Looking at it from a pure project point of view:
Australia has:
3 continuous production lines
It is expected the yards will also maintain and upgrade the ships they build, but there is a bit more flexibility in that and there might be movement on that front.
Canada has:
The small ships seem very vague with much of the builds being quite small, almost dingy sized. The same yard that makes a 800t tug is probably not going to make a 10m coastal trailer boat and small in volume too.
There doesn't seem to be a full cycle of things. It isn't clear when you will stop building platform x, and when its replacement will be built, which is key to sustainable building.
Australia's programs look like this.
At ~2040 the surface combatants and the Minor naval vessel programs basically reset and replacements are built for those original ships. Australia I assume will then sell off those older ships, most likely to those around the region. If not, they will be turned into razors, sinkex or dive wrecks.
The future submarine program doesn't really go through a reset until post 2055, and its more likely to be evolutionary batches like Japan does.
Australia's program seems to create a torrent of vessels, rolling programs, from 3 clear full swing production lines. The Australian program talks about drum beats, how long it takes to make each vessel, and how that can be managed to speed up to create more vessels faster, and what is the minimum sustainable beat to keep everything efficiently moving. With the AWD program, we saw what happens if things were to drag, blocks of work could be reallocated to other yards, short term or long term, and projects could be wrenched off if deliverables are not met. There are additional places that works could be carried out, and at the ship building sites, there will actually be multiple ship builders. So BAE and Naval will be at South Australia for example.
I am always sceptical of $ values when quoting big programs. Certainly Australia's seems a lot more future planned and more meaty.
Clearly Australia did look at the Canadian plan, took elements that were important, regionalism, political involvement, leadership, then looked at nations where continuous programs work very well, like Japan, like the US and implemented programs more inline with those nations but on a smaller scale.
Also looking at delivery and workforce usage.
The valley between the AWD/LHD and the OCV's became known as the valley of death, so despite a huge amount of work in the future, the work was unsustainable, and there would be whole periods where the work force had nothing to do simply due to scheduling. This was the previous Defence capability plan, and as we can see its changed. There are no heavy landing craft being built, no supply ship local build, no sealift, the future frigates is years off (now 2020) and the OCV's moved forward to 2018.
The budget papers made it clear with this graph.
So there were still problems, we have one large ship yard building some small OPV's to fill in before the surface combatant program takes off. Then each yard has their ship type and their drum beat as the OPV build moves to WA (where they are still building the yard) and then onwards.
Big ships like the AORs and the 26,000+t Antarctic icebreaker are being built overseas, because we need those sooner rather than later, and our work force is focusing on finishing the AWD's moving the OPV's and the surface combatants by 2020. We also don't focus on building ships of that type and of that size. Those ships are actually quite low on manpower in the build compared to a frigate or a submarine. A submarine might have more welding and manpower in the build than a whole fleet of surface combatants, and a surface combatant might have more welding/fitout and man build hours than multiple fleet oilers. One of the key reasons is most think tanks think that ~2025 will be peak tension globally, our fleet needs to be ready.
Going into a full time war production mode, the small ship production line could probably build up to frigate sized ships, and the submarine and surface combatant line could be quickened on the drum beat and possibly doubled. On top of that, Australia isn't afraid of ordering ships from overseas builders, and Spain has ships in the water and significant yard capacity, as do other potential builders (UK, Japan, US).
On top of the NSP is the huge upgrades to both the Anzacs which will be complete by 2023 and the destroyer upgrades completed around then as well.
The Canadian program doesn't seem to have much depth, clarity, size, urgency or momentum. Australia is likely to have completely refreshed its entire fleet, punched out a few opvs' the first surface combatant, a pacific patrol fleet, cutting steel on the future sub by the time the Canadians start on the surface combatant hull 1.
Maybe the Canadian members can enlighten me with delivery dates and how their program and workshare works.
Australia has:
3 continuous production lines
- 1 small vessels (starting off with 12 OPV and moving onto other small vessels of 2000t. but could be up to Frigate size) New yard in Western Australia. Previous papers have mentioned up to 20 ships (the origional OCV concept) but perhaps now not off a common hull. Most likely another 8-12 ships to be built per cycle. The current OPV design is ~1700t 80m so fairly big.
- 1 surface combatants (9 ordered, likely to be 12+ with the DDG replacements built after the hunters full cycle) Existing yard, expanded, in South Australia
- 1 submarines (12 ordered, 12 won't be in service at the same time full cycle) Existing yard, expanded, in South Australia
It is expected the yards will also maintain and upgrade the ships they build, but there is a bit more flexibility in that and there might be movement on that front.
Canada has:
- 2 large ship construction yards both building large ships. Large ships include the surface combatant(15), JSS(2), Artic patrol ships(6), Fisheries(3), oceanagraphic (1).
- Small ships <1000t but many less than 500t. Some even smaller than that. One is trailer-able (and include trailer build). The big tugs and the rescue boats are significant, but they get less clear and much smaller from there.
The small ships seem very vague with much of the builds being quite small, almost dingy sized. The same yard that makes a 800t tug is probably not going to make a 10m coastal trailer boat and small in volume too.
There doesn't seem to be a full cycle of things. It isn't clear when you will stop building platform x, and when its replacement will be built, which is key to sustainable building.
Australia's programs look like this.
At ~2040 the surface combatants and the Minor naval vessel programs basically reset and replacements are built for those original ships. Australia I assume will then sell off those older ships, most likely to those around the region. If not, they will be turned into razors, sinkex or dive wrecks.
The future submarine program doesn't really go through a reset until post 2055, and its more likely to be evolutionary batches like Japan does.
Australia's program seems to create a torrent of vessels, rolling programs, from 3 clear full swing production lines. The Australian program talks about drum beats, how long it takes to make each vessel, and how that can be managed to speed up to create more vessels faster, and what is the minimum sustainable beat to keep everything efficiently moving. With the AWD program, we saw what happens if things were to drag, blocks of work could be reallocated to other yards, short term or long term, and projects could be wrenched off if deliverables are not met. There are additional places that works could be carried out, and at the ship building sites, there will actually be multiple ship builders. So BAE and Naval will be at South Australia for example.
I am always sceptical of $ values when quoting big programs. Certainly Australia's seems a lot more future planned and more meaty.
Clearly Australia did look at the Canadian plan, took elements that were important, regionalism, political involvement, leadership, then looked at nations where continuous programs work very well, like Japan, like the US and implemented programs more inline with those nations but on a smaller scale.
Also looking at delivery and workforce usage.
The valley between the AWD/LHD and the OCV's became known as the valley of death, so despite a huge amount of work in the future, the work was unsustainable, and there would be whole periods where the work force had nothing to do simply due to scheduling. This was the previous Defence capability plan, and as we can see its changed. There are no heavy landing craft being built, no supply ship local build, no sealift, the future frigates is years off (now 2020) and the OCV's moved forward to 2018.
The budget papers made it clear with this graph.
So there were still problems, we have one large ship yard building some small OPV's to fill in before the surface combatant program takes off. Then each yard has their ship type and their drum beat as the OPV build moves to WA (where they are still building the yard) and then onwards.
Big ships like the AORs and the 26,000+t Antarctic icebreaker are being built overseas, because we need those sooner rather than later, and our work force is focusing on finishing the AWD's moving the OPV's and the surface combatants by 2020. We also don't focus on building ships of that type and of that size. Those ships are actually quite low on manpower in the build compared to a frigate or a submarine. A submarine might have more welding and manpower in the build than a whole fleet of surface combatants, and a surface combatant might have more welding/fitout and man build hours than multiple fleet oilers. One of the key reasons is most think tanks think that ~2025 will be peak tension globally, our fleet needs to be ready.
Going into a full time war production mode, the small ship production line could probably build up to frigate sized ships, and the submarine and surface combatant line could be quickened on the drum beat and possibly doubled. On top of that, Australia isn't afraid of ordering ships from overseas builders, and Spain has ships in the water and significant yard capacity, as do other potential builders (UK, Japan, US).
On top of the NSP is the huge upgrades to both the Anzacs which will be complete by 2023 and the destroyer upgrades completed around then as well.
The Canadian program doesn't seem to have much depth, clarity, size, urgency or momentum. Australia is likely to have completely refreshed its entire fleet, punched out a few opvs' the first surface combatant, a pacific patrol fleet, cutting steel on the future sub by the time the Canadians start on the surface combatant hull 1.
Maybe the Canadian members can enlighten me with delivery dates and how their program and workshare works.
