Page 26 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2022

26 DEFENCE BUSINESS COLLINS LOTE
JULY-AUGUST 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
The LOTE will involve a two-year upgrade for each 3,100-tonne Collins boat on reaching 30 years of service – the first starting with HMAS Farncomb in May 2026, the five others at two-year intervals – that will extend their operational life by 10 years and enhance their capabilities, although the emphasis will primarily be on updating and renewing ship systems. The combat effectiveness of the platform is largely maintained under Sea 1439, a separate multi-year, multi-phase program which involves continuous improvements to sensors and systems.
Costed somewhere between $3.5-6.0 billion, the LOTE will be undertaken by ASC, constructor and sustainer of the Collins-class, at its Osborne facility.
BELOW: Collins-class submarines are an essential part of Australia’s naval capability, providing a strategic advantage in terms of surveillance and protection of our maritime approaches
distribution) respectively. This challenging undertaking will be combined with the usual maintenance and obsoles- cence management of once-in-a-decade full cycle dockings (FCDs) while somehow compressing both activities into the two years normally allocated for an FCD alone.
Despite some conjecture to the contrary, air independent propulsion (AIP) will not be installed.
According to Commodore Tom Phillips, the RAN’s Di- rector-General of submarines, AIP works well for nations whose submarines only need to travel short distances to their operational areas. By contrast, it’s around 5,000 km from the Collins-class base at HMAS Stirling near Perth to the South China sea.
“If you put AIP into a submarine, you necessarily either make the submarine larger which reduces range and endur- ance, or you keep the submarine the same size and reduce battery and fuel capacity which again affects endurance and range – AIP will not be in the LOTE going forward,” CDRE Phillips stated.
As well as building, sustaining and upgrading the Collins- class, ASC is also the Collins’ design authority. As such, along with Defence it has been quietly progressing system design for a potential LOTE for several years. A 33-strong team was already busy on this activity in 2019.
Recent Defence funding has covered a LOTE definition plan, LOTE signature study, and LOTE business case, con- cept design and workforce capability development.
Looking ahead, a major LOTE support role as a strategic partner to ASC now appears increasingly likely for Saab (the Saab Group acquired Kockums in 2014) although, as yet, no official confirmation has been forthcoming, nor fi- nal program approval. ■
“DESPITE SOME CONJECTURE TO THE CONTRARY, AIR INDEPENDENT PROPULSION (AIP) WILL NOT BE INSTALLED”
Notwithstanding the gener- ous Defence-sized variance included in this estimate, the amounts involved underline the challenges that will be faced by ASC in heading an undertaking likely to be beyond the scope of its experience to date.
The validity of extending the operational life of the Collins-class was first confirmed by a service life evaluation program (SLEP) carried out in 2011. This review followed the same methodology as that used by the US Navy in evaluating the potential service life of its
Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines.
A more recent assessment, peer-reviewed by both the US
Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and Collins’ de- signer Saab-Kockums, also confirmed that the Collins boats could safely achieve the extended operational life required to bridge the gap to their nuclear replacements. Post-LOTE, the final Collins vessel, HMAS Rankin, is set to retire in 2048.
The LOTE will replace three of the major systems on the Collins – main electric motor, generators, and electrical distribution systems – with systems from Jeumont Electric (permanent magnet AC motor), MTU (4000 series diesel generators) and Wartsila Euroatlas (power conversion and
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