Page 76 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

PACIFIC
ATTACK CLASS
“Concept design under the Design and Mobilisation contract was completed in January 2019 in the wake of a concept studies review in late 2018 that found no significant areas of concern.”
Leading Seaman Electronic Warfare Submarines Tawhi Eru throws a heaving line over to Diamantina
Pier from HMAS Farncomb as they arrive back to Fleet Base West, WA.
steel, manoeuverability, drag and acoustic performances, and the suitability of ship control, electrical, hydraulic, sonar, sensor, habitability, weapons storage, cooling, and ancillary platform systems.
For batteries and voltage, power gen- eration (induction and diesel generators) and propulsion (main electric motor), the design references would come either from DCNS’s Scorpene class or from an existing submarine technology within the company.
This would avoid years of design studies for equipment validation and allow mar- gins for higher performances elsewhere in the boat.
“One submarine is not converted to an- other. Rather, a design reference is selected and an iteration of a new design is devel- oped to meet the requirement with inter- polation of known data and the re-use of proven technologies,” Autret said.
While Australia had built up its abil- ity within the Sea 1000 project office to develop its own pre-concept design and to
compile a set of realistic requirements, the CEP was intended to select an international partner with the skillset not only to design submarines to Australian specifications, but to build and commission them into service.
“The requirements we set were not pure- ly aspirations, they were a set of very spe- cific objectives that could be met in terms of the technologies that would be avail- able, and not in a way that we were push- ing technology on every front, as arguably we did with Collins,” stated Rear Admiral Greg Sammut, a former Collins-class com- mander and Director General of Subma- rine Capability within the RAN’s Strate- gic Command, who succeeded RADM Moffitt as head of the Future Submarine Program in 2013.
“We’ll begin to know things about the submarine because of that early design work, such as its length. The pre-concept design offered by DCNS predicates the hull length at 97 metres, but that doesn’t reflect decision-making on issues such as the diesel
engines and the main motor. These have a large bearing on the submarine’s size.”
Detailed program planning would be undertaken in parallel to establish the schedules and tools necessary to support the design process and ensure the avail- ability of an appropriate earned value management system.
Other detailed planning would involve build, test and integration facilities as well as the infrastructure that would be required to support the Australian build – lessons learnt the hard way from Collins construction.
“We’ll make the best technology choices that match the range of operations our sub- marines undertake, not because a particular technology has a particular application in a particular navy,” stated RADM Sammut.
Stephen Johnson, General Manager Submarines in CASG from November 2015 until May 2019 and a US Navy Rear Admiral (Rt’d) who had inter alia headed the Ohio class ballistic submarine replace- ment program and was involved in the ill- fated Sea Wolf program, commented at the time that “you can’t take a nuclear subma- rine design and put a diesel engine in it”.
From nuclear to diesel
However, there were significant benefits that would flow from DCNS producing a separate albeit nuclear-powered subma- rine of similar diameter (8.8 metres) and length (99.4 metres), and having access to that design team.
76 | October 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
DEFENCE