Page 44 - Australian Defence Magazine Nov 2018

UNDERWATER TECHNOLOGY
TRANSITION
“Good submarine practice is the same no matter what platform you’re in.”
DEFENCE
“What’s needed is a comprehensive stra- tegic plan with recommendations and a timeline endorsed by government. We may be told that such plans are being formulated today, but I’m not aware of them.”
Concurrent crews
This will be particularly relevant to a situ- ation where for some years Navy will be operating a mixed fleet of Collins and Fu- ture Submarines.
“I was posted in command of Waller twice and the boat kept on getting de- layed and I kept on going back to sea on
Oberons,” Sander explained to ADM. “That was unusual; once you were posted to the Collins program most people didn’t come back. They remained in the program rather than returning to the Oberons for further operational experience. Whilst the boats were in the early stages of their build there was not a lot for them to do, which was a negative on both sides.
“Today, we’re going from a Swedish- designed submarine to a French-designed submarine and although the systems will perform the same task, the manner in which they will do it will be different. It’s a different engineering culture, and transferring sailors trained for a delayed Future Submarine back to Collins will be more challenging.”
However, upgrading Collins or us- ing the class as a testbed for equipment also destined for the Future Submarines would ease this issue. One change affect- ing operational procedures will be the Future Submarine’s non-hull-penetrating optronic mast.
Where previously the only person look- ing through the periscope was the Captain or one of the officers, now everyone will be able to see on screens what’s being shown through that mast. How best to optimise this new system will be a further learning curve that operators will have to climb.
With unemployment running at around six per cent, sourcing sufficient uniformed workforce to virtually double sub- marine service person- nel when the fleet moves beyond the current six boats will represent a ma- jor challenge on its own.
The development of a much larger training pipeline to push people through that will initially retain combat system and plat- form trainers for both classes will also be a significant challenge, notes another for- mer Collins CO.
“Where we’re struggling is at the senior warfare officer level – executive officers and commanding officers.
“Over the past 5-10 years we’ve recruited a number of people from other navies and persuaded former COs to rejoin but that’s a limited resource which will run out.
“To get a commanding officer you need a pool of 10 or so officers who go through submarine training and progressively drop out; people don’t appreciate that kind of at- trition rate.”
Future basing
Also inherent in the personnel challenge is the future basing of the sub-surface fleet, given the general assumption of a west coast/east coast split.
“Are you going to have all 12 boats at HMAS Stirling – I don’t think so, it wouldn’t make any sense,” commented a serving Collins officer to ADM.
“We’re not only buying more submarines, they’re larger, requiring more space at port. Garden Island on the east coast is full, Stir- ling is also full so you look at some sort of tender concept or you build a new base, and that always has challenges and costs.
“If you want to build on the east coast you’relookingatPortKembla,maybeNew- castle, or even Brisbane, which means you need to look at your infrastructure and ev- erything that goes with it. It’s an issue that must be addressed within the next few years.”
The yard being built at Adelaide’s Techport was for construction, suggesting maintenance for west coast submarines would be moved to Perth. At the moment, full cycle dockings (FCDs) can take place at either Adelaide or Perth but the construction phase in Adelaide will take an enormous amount of space and people from the FCD workforce there.
“But if you split your fleet you probably don’t want to take your east coast submarines all the way around to the west coast to have them maintained, you’d probably want to have an intermediate facility on the east coast. You’d also want two full cycle docking spots available, probably on the west, because it’s go- ing to happen, you’re going to have two sub- marines wanting full cycle docking at once.
“I don’t think Navy has got its head around this.”
The potential split basing would also re- quire innovative solutions for manning,
44 | November 2018 | www.australiandefence.com.au