Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0

[spoz]

Kevin deferred it arguably money was hollowed out, but it wasn't dead as an option. Naughty Kevin particularly as he is so pro deterrence, pro capability.

It was Julia Gillard and Stephen Smith that wilfully cancelled it. This was in line with the new white paper where they thought China = friend, and several military projects were canned. Nearly 3 years after canning Kevin. They really had no interest in it, they may have cancelled it even if Kevin had approved it and found money for it. Idologically they opposed it.

The also cancelled or delayed F-35, SPG, OCV, Triton. etc.

While all of those cancelled projects basically came back. The 4th AWD didn't because its not a MOTS acquisition, it was an essential part of Australia's workforce, sovereign capability. All hollowed out.

Now I just worry that we aren't seeing that kind of capability join the fleet for another 10 years. Because neither the Hunter nor Mogami, are true AWD, And they are certainly different in design from the Hobarts with minimal commonality and operations.

No, it was Rudd and Faulkner. The option for the fourth, without a renegotiation, expired in October 2008, on the 5th IIRC. I drafted one of the ministerials which tried to exercise it. A fourth could of course have been ordered later, probably up to about 2011 so as to preserve commonality and avoid major equipment unavailability, but we would have then needed to negotiate with Navantia for a licence and ASC/Raytheon for the build. However, after Oct 2008 it was very obvious that the GotD wasn’t interested.

 

[Sandson41]

HMAS Melbourne needs a ship
Hunter Class
Mogami Class

Something else

Cheers S

I'm personally convinced the next HMAS Melbourne will be one of the 'SSN-AUKUS' class, as we will take the American's lead on that tradition. That was settled in my mind as soon as HMAS 'Hunter' was announced.

We shall see...

As long as we're talking about things that annoy us - in no particular order:

• No Collins 7 & 8. Understandable, maybe, given the issues finding crews and possibly money, but regrettable. Beazley was right about them, if only because we'd now have more hulls to stretch out to 2045... Heck, we could have maybe finished number 8 just in time to start a Japanese submarine program from the same yard...

• No ANZACs 11 and 12. I know these were never planned, except for the potential NZ follow on order, but they should have been relatively cheap to add once that arrangement fell through. Another 2 ANZACs would be pretty useful about now. Also, why go to the expense of massive upgrades to our ANZAC 'patrol frigates' instead of a 2.0 batch with improvements from the start? I mean, Perth was completed only a relatively short time before the first radar upgrades, right? Couldn't we have gone for new built ships instead, and had a two-tier ANZAC fleet (GP Patrol and missile escort combatant)? I believe there may be a timing issue there, but maybe we could have kept all those workers in the shipbuilding industry...

• No OPV/OPCs after Malaysia pulled out. Why not? Did the need for a small, long range patrol combatant go away? After decades of trying to procure one? We were MORE worried about regional instability in the '90s.

• Also, why order the helicopters before the ships themselves? Do Seasprites take that long to refurbish? (turns out they do, lol)

• No 4th Hobart. Why go to the expense of setting up that operation for only 3 ships? Heck, why not just order them from Spain if there's only 3? We order other stuff from foreign yards - nothing to be embarrassed about. Heck, that's how we got the Perths! Anyway, what was the point? Are those AWD workers still in the shipbuilding industry?

• The entire Adelaide Class WIP thing was always weird to me. Why? To replace the Perths? How? And why so late? It should have been done in the nineties, if at all, surely? Why not order new hulls? The ANZAC program was over and AWD was still being planned, so there should have been capacity...

• Why not replace the Perths in the nineties, as they each hit 30? With more Adelaides, why not! Or an improved Adelaide, which is apparently what the Hobarts are... sort off... Come to think of it, why only build 2 Adelaides locally? That can't have been efficient.

• Why have a white paper in '08 or '09 calling for '8 large anti-submarine destroyers' and then do nothing about it for over a decade? And that's both parties in government, BTW. At the same time you have yards shutting down?

Oh, and while I'm at it - why upgrade the Darings but with no modern weapons? What was the point? The best radar-equipped pure gun-destroyer of the (missile age) '70s! To be fair, they looked fantastic...

 

[old faithful]

Something about politicians, they don't understand the "Rule Of Three"!

Rule of 3 is a total mystery for them.
Its abiut $ saving of course.
The same reason they didnt replace the T10R's (reserve parachute) pilot chute. It was just like a spring loaded umbrella, but reseve chutes never used any way, so we will not replace the pilot chute, and we will change the reserve drill....I kid you not, until someone died....then they had to buy pilot chutes again...Keating govt, where money was taken from the defence budget and syphoned to other areas......we wont have a war anyway, and ifvwe do, we will have 10 years warning....rigghhhhtttttt.