in which many other countries have failed disastrously.
During the 1970s the Australian Navy operated British-built Oberon diesel-electric submarines on some of the most secret intelligence-gathering missions of the ColdWar.
Nuclear submarines lacked the stealth for these covert operations, and the U.S. Navy encouraged Australian military planners and politicians to maintain the long-range intelligence-gathering capability in the Oberons' successor vessels.
At the same time the Australian submariners developed convincing arguments that submarines were the most effective vessels for use in long-range offensive operations in enemy waters.
Thus was born the desire to build the most modern long-range conventional submarine in the world.
Modernity would be attained through a then-revolutionary idea: Instead of taking whatever options for a combat system came with the design, the navy would specify the combat system which best met its needs and this would be developed separately from the submarine.
Further, following intense debate, it was decided to build the submarines in Adelaide as a focus for industrial regeneration and to provide better long-term maintenance and support than was usually received from overseas shipyards.
These factors determined the nature of the Collins project. To U.S. submariner Admiral Phil Davis, the project was a huge undertaking, a "monumental feat".
"There is really nothing in the history of submarine construction that has been done like that," he said of the transformation of a small Swedish submarine into a "radical new design", built 18,000km from the designer's office "in a new yard with a new workforce".
Amazingly, the project's objectives were largely delivered. Today, the Australian Navy operates sophisticated long-range submarines.
Peter Sinclair, the first skipper of HMAS Collins, who has wide experience with other conventional submarines, believes the Collins is more capable than any conventional submarine at sea, with a turning circle second to none and "super quiet at slow speed, quieter than anything else in the world".
Few thought that Australia's recession-ravaged industries of the early 1980s could build a submarine. Yet, with the introduction of modern techniques that accompanied the project, over 70 per cent of its value was produced in Australia by hundreds of subcontractors who embraced the exacting defence quality standards. The welding standards remain some of the best achieved in the world.
THE project suffered its share of problems but the only surprise, given the ambition of the project, was that they were not better anticipated.
With problems overcome through some remarkable defence science and assistance from the U.S., the submarines were delivered close to budget and an average of 26 months behind schedule.
This is one of the shortest delays with any military purchase and remarkable for the largest systems integration project in Australian history.
The persisting failure has been the combat system, a testament to both the inadequacies of some of the world's major arms corporations and the unchecked ambition of Australian submariners.
Even this disaster was salvaged by the expertise and ingenuity of Australia's project engineers and defence scientists, cobbling together a system to provide an acceptable performance.
Derek Woolner is an expert on defence procurement projects, and is Visiting Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He is co-author, with Peter Yule, of The Collins Class Submarine Story – Steel, Spies and Spin.
The Australian navy has six Collins Class submarines, designed by the Swedish company Kockums, and built by the Australian Submarine Corporation at Adelaide between 1989 and 2003. The construction of the Collins class submarines was Australia's largest and most controversial military purchase. The submarine project was subjected to an unprecedented level of media scrutiny and criticism, became highly politicised and on several occasions faced the prospect of being abandoned.
The general public perception of the submarine project is that it was a hugely expensive failure and that the submarines are noisy 'dud subs'. While I am far from being an apologist for the navy, it is amazing how wrong this perception is. The submarines were indeed expensive - all modern weapons are expensive - but the submarine project was one of Australia's few modern military purchases in which the initial budget was still relevant at the end of the project. The submarines were a financial success.
The Collins submarines had technical problems - all new and complex machinery has teething problems - but the general belief that they are 'noisy as a rock concert' is wrong. The reality is that they are probably the second-quietest submarines in the world, with the only quieter ones being the Swedish Gotland class, Kockums' next design after the Collins class. The minor noise problems of the early submarines, as with the other mechanical issues, have long since been solved.
However, the submarines suffered from one major defect which the media and the public never really picked up on. The combat system - that is the computer systems in the submarine used to find enemies and fire torpedoes or missiles at them - has been by far the largest problem for the Collins class submarines. The earlier Oberon class submarines had a largely Australian-built combat system which was one of the best in the world. When our submariners began planning the combat system for the new submarines, they naturally wanted an even better one. However, what they asked for proved to be too hard to build and the combat system never worked properly - in fact it was never finished - and it was abandoned in 2000.
The navy then ran a competition to select the best available combat system already in operation in foreign submarines - a competition won easily by a European electronics company. However, the result was overturned by the coalition government, which insisted that our submarines had to have an American combat system. As the Americans did not have a combat system suitable for non-nuclear submarines, the consequence was that it was not until 2007 that our submarines began to be fitted with a combat system of the standard hoped for when the submarines were designed back in the 1980s.
The media and the public (and even to a surprising extent, the navy) never understood the sheer scale, complexity and risk of the submarine project. Building submarines is hard and getting harder - far harder than building aeroplanes, the closest analogy is perhaps with space ships. To build a hull to withstand extreme water pressures has always been demanding but the increasing complexities of electronics and computer systems make modern submarines among the greatest of engineering challenges. Even countries with long histories of submarine construction often have problems, while countries attempting to build submarines for the first time regularly experience disasters. Dilapidated or abandoned shipyards from Buenos Aires to Bombay, littered with the relics of failed submarine projects testify to the magnitude of the challenges.
The submarine project was taken up with great enthusiasm by the Hawke government in the 1980s as a major nation building endevour to revitalise Australian manufacturing. Consequently the submarines were built in Australia rather than overseas and over 70% of the money spent on the submarines was spent in Australia - a far higher proportion than with most military purchases. The end result of the project is a squadron of submarines that are among the best conventional submarines in any navy in the world and rank with the F111s as Australia's most potent weapons. The Collins Class submarines were an extraordinary engineering achievement and it is testimony to the power of politics and the popular press (lionnoisy) that they are regarded as a disaster.
Australia leads the way in Submarine development, not STK!
The Future of Submarines Is Down Under
The Collins class submarine replacement is getting a lot of attention. In case you are curious why the topic has suddenly came up in the media, it has little to do with any new movement and everything to do with politicians talking about it. These are the only details that matter on the subject to date.New Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has ordered planning to begin on the next generation of submarines to replace the Royal Australian Navy's Collins-class fleet with the aim of gaining "first pass" approval for the design phase from cabinet's National Security Committee in 2011.
The 17-year project will be the largest, longest and most expensive defence acquisition since Federation, potentially costing up to $25 billion.
Everything else is speculation, mostly regarding what the new platform will be, hell we've done a bit of our own. In reality though, if you are looking towards an existing design as a contender for the Collins replacement, you are probably looking in the wrong place.
The Collins class had a tough start, was given a bad reputation, and to this day is one of the least understood weapons of war taxpayers in Australia probably do recognize by name. Perception drives the reality of the media, and in general the media misses the mark today when it talks about the Collins class submarines.
The truth is, the Collins class submarine is one of the best submarines in the world, anywhere. Only Japan and the United States are realistically contenders in a match game debate, it really is that good. Any American submariner who has served on a Seawolf or Virginia class submarine would feel comfortable in a Collins, the same tech exists. In fact, the same strike packages exist, the same mission profiles exist, and in many ways they handle the same roles for their respective services. The only real difference is the propulsion system and the size.
The Collins class may not be nuclear, but it is a fleet submarine. We have recently learned thanks to released documents that if they were allowed, Australian submariners could tell more than a few stories of cold war operations deep into Russian waters in the Pacific, and it is a good bet if they did it with older submarine platforms, they will conduct the same mission profiles with the Collin class, and the Collins class replacement.
There is a lot of speculation regarding what the requirements of the Collins class replacement will be. From my discussions with people who do know, this is all we actually know..., it will not be like anything on the market today outside the US, and when 2011 comes, we will only hear the generic details. We can only count on three specific requirements leading the design focus: Fuel cell technology, high energy requirements, and it will operate as an underwater mothership for both manned and unmanned deployable systems. There is currently nothing in the market that meets those requirements outside of the US, and sense it is unlikely Australia will go nuclear with its submarines, it means there is nothing in the market designed today likely to be the Collins submarine replacement.
Australia will introduce something new, likely to only be influenced by Japanese and American concepts and technologies. Of all the underwater programs under development today, if you are looking for the next 'game changer' in underwater warfare, the Collins class submarine replacement program is the program to keep your eye on. -
Additionally, your focus on the number of ships patolling Australian waters in peacetime suffers from the flaw common in all your threads on Australia.
You assume that the only practical way to defend millions of square miles of ocean is to have a ship patrolling each and every square inch of it.
Let's not talk about the blue water, lets just talk about the coastline... Not even the USN could defend the Australian shoreline up to your standards, it is simply impossible. No military ON EARTH could do it.
Never heard of JORN?
In fact even our own navy and coastguard has proven to be leaky, and we have far less shorelines to defend, how come you never comment on us? According to you we then ought to have enough ships patrolling our shorelines right?
How come this can happen?
SINGAPORE : More than 400 soldiers and policemen were conducting a massive manhunt on Thursday for three armed robbers on Pulau Tekong.
The three men are suspected of committing an armed robbery in Johor.
Malaysian police told Channel NewsAsia the men are believed to be Indonesians and are armed with a pistol and pump action gun.
Malaysian media say they robbed a businessman in Kota Tinggi of 600 ringgit, before they robbed a Johor boat rental company of 10,000 ringgit.
They were being pursued by Malaysian police but fled the country at about 8.45 am Thursday in a motorised sampan.
They landed on Pulau Tekong, one of Singapore's largest islands, which lies to the north-east.
The manhunt, which began at 9 am, involves 200 soldiers armed with M16s, 200 policemen, a dozen dogs and two helicopters.
The island has also been cordoned off by patrol craft from the Coast Guard.
There are no residents on the island but there are at least two army camps there, which are used for basic military training.
All military training was stopped at 10.30 am and recruits have been ordered to stay indoors. - CNAWe can't even defend an island run and guarded by the SAF from simple robbers in a sampan, what about Singapore mainland? Where is the Singapore Coast guard and RSN? What if this was a real terrorist operation?
Note Singapore has a coastline thousands of times smaller then Australia, and according to you we have many more ships protecting us thent the Aussies...
So how come this can happen?
So going by your math the Australians need tens of thousands of ships then?
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SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES SUSPENDS TRAINING BECAUSE OF NAVAL SECURITY LAPSE
Singapore Armed Forces and Singapore Police Force (SPF) personnel are jointly conducting a search on Pulau Tekong for three suspected armed robbers.
The trio escaped to the island in a motorised sampan, while they are being pursued at around 8.45 am on 18 Mar morning.
According to the Malaysian police, the three men are suspected of committing armed robbery earlier in Johore.
To facilitate the search operations, all military training on Pulau Tekong has been temporarily suspended. Security measures have also been stepped up on the island, where basic military training is conducted for full-time national servicemen.
The Ministry of Defence and the SPF will provide more updates as the situation develops.As you know according to lionnoisy, Oz navy should be more like ours.
Have enough ships to patrol our waters
But then with so many RSN and coast guard
How come this can happen?
Tekong is not deserted place of no important but military installation that needs to be protected
RSN and coast guard dunt can protect this thing from simple robbers?
What if enemy, any time, any day, any how,
Turn up on Singapore
Will rsn can handle it
When they can’t even stop simple robbers?
In a nation requiring good security is this acceptable?
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Robbers use motorized sampan:
RSN and Singapore Coast Guard got:
Stealth Frigates, suppose "best" in region
fast patrol boat
all this very powerful, advertise a lot in media
but when it come down to it, dunt can even protect tekong island from robbers using a simple sampan!
lionnoisy, what if your children go to tekong to train and then something more serious invade?
are your recruits safe?
how lionnoisy, we are all very scared...
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lionnoisy say RSN and singapore coast guard can protect singapore
but then how come cases of our coast defence being leaky and dunt can work
is increasing?
Car smuggling by sea from Singapore
"Every car smuggler taking cars coming into Batam from Singapore must wait for the high tide because it allows the boats to dock at the beach, something that people don't expect," Sumandi said. Each large vessel carried seven to 12 cars, he said.
It is an open secret that the local police, the Navy, the Army and the customs office are behind the smuggling of the used cars from Singapore into Batam.
These smuggling operations have grown in size since the beginning of the reform era, with importers now competing to bring in cars illegally.How come we dunt can catch this?
We not like Oz, we have far less waters to patrol!
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currently,only 2 subs of oz can sail,as at 19 aug 2008.
the rest are sitting in docks due to unknown reasons,
among them short of crews.
in the first place,no need to buy 6 subs if 2 subs can do the jobs.
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Originally posted by lionnoisy:
currently,only 2 subs of oz can sail,as at 19 aug 2008.
the rest are sitting in docks due to unknown reasons,
among them short of crews.
in the first place,no need to buy 6 subs if 2 subs can do the jobs.
purely tongue in cheek. or rather, tongue ripped right out of lionnoisy's cheek. all in bad humour of course. no offence intended. the usual b.s about any resemblance to any living person, nick or avartar dead or alive is purely conincidental. reserve no rights to any issue :)
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