Page 40 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2021

40 FEATURE
OCTOBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
account the Aegis combat management system, the CEAFAR 2 phased array radar and other Australian Government man- dated changes. It’s a mixture of things and my job is to ensure we end up with a design that still meets the key performance criteria whilst giving the RAN the capability they need.
ADM: How significant are the design changes required for the Australian-mandated equipment?
LOCKHART: CEAFAR 2 is a hugely capable radar but with that comes challenges; it is a very power-consumptive radar. So, the power dynamics onboard the ship are much more complex than its direct peers. The radar is heavier than the UK equivalent and when we put weight up high, it has a corresponding effect on ballast and seakeeping. But these are challenges that are common with first-of-class design and builds which we’d normally see anyway.
ADM: There’s concern about a growth margin of only 3.3 per cent of the light-ship weight of the Hunter, reportedly 8,200 tonnes, and a full displacement weight of 10,000
ABOVE: Craig Lockhart is Managing Director
of BAE Systems Maritime Australia.
RIGHT: Construction of transverse bulkheads underway in the steel and unit fabrication hall at the Osborne naval shipyard. The bulkheads will form part of the habitability spaces in the first prototyping block.
tonnes which is 1,200 tonnes heavier than the UK refer- ence design?
LOCKHART: We’re providing a Light Ship weight baseline ship that has been designed to meet our customer’s key performance criteria. Once we’ve got through SDR we can predict within the design and build models with a level of through-life growth margin. Final displacement is a matter for the RAN – how many missiles they take, how much fuel is on board, how many toolkits on the deck. Ultimately the decision on future through life upgrade/improvements by the Navy drives the need for a margin consideration, through- out the design and build process we also have margins that we consume as part of this process, all of which is carefully managed against those future growth expectations.
ADM: What changes are being made to the Hunter-class hull?
LOCKHART: We’re making the ship slightly fatter over the majority of its (149.9 m) length. We’re not changing any of the ship systems, we’re just providing more buoyancy and stability and margins which the RAN can use in the future.
ADM: Design separation is the other major milestone scheduled for this year, transferring the Type 26 control processes, tools and systems from the UK to Australia. How will this be done?
LOCKHART: A lot of the information originates in the ref- erence ship design and therefore is governed to UK export standards. So, we have to make sure we’ve got information management protocols and processes in place, first and fore- most. And then we are able to put in a clear demand state- ment – what information do we need in support of work, why and by when?
And now we’re doing that zone by zone. We’ve been build- ing and testing the data repository through our tool that al- lows us to transfer and manage 10,000 artefacts per week – design information, drawings, data, videos, diagrams – and the tool has performed exceptionally well. We’re taking a cut
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