Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates

Volkodav said:

Something that seems to be forgotten is that retention of submarine crews has always been a problem even in the Oberon days at Platypus. Talk to an old submariner and they will tell you that pressganging sailors on shore assignment to get a boat to sea was a common occurance. They could kiss their wife good by in the morning expecting to be home for dinner and end up being out for three months.

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Still while unfortunate sometimes these things happen. Atleast at Platypus you were drawing on the whole of Sydney for crewing (and lets be honest most of the east coast with airfares/buses/roads being so cheap and regular). Wives/partners mostly would have more contacts/family etc to help with these types of situations. Relocating to WA does not afford that opportunity and costs associated would be far more expensive.

For training and deep water exercises Sydney is ideal. War time or threats you can preposition assets as required. For some threats Sydney would be closer than a lot of other bases, and you can move out with all that local traffic.

We should be definately working towards a West/East setup. It doesn't have to be a priority but long lead expensive items like docks etc should be obtained or atleast not sold off.

Platypus hasn't been developed, it may actually be cheaper to make it a sub base again (even if its just a small one) than to do anything else with it. You could build sub pens out of all the concrete you would have to pour to make the place enviromentally sound..

Todjaeger said:

I could be mistaken, but there might not be very many Aussie-flagged STUFT available which could be tasked for RAS and fleet oiler roles. How many oilers/tankers are in the Australian merchant marine at present? Others would be better positioned to know, but I believe there are just a few such vessels, and those are operating to meet domestic needs.

Is STUFT applicable to Aussie-owned vessels which are registered and fly the flags of other nations?

-Cheers

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Not to mention civi vessels dont come with a 3 helicopter hangar a refit in 09 and full RAS capability

plus doesnt a Bay Class only need 60 crew? what happenes to the rest of the crew of the ship she replaces?

SASWanabe said:

what happenes to the rest of the crew of the ship she replaces?

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they become part of a changeover crew or get shuffled out elsewhere.

gf0012-aust said:

they become part of a changeover crew or get shuffled out elsewhere.

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240 odd versus 55, The crew reduction should be enough of a plus to purchase the Bay.

OTOH the Largis Bay wouldn't likely have much of a C&C capability, this would surely require at least one of the LPD's staying on.

robsta83 said:

The crew reduction should be enough of a plus to purchase the Bay.

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or retrain for subs..

SASWanabe said:

Not to mention civi vessels dont come with a 3 helicopter hangar a refit in 09 and full RAS capability

plus doesnt a Bay Class only need 60 crew? what happenes to the rest of the crew of the ship she replaces?

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I reckon a Bay manned by the RAN, would have a much bigger ships company onboard.

StoresBasher said:

I reckon a Bay manned by the RAN, would have a much bigger ships company onboard.

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does the RN have a similar fire control/party model?

gf0012-aust said:

or retrain for subs..

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That'll work too

gf0012-aust said:

does the RN have a similar fire control/party model?

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Onboard a RN ship I would say yes, but a RFA manned by civilians, might be a different matter. I would say a lot of unmanned machinery spaces and compartments, would be manned by the RAN.

StoresBasher said:

Onboard a RN ship I would say yes, but a RFA manned by civilians, might be a different matter. I would say a lot of unmanned machinery spaces and compartments, would be manned by the RAN.

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with a bit of luck, alexas will see this and give an answer....

i think you guys are right, i remember hearing somewhere else that the RFA runs the engine room with ~15 crew whereas the RN on the Albions man them with 60+ crew

Todjaeger said:

I could be mistaken, but there might not be very many Aussie-flagged STUFT available which could be tasked for RAS and fleet oiler roles. How many oilers/tankers are in the Australian merchant marine at present? Others would be better positioned to know, but I believe there are just a few such vessels, and those are operating to meet domestic needs.

Is STUFT applicable to Aussie-owned vessels which are registered and fly the flags of other nations?

-Cheers

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Not many......... and you would need a product carrier so that further limits the scope.

robsta83 said:

Well the CIA world factbook gives the following on the merchant marine:
Merchant marine:
By type: bulk carrier 10, cargo 8, liquefied gas 4, passenger 6, passenger/cargo 6, petroleum tanker 6, roll on/roll off 5

Foreign-owned: 20 (Canada 7, Germany 2, Netherlands 1, Norway 1, Singapore 2, UK 5, US 2)

Registered in other countries: 29 (Dominica 1, Fiji 2, Liberia 2, Marshall Islands 1, Netherlands 1, NZ 1, Panama 5, Singapore 11, Tonga 1, UK 1, US 1, Vanuatu 2) (2010)

Unfortunately the foreign registered ships aren't listed by type nor tonnage, well at least its a number The Wiki table is based on the CIA factbook information but puts it in a straight forward table, I certainly was unaware of Japan holding the worlds largest merchant navy in number of ships.
List of merchant marine capacity by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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That is a tad out of date. Our merchnat marine has been in decline for quite some time wiht very little cargo carried in australian flagged ships. A full list of commonwealth registered vessels is available at

[http://www.amsa.gov.au/Shipping_Registration/List_of_Registered_Ships/

However, the vast majority of these are small coastal vessels or pleasure craft. There are moves for shipping reform to try and boost the large ship fleet but the actual measures are still under consideration.

gf0012-aust said:

with a bit of luck, alexas will see this and give an answer....

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A 60 man crew to simply run the ship is very large by merchant standards. (and noting an RN crew would run flying operations).

A modern large box boat (300+m and 25kt at over 100000 gross tonnes) of the maersk S and E class would have a crew of 20 or so. The large crew does reflect the type of operations the ship undertakes (military support) and a navy crew should be able to operate at the same levels.

The issue would be experiance on the ship and at sea. RFA crews work a merchant rotataion which is 4 on and 2 off (months normally) or 3 on 2 off if they are lucky. As a result the spend a lot more time on the ships they operate and are very familiar with machinery and systems. Engineers are watch keepers (not managers as in RAN practice) and are hands on. Again this means the familiarity with the gera is quite high and is a very efficnet use of resources.

To give an example of the sea time accumulated on merchant vessels by merchant crew a 18 year career may actually see an officer 'at sea' for about 13.5 to 14 years (not for Australian crew where they have a 1 to 1 roatation). Here the RFA is a little differnt as they get more time in port, commercial cargo vessel do not as they only make money on the move. It does mean that effective officers become very good at keepng the ships going and dealing with heavy maintenance on the run.

SASWanabe said:

i think you guys are right, i remember hearing somewhere else that the RFA runs the engine room with ~15 crew whereas the RN on the Albions man them with 60+ crew

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But the engine room demands and arrangements are different. You cannot simply compare them.

Re:

Consider that a lot of ships are flagged in foreign countries merely for tax reasons eg in Liberia, Bahamas. Would think that many of these foreign flagged vessels are actually AU owned and AU crewed.

Example below:
http://www.aimpe.asn.au/files/caltex_tanker_letter_to_fed_gov.pdf

weasel1962 said:

Consider that a lot of ships are flagged in foreign countries merely for tax reasons eg in Liberia, Bahamas. Would think that many of these foreign flagged vessels are actually AU owned and AU crewed.

Example below:
http://www.aimpe.asn.au/files/caltex_tanker_letter_to_fed_gov.pdf

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This is true for vessel in the offshore industry on the Australian but is not true for larger commercial vessels where the number of AU crewed vessels has been in decline for quite some time. Under the permit system we actaully have foreign crewed and flagged vessels working on the coastal trade on an oning basis (licence) or adhoc on a permit.

Current Vessel Licences

The fact is that much of the large AU tonnage is quite old and not in great condition but given the cost of crewing (1 to 1 leave ration plue annual) ship owners are not willing to invest, particulalry as some crews and work practices were less than helpful in ensuring reasonable return on investment could be realised. This is not the case in the offshore indsutry where they are struggling to find crews, however the work load is quite a bit higher.

Options being considered area tonnage tax (making ships cheaper to purchase over thier life) and a second register (allowing the use of lower cost crews wth AU qualified officers or other officers with a CoR)..

Shipping Reform

Re:

Interesting. So it could be a crew limitation rather than a vessel limitation. I suppose it could be difficult to transfer crew from the smaller vessels to the larger ones if push comes to shove.

During Falklands war aka op corporate, RN took up about 43 to 48 vessels depending on the source (~8 tankers).

Merchant Ships - Falklands War 1982

I can't imagine STUFT requirements being that large in any case for RAN. If there's a need, couldn't they just call the US counterparts at the MSC at Diego Garcia or Guam?

In a wartime situation in the South Pacific I am sure many of the Australian flagged shipping have the range to get to Fiji or Samoa and back without refueling... In a wartime situation an ocean away its most likely there will be allies and their flagged shipping which would close any shortfall... Australia would not necessarily be alone...

The RAN have two and the RNZN have one replenishment ships. They should be more than enough to provide replenishment at sea for a surface action group task force within the confines of the South Pacific for peacetime operations...

Oiler sizes have got a lot bigger since the Falklands War so comparing the numbers is silly unless you are using tonnage.

As for the Largs Bay it may not become Jervis Bay after all as Chile want to buy it too, also to replace their Newports. (RFA Association)