The AUSTRALIAN – Ben Packham : A $5bn plan to extend the lives of the navy’s Collins-class submarines is in disarray as the government-owned shipbuilder ASC warns it won’t be ready to fully upgrade the first boat, raising the prospect of a capability gap before arrival of the nation’s nuclear-powered subs. The Australian can reveal that the government is now considering a scaled-back “life-of-type extension” for the first overhaul from next year, which won’t deliver the extra 10 years of operational life the boat needs [by Ed. not necessarily true, however the capability of the relevant submarines would not be as advanced as conceived in the fully scoped LOTE].
Multiple sources have said that the revised upgrade scope would leave the first boat in line, the 27-year-old HMAS Farncomb, with its main motor, diesel engines and generators in place, rather than having installed new ones as planned. Failure to replace the critical systems would undermine the boat’s reliability and shorten its planned lifespan, degrading the submarine force ahead of the transition to nuclear boats in the 2030s and 2040s.
VADM Mark Hammond Chief of Navy – photo David Gray AFP
The Chief of the Navy, Mark Hammond, told a Senate estimates hearing last month the upgrade plan for HMAS Farncomb was “unchanged at the moment”.
But sources close to the LOTE program, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the navy’s submarine capabilities, said design and implementation studies had revealed ASC was highly unlikely to be ready to complete the full scope of works within the mandated two-year time frame. “It’s not just a case of pulling out the current motor and putting a new motor in,” one source said. “Everything needs to be designed because it’s a completely different shape, completely different technology. The design work just hasn’t been done. These things take years to plan, years to do the design drawings, and they’ve basically missed the boat. And the real fear is if they’ve missed the boat for 2026, they’re just as likely to miss the boat for 2028 (when the second Collins-class submarine is due to enter the LOTE program).”
Another source said some ASC suppliers had contributed to the immaturity of the LOTE designs, and that Defence had slowed the process with late changes to system requirements. The source said ASC was examining how much of the planned upgrade it would be able to complete within the two-year window. An ASC spokesperson said its LOTE design and procurement work was progressing in co-operation with navy and Defence.
Former Defence official Michael Shoebridge said it would be a mistake to lay all the blame on ASC, arguing Defence was responsible for managing the Collins and scoping the LOTE works. “There’s a lot of blame to go around, but the root cause is the submarines are too old,” the Strategic Analysis Australia director said.