To save later confusion and to clarify the topic; these are the 9 recommendations for the OPV's from Dr Marcus Hellyer
"Recommendation 1
Increase the number of Arafura-class OPVs to be acquired through project SEA 1180 from 12 to 18 and accelerate their delivery to two vessels per year.
Recommendation 2
Develop variants of the OPVs equipped with appropriate mixes of sensors, weapons and command and communications systems, so that they can contribute to maritime and amphibious operating concepts employing distributed lethality, with (indicatively) six each of the following variants:
An anti-surface warfare variant
An ASW Variant
An air warfare variant
Recommendation 3
Install an appropriately scaled version of CEA Technologies’ active electronically scanned array radar on the OPV fleet so that it can effectively contribute to maritime operating concepts employing distributed lethality.
Recommendation 4
Equip the variants of the OPV fleet with appropriate mixes of unmanned and autonomous systems so that it can effectively contribute to maritime and amphibious operating concepts employing distributed lethality.
Recommendation 5
Declare that there is a sovereign requirement for an Australian common control system that will:
- standardise control of unmanned and autonomous systems
- facilitate the integration of Australian-developed unmanned and autonomous systems into the combat cloud
- allow for military commanders to rapidly develop multiple courses of action employing all available manned and unmanned systems.
Recommendation 6
Use the OPV hull as the basis of the future mine warfare and military hydrography fleets (in addition to the 18 vessels in Recommendation 1).
Recommendation 7
Ensure that the basing and operating strategy for the enhanced OPV fleet supports extended rotations of squadrons of OPVs through Southeast Asia and the South Pacific to reinforce partnerships, develop interoperability and demonstrate greater presence and deterrence.
Recommendation 8
Increase the funding for Defence’s innovation programs (the Next Generation Technologies Fund and the Innovation Hub) to at least 1% of Defence’s total budget or, indicatively, $400 million per year.
Recommendation 9
Provide an immediate stimulus and greater financial security to Australia’s research universities and high-tech sector by using the funding in Recommendation 8 to:
- fund innovation proposals for defence technology that were assessed as worthy but for which there was previously insufficient funding
- provide guarantees of ongoing funding to the most promising R&D proposals (provided developmental milestones are met), allowing universities and high-tech small-to-medium enterprises to provide greater certainty of employment and research funding to staff."
I'd like to say that I support each one of these recommendations and would like to see them implemented. As such, I'd like to open the floor as to why each specifically would not work.
I'd like to suggest that the mods not consider this in fantasy land as it is being discussed in the context of the current shifting strategic outlook.
In effect, it would seem the good doctor is advocating for either turning the OPV's into combatants, or taking the design base and developing a combatant variant. Alongside this, there seems to be advocacy for both increasing the drumbeat and numbers for OPV and/or OCV (since an upgunned OPV design still will not be quite the same as a purpose-designed corvette). To me, this smacks of the good idea fairy having visited someone who either does not know what they are about, or have ignored likely issues which would conflict with the idea being pushed.
Increasing both the drumbeat and number of vessels being built would effectively torpedo the current national shipbuilding plan. There would be sunk costs involved in expanding both the infrastructure and workforce required to accelerate the shipbuilding drumbeat, and in less than a decade that workforce and associated infrastructure will start idling. As I understand it, the national shipbuilding plan has factored that in, for the currently sized workforce and existing infrastructure. Expanding both would likely cause either greater overall costs for the national shipbuilding plan, assuming Australia wishes to maintain such a national capability, or there would again be an element of the valley of death...
Secondly, a ~50% increase in OPV-sized vessels in the RAN would require an additional injection of funding and likely fairly substantial, even more so if the base design had to be greatly changed to accommodate more combat capabilities. This raises the spectre of whether or not the additional capabilities provided are worth the costs associated. Thirdly, an extra six vessels would require both additional crews, as well as support infrastructure at RAN bases.
As for the notion of fitting CEAFAR, I still feel the only logical reasons to do so would be due to a lower cost for the systems than a conventional rotating radar transceiver, or to achieve commonality in radar systems training across the RAN for both operators and maintainers. Capability-wise, I just do not see the value aboard a vessel like an OPV.
With regards to the idea of possibly being used to detect/track and possibly even EA small drones like quad copters, there are a bunch of questions which would need answers for and consideration, some of which others have already touched on, while other issues have not been.
The first is, with a RAN OPV operating in open ocean, most likely within the confines of Australia's EEZ claims, where is the launch point for the hypothetical small drone and where is the planned destination? If the launch point is from Indonesia, Timor Leste, PNG or one of the S. Pacific islands, it would be very unlikely that a small, low flying drone would have the range to actually reach Australian territory considering that would be both over the horizon and potentially at least a few hundred km's. Even if the launch point was a ship at sea, unless the vessel was within sight of land it would still be an over the horizon flight which such small drones are not really designed for. Relating to the whole over the horizon idea, where is the drone pilot located, and what sort of command link exists between the drone pilot and drone, to enable over the horizon flight? Or is the expectation that the flight plan would be pre-programmed, autonomous and likely one way? Even with autonomous flight, that range is still going to be an issue. The small commercial drones I am familiar with typically have a max flight time of ~30 minutes, with very little in terms of available payload. When I looked into the Wings drone delivery service, the max range (round trip distance) was 20 km, and max payload was 1.5 kg with a speed of 113 kph. To get anything significantly greater in terms of range, and/or payload then one it talking about a significantly bigger bird, something likely at least the size of a Scaneagle. Realistically, I would be much more comfortable leaving the detection and tracking of aerial intrusions into Australian airspace to the RAAF, rather than trying to rely upon a possible 'Hail Mary' detection by an OPV that was in the right place, at the right time. After all, even with a radar array like CEAFAR, a ship would need to be close enough to an aerial contact that the radar horizon does not block detection. Assuming a drone flight altitude of 45 m, and ~30 m mast height, the detecting OPV would need to be within 50 km. The question would still remain whether or not the extra effort and costs associated with fitting something like CEAFAR would provide a sufficiently greater capability than a slower scanning air search radar like the SPS-49.
Lastly, since this area of discussion has been about detecting unmanned aerial vehicles by RAN OPV's on patrol duties in the Australian EEZ, what rights/powers does Australia have to deal with them? Once an aircraft enters Australian airspace, then there is no question about Australian authority, However, until an aircraft crosses the 12 n mile limit, it is flying in international airspace, and I am unaware of any sort of international agreement or treaty which would be comparable to UNCLOS but covering international airspace instead of international waters.
