Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates

[old faithful]

A question


What is the pay situation for Army and Air force personal deployed at sea.
If army deploy an Infantry company aboard a LHD for any length of time is their an allowance paid in addition to their regular salary.
As the Canberra Class can carry up to 1000 troops I would guess this may be quite an additional expense.

Interested

Regards S

Only guessing, but I think there would be an R&Q allowance refund, and probably field allowance, the same as any exercise. Field allowance probably named something else, like sea.allowance?

When I was in 3 RAR, we used to get paid something like $8.50 per jump until Bomber Beazley granted us para allowance, which when introduced was a hefty $530 per year.....

 

[Raven22]

When at sea the embarked forces get seagoing allowance, which is about $34 a day. Which is actually a lot cheaper than sending them to the field, where they will earn field allowance of about $68 a day (plus being fed much cheaper in the ship’s mess than using very expensive combat rations in the field).

The navy have actually got themselves a nice little rort going on. The ships crew get paid seagoing allowance of about $12 500 year, whether they are actually at sea or not. They can be posted to a ship that is dry dock for refit and still get paid seagoing allowance. The argument is they can get recalled to duty at any time, hence they should still get it when alongside, which is nonsense. Any ADF member can be recalled at any time. I once spend 13 months straight on four hours notice to move without getting paid one extra cent.

In addition, the seagoing allowance is based on being at sea for 100 days a year, but the seagoing going rate for embarked forces is pro rata based on 365 days a year. So, for example, if a ship went to sea for 100 days in a year, the crew would get their full $12 500 while any embarked forces would get less than $4000.

 

[old faithful]

just checked an old pay slip, para allowance was actually $60 per fortnight, so $1560 per year.

 

[old faithful]

13 months at 4 hours!?
For those that don't realize what that actually means to the individual, it means you must be contactable, and be able to present to your workplace within 4 hours. No road trips from Sydney to Coffs Harbour if you family there for example. No fishing out at sea if it will take you a long time to get back.
Prior to mobile phones, it meant a register was kept at the guard room, and you had to log where you would be....try that on a Friday night, which is why the Observer hotel at the rocks became a 3RAR pub!

 

[Redlands18]

13 months at 4 hours!?
For those that don't realize what that actually means to the individual, it means you must be contactable, and be able to present to your workplace within 4 hours. No road trips from Sydney to Coffs Harbour if you family there for example. No fishing out at sea if it will take you a long time to get back.
Prior to mobile phones, it meant a register was kept at the guard room, and you had to log where you would be....try that on a Friday night, which is why the Observer hotel at the rocks became a 3RAR pub!

Where were you expecting to be sent, if you don’t mind me asking?
If not fully understand.

 

[Raven22]

Where were you expecting to be sent, if you don’t mind me asking?
If not fully understand.

The ADF has a number of ‘ready’ elements, which are prepared to react to any sort of contingency. The main army ready element is the ready battle group, which is based on an infantry battalion (it’s currently 8/9 RAR). A subset of the ready battle group is the ready combat team, which is based on a rifle company, and has the shortest notice to move of any conventional ready element (the exact notice to move is sensitive, obviously).

I was supporting the ready combat team, but because I was armour it took us longer to prepare than the infantry we were supporting, as we had to prep our vehicles for sea or air movement and a few other things. Work the timings back and that meant we had to be at work within four hours of being recalled to prep everything in time.

That was the days before the force generation cycle, when the ready battle group was maintained only by 3 brigade. While the infantry battalions could rotate, there was only one armoured unit so we always had to maintain the ready commitment. Due to deployments, courses and a shoulder injury for a peer, I got stuck supporting the ready element for 13 months, minus the odd weekend away when I could swap out with someone.

As old faithful said, maintaining readiness is a massive issue, that no one really understands until they have to do it themselves. It’s also why the idea of putting 16 helicopters on the LHD every time it leaves port is nonsensical.

 

[spoz]

The standard readiness of an RAN ship when in harbour and not in maintenance is 4 or 8 hours notice for steam. Ships can and do spend months at that notice. You may have noticed ships in the past sailed over Christmas at very short notice to search for yachtsmen, assist after Tsunamis and Cyclones, and the like.

The conditions for seagoing allowance are found here:

Division 9 - Maritime disability allowance : Part 2B : Department of Defence

Army and RAAF members posted to a ship get exactly the same allowances as Navy people.

The 100 days at sea is a notional rate of effort used for personnel planning purposes and aspirationally for planning ship's programs, it is not a hard and fast rule and many, maybe most, ships not in deep maintenance substantially exceed it each year. One NAG deployment will almost certainly do so, not even counting workup for that deployment, and whatever else goes on in the remaining half year.

 

[Raven22]

The standard readiness of an RAN ship when in harbour and not in maintenance is 4 or 8 hours notice for steam. Ships can and do spend months at that notice. You may have noticed ships in the past sailed over Christmas at very short notice to search for yachtsmen, assist after Tsunamis and Cyclones, and the like.

How is that any different to any other part of the ADF being on a notice to move? There are thousands of people sitting on their packs waiting for something to happen, getting paid nothing extra. Allusions to disaster response aren’t going to help. Every brigade maintains a response force and emergency support force throughout the year, ready to respond to disaster. They can’t go home at Christmas either, and get paid nothing extra.

Service allowance is designed to compensate you for special demands of service life. Indeed the first line from PACMAN is ‘the requirement to be on call.’

Army and RAAF members posted to a ship get exactly the same allowances as Navy people.

The 100 days at sea is a notional rate of effort used for personnel planning purposes and aspirationally for planning ship's programs, it is not a hard and fast rule and many, maybe most, ships not in deep maintenance substantially exceed it each year. One NAG deployment will almost certainly do so, not even counting workup for that deployment, and whatever else goes on in the remaining half year.

I’ve got no issue with seagoing allowance when people are actually at sea, only getting it when ashore. It is indefensible that a sailor posted to a ship in refit gets seagoing allowance. The justification given to the DFRT was that working in a ship in refit is very hard, and therefore they should get it too, which is a strange justification considering that lots of jobs are hard, but they dont come with their own disability allowance.

 

[StingrayOZ]

This just dropped from the RAN yesterday.

Interestingly they will have "over 1000 people on board" from the ADF and the Australian government.

There is no space to embark more helicopters or forces, because the thing is completely loaded with diplomats, fisheries, police, law experts, accountants, doctors, various other departments as well as the military component. As well as the other ships as part of the taskforce.

As has been mentioned before, the LHD's are big, but they can't do everything at once.

If the army isn't careful, they might even get pushed off it in future missions. I say that half jokingly. They really are the Canberra class, moving all those government agencies and workers on a big mobile piece of Australia. And to do it annually for many months at a time. Australia is showing that it is more than an open cheque book that sells small nations debt, but actually interacting, understanding and solving problems and addressing concerns. So other tasks will have to slot in around that. I don't think anyone would disagree now that the LHD's are dam useful ships, but we have more uses than ships currently. The priority now is soft diplomacy like what it is doing.

If nothing else it flexing soft power to China, and China is watching, and to everyone else what is going on.

 

[Flexson]

How is that any different to any other part of the ADF being on a notice to move? There are thousands of people sitting on their packs waiting for something to happen, getting paid nothing extra. Allusions to disaster response aren’t going to help. Every brigade maintains a response force and emergency support force throughout the year, ready to respond to disaster. They can’t go home at Christmas either, and get paid nothing extra.

Service allowance is designed to compensate you for special demands of service life. Indeed the first line from PACMAN is ‘the requirement to be on call.’



I’ve got no issue with seagoing allowance when people are actually at sea, only getting it when ashore. It is indefensible that a sailor posted to a ship in refit gets seagoing allowance. The justification given to the DFRT was that working in a ship in refit is very hard, and therefore they should get it too, which is a strange justification considering that lots of jobs are hard, but they dont come with their own disability allowance.

I've done almost 11 years sea time and in that time some of the longest and hardest hours I've worked has been with the ship in Refit. Yes its a break for some but for key personnel of Engineering Departments its a relief to be back underway at sea only having to work 8 hours engine room watch keeping plus 2-4 hours departmental work on top of that per day.

 

[hauritz]

I just found this report on the Anzac frigate sustainment program

ANZAC Class Frigates — Sustainment | Australian National Audit Office

The Anzac will stay in service until 2043 with the first ship being withdrawn around 2029-2030. This is a lot longer than I thought they would have to serve. It would seem like they are expecting the SEA5000 to drag on a little longer than expected. The British type 26 build not being expected to enter service until 2027 might slow the Australian build. The official timeline has the construction of the HMAS Hunter starting in 2022.

The 2030s might be a tough time for the RAN with the ANZACs and Collins classes having to hold the line until their replacements are ready.

 

[Raven22]

I've done almost 11 years sea time and in that time some of the longest and hardest hours I've worked has been with the ship in Refit. Yes its a break for some but for key personnel of Engineering Departments its a relief to be back underway at sea only having to work 8 hours engine room watch keeping plus 2-4 hours departmental work on top of that per day.

I get that. My point isn’t that sailors posted to a ship in refit don’t work hard, it’s that the maratime disability allowance is to compensate people for the unique rigours of service at sea; it’s hard to justify that people ashore are subject to the rigours of service at sea. Lots and lots of people work hard on shore, but get paid not a single extra cent for doing so. It’s hard to justify that a ships crew should get an allowance for working hard ashore when no one else, from any service, does.

 

[spoz]

The point I think he is making is that a person in a ship in refit is not ashore; he or she is in a ship. And he certainly has a point, it's an experience most of us dread - we'd all rather be at sea than having to work, and regularly live, in a ship in that situation.

 

[StingrayOZ]

I just found this report on the Anzac frigate sustainment program

ANZAC Class Frigates — Sustainment | Australian National Audit Office

The Anzac will stay in service until 2043 with the first ship being withdrawn around 2029-2030. This is a lot longer than I thought they would have to serve. It would seem like they are expecting the SEA5000 to drag on a little longer than expected. The British type 26 build not being expected to enter service until 2027 might slow the Australian build. The official timeline has the construction of the HMAS Hunter starting in 2022.

The 2030s might be a tough time for the RAN with the ANZACs and Collins classes having to hold the line until their replacements are ready.

Yeh, I would be interested in how knowledgable members feel about how realistic they think that is.
Would have been nice to have that extra DDG hull being built right now, stopping the lay offs, stopping the flogging of an already maxed out and mid aged fleet. I think some of the hard pressing to get the ships built has gone now there is an election called and Pyne is stepping down. BAE was always pushing back regarding start date. We will be limited at ANZAC level capability for most of the fleet for a significant portion of the future.

 

[ngatimozart]

Yeh, I would be interested in how knowledgable members feel about how realistic they think that is.
Would have been nice to have that extra DDG hull being built right now, stopping the lay offs, stopping the flogging of an already maxed out and mid aged fleet. I think some of the hard pressing to get the ships built has gone now there is an election called and Pyne is stepping down. BAE was always pushing back regarding start date. We will be limited at ANZAC level capability for most of the fleet for a significant portion of the future.

The ANZACs are all going through a series of modernisations so that should keep them current for the next 10-15 years. Unless there is a major fubar in the build, nuship Hunter should be commissioned and worked up by the time HMAS Anzac is decommissioned and paid off. The three DDG will take some of the pressure off the ANZAC FFG fleet because they are modern and new. Once Hunter is launched and the build problems found and solved, nuship 2 will be quicker and so on, so that by the time nuship 5 is launched the build and fitting out times will be optimal. That's how I see it. I wouldn't get to hung up on the pommy build because how the poms do things, politically and bureaucratically, and how things are done in Australia are different with Australia having greater stability in the defence realm. There is significant political instability in Pomland at the moment and that has potential for negative impacts upon the T26 build there and other pom defence programs.

 

[StingrayOZ]

Don't forget the DDG's need to go through their upgrades as well. So they won't be completely available either.
The start of the hunters was always very ambitious, they were talking cutting steel in 2020. BAE said they would really struggle to meet that deadline, it isn't like the Hunter is exactly the same as the type 26, and they have also gone off and laid off a huge part of the work force (valley of death) and they have to build their Osborne stuff, sub contractors, full spec out etc etc.

I wouldn't be surprised at some-point if there is a catastrophic brexit, hitting the budget hard (UK), if BAE doesn't just bring people enmass to get at least the project moving on sheer manpower.

I am a bit worried about the future, Australia is going into an election cycle and we are getting a new def min either way and quite likely a lot of new faces in parliament.

I am sure the build will get quicker, just worried about this transition period from design to cutting steel and moving along. Not actually building any new surface combatants in the middle of an arms race should have us mildly concerned.

The Anzacs have been upgraded to the wazoo, but they are not really the ship Australia needs at the core of its Navy post 2030 in any sort of likely pressure environment. We were hoping they would be getting handed off to a friendly while strengthening said friendly and the RAN with new ships.

Its very important we get this right.

 

[aussienscale]

How is that any different to any other part of the ADF being on a notice to move? There are thousands of people sitting on their packs waiting for something to happen

In what conditions are they sitting on their packs ? What is their rooms like ? facilities ? shower blocks ? what duty roster do they work ? when they are not actively out "in the field" what are they doing ?

Just curious, because obviously there is a reason for the rate the Navy gets, and it certainly would not stand if it were not for good reason, the Politicians and Bureaucrats would certainly make sure of that, and they ain't getting it just because they are the senior service either.

Cheers

 

[Stampede]

I just found this report on the Anzac frigate sustainment program

ANZAC Class Frigates — Sustainment | Australian National Audit Office

The Anzac will stay in service until 2043 with the first ship being withdrawn around 2029-2030. This is a lot longer than I thought they would have to serve. It would seem like they are expecting the SEA5000 to drag on a little longer than expected. The British type 26 build not being expected to enter service until 2027 might slow the Australian build. The official timeline has the construction of the HMAS Hunter starting in 2022.

The 2030s might be a tough time for the RAN with the ANZACs and Collins classes having to hold the line until their replacements are ready.

What was that book Dickens wrote?.... "Great Expectations."

For the ANZAC class, we will certainly have great expectations that they will both make the distance and be militarily relevant for this new projected time table.
Most on DT would know their history and the expectations of combat performance from their design and size. We will again expect a lot from these "small ships" with the new expectation that the very first of the class will not be retired for another decade.
While great work has been accomplished on upgrading these ships, both in the past and currently, one is still mindful that only so much can be achieved within the parameters of the ships limited size.
However time is not our friend, so I suspect we will need to raise the high jump bar further to again explore what can be done over and above the current upgrade to squeeze that bit extra of defence capability from these ships.
The start I suggest is finding that top weight to accommodate a CIWS.
Do we ballast the crap out of the ship and lose some knots, or look at other options I don't know; but with up to 20 more years of service expected for this class they will look increasingly challenged to acquit themselves unless we ask and act upon this challenge sooner rather than later.

With the imminent retirement of the FFG's, we will have a Destroyer / Frigate force of eleven ships for the next decade with a collective inner hard kill ring of 3 x CIWS and 6 x medium guns all on the new Hobart Class.

That is just scary and suggest limiting.

Regards S

 

[Stampede]

This just dropped from the RAN yesterday.

Interestingly they will have "over 1000 people on board" from the ADF and the Australian government.

There is no space to embark more helicopters or forces, because the thing is completely loaded with diplomats, fisheries, police, law experts, accountants, doctors, various other departments as well as the military component. As well as the other ships as part of the taskforce.

As has been mentioned before, the LHD's are big, but they can't do everything at once.

If the army isn't careful, they might even get pushed off it in future missions. I say that half jokingly. They really are the Canberra class, moving all those government agencies and workers on a big mobile piece of Australia. And to do it annually for many months at a time. Australia is showing that it is more than an open cheque book that sells small nations debt, but actually interacting, understanding and solving problems and addressing concerns. So other tasks will have to slot in around that. I don't think anyone would disagree now that the LHD's are dam useful ships, but we have more uses than ships currently. The priority now is soft diplomacy like what it is doing.

If nothing else it flexing soft power to China, and China is watching, and to everyone else what is going on.

Wonderful to hear the ship is full and doing go work

Regards S

 

[Stampede]

The ADF has a number of ‘ready’ elements, which are prepared to react to any sort of contingency. The main army ready element is the ready battle group, which is based on an infantry battalion (it’s currently 8/9 RAR). A subset of the ready battle group is the ready combat team, which is based on a rifle company, and has the shortest notice to move of any conventional ready element (the exact notice to move is sensitive, obviously).

I was supporting the ready combat team, but because I was armour it took us longer to prepare than the infantry we were supporting, as we had to prep our vehicles for sea or air movement and a few other things. Work the timings back and that meant we had to be at work within four hours of being recalled to prep everything in time.

That was the days before the force generation cycle, when the ready battle group was maintained only by 3 brigade. While the infantry battalions could rotate, there was only one armoured unit so we always had to maintain the ready commitment. Due to deployments, courses and a shoulder injury for a peer, I got stuck supporting the ready element for 13 months, minus the odd weekend away when I could swap out with someone.

As old faithful said, maintaining readiness is a massive issue, that no one really understands until they have to do it themselves. It’s also why the idea of putting 16 helicopters on the LHD every time it leaves port is nonsensical.

Thanks for the post and well done with the service.

Still want more bloody helicopters though.

Regards S