Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates

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Jack Wyatt said:
The post provided provides context and the issue of the non ordering of ships for 6 years, which was raised by Newman, has to a large extent gone unchallenged. Having a half truth repeated over and over again the mess until it becomes a "fact" does not make it one.
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No it doesn’t - it pushes a particular political viewpoint. And to quote an article from 9 years ago as if it was current perspective is verging on dishonest.

This is not the place to put one’s political points; if you want to do that go to NAVWEAPS, they’re accepting of that sort of thing there.
 
Perentie said:
Hi all

Good to see that the development of the Attack class submarine continues.
Attack Class Submarine subcontract signed | Department of Defence Ministers

DGR will be a MTU 12V 4000 which will provide a reliable & sustainable power pack.

regards
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And it will have a good deal of commonality with the MTU 20V 4000 generators for the Hunter class, with benefits of logistics/training.
Pensky the MTU agent in Australia should be able to set up a good local support base for both these variants.
Pensky has already loaned a MTU v12 4000 to ASC for trials as replacement engine for the Collins class.
 
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Not wanting to stray into politics too much I believe the issue is not so much that one side of politics is better or worse than the other, but rather each side has elements that are focused on politics, elements that are focused on particular regions, and elements that are focused on the big picture (occasionally including our actual strategic needs) . The performance of either major party is more in accordance with which internal element has precedence than with any grand strategy.

On pork barrelling it could be argued that the current SA build situation has more to do with a rejection of pork. The attempted pork barrelling was scrapping major local ship and submarine construction in Australia altogether, moving all major maintenance to WA and only buying small fast frigates and patrol boats from Austal. While it could be argued that the AWD build in Adelaide was Pork, choosing to maintain and expand an existing facility for the Hunters is actually commonsense winning over pork.

To have starved a third major ship building operation to death in three to four decades would have been insane.
 
Wonder how many? 3? 4? The rumored 6? It also looks like the first of the class will have at least some lead acid batteries.

The Collins class I imagine would take similar engines to the Gotland MTU engines, as even Sweden dropped Hedemora on their class of subs, I believe quite late in the design process..
 
StingrayOZ said:
Wonder how many? 3? 4? The rumored 6? It also looks like the first of the class will have at least some lead acid batteries.

The Collins class I imagine would take similar engines to the Gotland MTU engines, as even Sweden dropped Hedemora on their class of subs, I believe quite late in the design process..
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Sweden dropped Hedemora for MTU just after convincing Australia to sign for Hedemora instead of the preferred MTUs. There were many very unhappy people arong the project.
 
Will be great to get out of such an orphan propulsion setup. I really hope a full refit/life extension of collins does a full re-engine. Particularly going forward and running a mixed fleet. Find submariners is hard enough, let alone when you split and have multiple propulsion systems running around. Support and development will also be painful.
 
Volkodav said:
The attempted pork barrelling was scrapping major local ship and submarine construction in Australia altogether, moving all major maintenance to WA and only buying small fast frigates and patrol boats from Austal. While it could be argued that the AWD build in Adelaide was Pork, choosing to maintain and expand an existing facility for the Hunters is actually commonsense winning over pork.

To have starved a third major ship building operation to death in three to four decades would have been insane.
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As a relative newcomer to industry in this area, was the WA proposal you mentioned ever considered realistic?
(Not in terms of it being a good idea or not, but whether it was realistically considered?)

I defer to your experience, but as an outsider, it sounds so implausible to me that it reads almost like a strawman argument.
Is there an area I can look into to learn more?

To clarify, none of our Defence SME's members in the precinct have admitted to holding that position to me in the last three years or so.
They want to be involved, absolutely. Some of them happily jetted off to perform critical tasks on AWD (and came back for WAMA).
If what you say is accurate, this sounds like a Prime going off the reservation.

I'll just put it out there - "The WA Mafia" (the tag I've seen thrown around) don't speak for us, which is why the little guys like us had to start speaking for ourselves.

The maintenance position, I understand. Looking at where the ships were being deployed at the time, there is a certain (limited) logic there.
Flat maps don't necessarily do a good job of showing just how much closer Perth is to those hotspots.
 
old faithful said:
Wouldn't have ship building been a reasonable stimulas package, rather than pink bats, $ 500 hand outs and sheds that were way over priced?
$500 buys a good party worth of black market drugs, they the pink bats in my place, then removed them because it was deemed dangerous, with no replacement, so effectively, I got zip from that scheme, but the contractor was paid twice....NBN could have been paid for or at least started, but wasn't.
I don't think the ALP saved us at all. Its still going, it just deleyed it a little.
This election won't be won by any one, it will be a curse to win it I think.
Anyway, enough of politics.

Mods feel free to delete this post, nothing good can come from it.
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I’m a little late to the party, and we’re getting well off topic, but here’s a non partisan explanation for you.

The trick with gov spending to address a sharp drop in demand (e.g. in 2008/09) is to get money into the hands of people who will spend it as quickly as possible, and then follow on with more slower to mobilise spending to sustain demand over the medium term (usually infrastructure spend).

The $500 cheques did a great job of doing the first part of this.

Ideally, the second part should leave you with some lasting benefit - which the pink batts / school sheds didn’t really do - but this is a second order consideration vs avoiding a jump in unemployment. So the big problem with shipbuilding or nbn, although clearly more worthy when taken out of context, is that it would have simply taken too long for the money to be spent. Ditto tax cuts for high income earners.

I don’t think this is really a partisan issue though. In a counter factual scenario where Peter Costello was in charge the broad brush strokes would likely have been largely the same. This is pretty orthodox economics and Treasury would’ve advised whoever was in charge to go down this course.

Apologies for the diversion Mods. Back to the ships.
 
Morgo said:
I’m a little late to the party, and we’re getting well off topic, but here’s a non partisan explanation for you.

The trick with gov spending to address a sharp drop in demand (e.g. in 2008/09) is to get money into the hands of people who will spend it as quickly as possible, and then follow on with more slower to mobilise spending to sustain demand over the medium term (usually infrastructure spend).

The $500 cheques did a great job of doing the first part of this.
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You do realise Morgo that $500 cheques were sent to Australians who had retired overseas.I know of two who had retired to Germany. I am sure the German Govt and people were pleased of Australia's support during the GFC.

My bad - for responding on something unrelated to RAN but as long as these post appear I have to remind folks how ill disciplined they were.
 
I am absolutely conscious of that. As I said - speed was of the essence. Of course it was an imperfect solution but we live in an imperfect world. The time taken to devise a perfect watertight policy would have been time that jobs were being lost, and human capital would have started to waste.

It’s like stabilising a trauma patient. You don’t worry about whether the scars from your incisions will be unseemly in 10 years time - you keep them alive for the next 24 hours.

And again as I said this isn’t a partisan political issue. This is textbook economics.

Anyway this is the wrong forum for this discussion. I’ll leave it there.
 
Hello to all

A nice little article in the latest May edition of APDR on the Arafura Class.

https://venturaapdr.partica.online/apdr/apdr-may-2019/flipbook/18/

Reinforces much of what has being written about the ship, but at the same time highlights that this OPV will be well equipped with sensors for situational awareness and a combat suite which can evolve over time.
Again Navy wants to point out it is a ship for constabulary missions only and not a combat vessel.
I trust other nations keep that in mind; play fair ,and play by our rules.

Regards S
 
That seems to be available by subscription only. Could you précis for those of us who don’t have digital subscriptions?
 
spoz said:
That seems to be available by subscription only. Could you précis for those of us who don’t have digital subscriptions?
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Not a paid subscription; it's a freebie. Just log in using a social media account, or create an account.
 
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