Page 54 - Australian Defence Mag Jul-Aug 2020

54 FROM THE SOURCE GABBY COSTIGAN CONTINUED FROM PAGE 58
industrial capability and this is certainly my focus and a key focus for our business.
We’re going to deliver nine world-leading anti-submarine warfare frigates to the Navy and an enduring shipbuilding capability for the nation, and I think that is what we need to be focused on.
There’s a number of activities involved in this and that includes things like the transfer of knowledge, intellec- tual property and technology to Australia, developing both the physical and the digital infrastructure, continual in- vestment in R&D and, really importantly, developing the workforce.
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been able to redeploy across into the Hunter program, and that’s important because that means that we’re able to retain that shipbuilding capability in the industry, that would otherwise have been lost if we weren’t able to rede- ploy them across either the Hunter program or into other parts of our business.
From our customers’ perspectives, and I think this is fair for me to say, I don’t think they would say we’ve skipped a beat and I think we’re delivering really important work and right now we are demonstrating continuous naval ship- building in action.
ADM: And finally on the shipbuilding front, what is the future of the Williamtown shipyard given that it has been effectively mothballed as a working yard since the LHD work?
COSTIGAN: Williamtown is still a facility that we own and as part of my business I’ve got to regularly review the facili- ties and what we’re going to do with them and how we will manage them. Williamstown is a very important site for us currently. We’re not building ships there but it is a really important engineering hub and we’ve got a significant num- ber of people based there who support both our national maritime sustainment business and also the Hunter Class Frigate program.
So it’s really been developed into what a capability hub and we will continue to use it in this capacity for the fore- seeable future. I think we’ve had some really good success stories through this COVID-19 crisis where normally a lot of the engineers who work in that maritime sustainment business at Williamstown, would travel domestically to sup- port some of the work on the Anzacs in Henderson or the Hunter team in Adelaide.
But because no one can travel, we’ve been able to contin- ue the design and the development work for both programs through lots of different virtual technologies.
It’s still an important place for us, we just won’t be build- ing ships there in the future.
ADM: Is BAE Systems Australia involved with ongoing UAS testing at Woomera? If so, can you provide details? COSTIGAN: We’ve had quite a history of testing at Woomera. We’re not currently doing any testing at Woomera at the moment but I think you probably would have been aware of the successful PHASA-35 trials that were conducted at the end of last year at Woomera. There was a lot of great out- comes around that and I think there’s some real potential opportunities, not just in the PHASA-35 program (a new solar electric high altitude long endurance [HALE] UAS
ABOVE LEFT: The Hunter class program is moving quickly for a program of its size.
ABOVE RIGHT: The Hawk LIF program has had some ups and downs but Costigan remains supportive of the program.
RIGHT: Work at Henderson on the RAN’s Anzac fleet is an important contract for the company.
“HERE IN AUSTRALIA, HUNTER IS STILL IN THE EARLY DESIGN AND MOBILISATION PHASE BUT WE ARE,
I THINK, RIGHT WHERE WE EXPECTED TO BE.”
As Australia’s industrial capabilities grow so too will the level of involvement that Australian industry has across this program. There’ll be a number of batches of each frigate and we want to maximise Australian industrial capability over those batches and in parallel form the foundation of continuous naval shipbuilding in this country.
ADM: Can you give us an update on how the integration of ASC Shipbuilding into your business is progressing? COSTIGAN: It’s going really well and, most importantly, the transition has actually been quite seamless. We’ve been able to see out the shipbuilding work that was being done on the Air Warfare Destroyer program with the third and final ship recently handed over to the Commonwealth and then obviously the OPV program –the keel was laid for the second vessel at Osborne just recently – and the hull of the first OPV has been consolidated.
So I would say it’s going really well. We’ve done a lot of the administrative steps that you would expect with any ac- quisition of the business, such as integrating the finance systems and migrating employees across into our business.
A good news story is the number of shipbuilding em- ployees from the Air Warfare Destroyer program we’ve
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