Page 67 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2022

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Rear Admiral Wendy Malcolm, head of Maritime Sys- tems at CASG, subsequently disclosed that a second die- sel generator brought online had also overheated and shut down, suspectedly due to a sensor defect which caused the generator to think it was over-speeding.
“Even though the maintenance on that had been checked in the past two or three days, that defect hadn't come up at that stage,” she said.
With these multiple system failures in mind, ADM ques- tioned Defence on whether the LHDs were performing to expectations, to which they provided only vague and opti- mistic answers.
“Since their commissioning and acceptance into opera- tional service in 2015, Australia’s LHDs have always de- ployed and achieved the missions directed by government to provide humanitarian aid and disaster relief,” a Defence spokesperson told ADM. “This includes the delivery of aid to our Pacific friends in Fiji and more recently Tonga and the assistance to Australian communities threatened by bushfires in 2020 as well as conducting annual deployments throughout the Indo-Pacific.
“Although designed as amphibious assault ships, the LHDs provide the most suitable heavy-lift platforms to transport substantial quantities of personnel, equipment and provisions, and are able to accommodate the ADF ele-
ments for the duration of the deployment without impact- ing on the local resources in the affected areas.”
Defence also failed to answer whether precautionary checks had been taken on HMAS Canberra following the power failures on Adelaide.
In the past, both LHDs have also experienced problems with the two large azimuth propulsion pod systems which drive and steer the vessels.
In 2017, both ships were either unavailable for service or subject to operating restrictions due to these irregularities with the propulsion systems, which were later linked to oil contamination in the seals. ■
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