Replacement of Australia's Collins Class Submarines

Seen from the outside (as a simple Pommy) the debate on this procurement on both sides of the argument is a lot more thorough than anything we get in the UK.
Not sure how you'll settle it. But it has been an eye opener.
 
I beg to differ. Whilst individual programs might have seen cuts etc, overall both sides of politics in Australia have been equally supportive of Defence spending both for new platforms and sustainment, at least for the last couple of decades. If anything, the support is growing in recent years.

I beg to differ. Traditionally, the Tories have spent decades criticising the idea of local manufacture of defence equipment. They have long espoused the idea of COTS for everything Defence needs. Then, under Howard they were elected and suddenly their tune changed when they saw that there were votes in Defence Industries which they could exploit. Since 1996 their policies have changed to supporting local manufacturers.
Hmmm...I said "at least the last couple of decades", which if I do my maths right, 1996 - 2021 = some 25yrs. Thank you for validating my comment.

As for the rest, please give me a break from the partisan politics and silly comments such as "tories". The rhetoric does not match reality.
The BARRACUDA was not the best choice for a new submarine class. What should have been done was evolve the COLLINS class - add AIP or extra batteries and improve it's capabilities - fix its problems with noise and so on. However that opportunity has been missed. We are stuck with the BARRACUDA.
I find this sort of comments amusing. I can remember all the criticism of the Collins class and yet now people are defending it. Here's a prediction (though one I probably won't be around to see proven): In 30+yrs people will have the same argument about the Attack class and its planned replacement...
We were WILLINGLY used as a nuclear test site by the British and people remember that and the French antics in the Pacific.

Let me correct that for you.;) Let's leave out the unwarranted indignation please.

We would need a long lead time, in order to train the nuclear professionals to service the submarines and an even longer time to build a nuclear enrichment plant to service the reactor cores. It would be hideously expensive and protracted. It would need a 15-20 year lead time.
Actually it wouldn't need that long if the will was there. That said, I agree that the will is not there and we have a public (and scared little politicians) who are ignorant to anything related. By way of example, people protest and have all sorts of conniptions over the proposal to put low level research reactor waste (and here I'm talking not about fuel rods or something similar but down to ear protection and gloves etc) back into old underground uranium mines. FFS!!
 
We are stuck with the BARRACUDA.

Hmmm... I think a LOT of navies would like to be "stuck" with Barracudas :p

There are worse submarines out there, just ask North Korea.

And now the "tongue-in-cheek" proposal... France is retiring the Rubis nuclear attack subs (except the one that pulled a Bonhomme Richard last year).
How about a mixed fleet of new Barracudas and second-hand Rubis ?
 
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Wow, I can't tell you how much this video depresses me - not the actual video or the narrator, but the fact that this whole important submarine program is obviously more to do with "business" and Australia's own little dirty 'Military/Political Complex' rather than a true fighting vessel for the RAN.

Peter Costello and old mate of Scomo - David Gazard WTF!!!

I truly can't believe after the hard learnt lessons from building the Collins class and the in-depth nature and intent of the Coles Review, we as a nation, as a government and as a Navy could f#@% up this second bite of the cherry!!
I'm now adimit that Australian has lost it's right to build submarines in Australia and that the Collins class should be replaced by an off-the-shelf design, tailored for the RAN's needs.!!!

Regards
Pioneer
Japanese and German options were found not to meet the stated requirements, legacy design features in each (both were the result of continuous evolution over decades) made them less advanced in many ways than the existing Collins Class (which was a clean sheet design from the late 80s early 90s), and more importantly, than the French offering.
I barely know where to begin here. The Collins is an enlarged evolution of Västergötland, with far greater range and completely different combat sytem, and that class is itself an evolution of the earlier Näcken class. It was never a clean-sheet design, or anything like it. The current state of the Collins, which has made a quite proud class out of some pretty questionable early decisions, isn't due to any inherent "advanced" design so much as a multi-national effort to turn them into the effective boats they are today. The idea that Sōryū is "less advanced" than Collins in basic design is fairly silly.
Soryu is an evolution of Barbel, a 1950s US design. According to my contacts, i.e. people still working on subs, they lack the fully rafted design of Collins and include many legacy features that have been superseded in Collins.
Soryu has a far, far superior hullform for Pacific operations and dramatically more modern propulsion than the Collins class. The Collins has good machinery isolation and a better combat system, neither of which is inherent to the design as it existed in the original competition.

Claiming the Collins is simply an enlarged evolution of the Vastergotland is like saying the Boeing 787 is an enlarged evolution of the 737 because they have similar configurations and come from the same designer. The Collins and Gotland have far more features in common and are more closely related as they were designed by the same team at the same time, it is understood in the game that the Collins contract gave Sweden the money they required to design the Gotland. That said, scaling up the Vastergotland is what was sold to the political classes but the issues encountered with the Collins development and build demonstrate just how inaccurate this was.
So Soryu is a Barbel but Collins is SeaQuest DSV because...reasons? The iterative evolution of the JMSDF SSKs is bad and holds them back but the superior Swedish iterative evolution of their SSKs empowers them to make great leaps? The larger dimensions of the Collins aren't the result of a sudden technological breakthrough, and the design is a considerable break from earlier Swedish boats primarily in ways which it has been adapted to the Australian requirements for endurance and range. This is why the Gotland, despite following the Chad Collins, returned to the more compact dimensions favored by the SM.

An example of the fundamental differences can be seen in the welding issues found in the Swedish fabricated sections for the first hull, the design and fabrication techniques required were so different that the highly experienced Swedish sub builders delivered dangerously substandard sections that had to be completely reworked during the first full cycle docking. Ironically the new Australian workforce, which due to its inexperience worked within a much more highly controlled environment as a mitigation to their inexperience, delivered conforming product. Had it been a simple evolution the experienced Kockums fabricators would have had no problems and actually had no issues building the related Gotlands.
This is just fantasy. Type 471 was bid using the same hull SAAB HSLA steel and partial-penetration welding featured on SM boats, after award specifications were changed to full-penetration welds and the steel changed as it was to be supplied by Bisalloy in NSW. Kockums was notified late of the change, thanks to communications issues caused by immense distance between the two countries and tight development timeline, and the steel for Hull 1 was late getting to Sweden. In the resulting rush to meet the delivery deadline work quality took a nosedive. Kockums' engineers, well aware of the issues, recommended delivery be delayed while they corrected the issues but they were overruled in favor of delivering on time and attempting repairs at ASC during assembly. This is partially due to the way the contracting was constructed, Kockums was entitled to be paid for additional time working on a problem at least partially caused by delays due to the steel delivery, but ASC could not bill that to the Australian Government or otherwise recoup the cost.

Ultimately, the ASC repairs during construction failed to address the issues, though it wasn't until the 2001 drydocking showed how bad things were getting that a proper job was done of it. The Kockums-trained ASC workforce was able to produce the remaining hulls with only about 1% of welds failing inspection, of course the construction time for each of those boats was much longer than for Collins herself, reducing the time crunch.

The riskiest path forward is scaling up and down a design. By all means pick and use improved and evolved systems in a new hull, if you have a MOTS solution for the hull that meets requirements then go for that, but if you don't you are better off with a clean sheet for the platform. Anything else is a complex and risky compromise with many unforeseen consequences, as proved by the Collins build.
There are a lot more factors than just scaling, but my point is that you can't credit the Collins as being "more advanced" simply because it is "different." You can absolutely build an "old design" new, just look at China's second Aircraft Carrier, or create a lot of work enlarging something without actually producing the same result as a "clean sheet of paper."

What you have fallen into is the political narrative that a broken design was fixed, rather than the truth known to everyone who has ever worked on a major project, there will always be development issues that need to be addressed, no matter who the designer or who the builder is. In the middle of a review into another project I worked the designer / builder of the product we were building under licence was caught out when we discovered and proved that they had encountered the exact same issue we had during their build, the thing is they had lied to our customer and told them that it was our incompetence and not their design at fault.
I keep myself informed, a "narrative" is one thing but facts are another.

That is the Collins project in a nutshell and the same is happening with the Attack, there are issues that occur on every project that are happening on this one but the narrative, depending on your bias is either Aussies can't build submarines, the French are bullies, should have gone Astute/Virginia/Soryu/Type 214/6 etc.
 
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Seen from the outside (as a simple Pommy) the debate on this procurement on both sides of the argument is a lot more thorough than anything we get in the UK.
Not sure how you'll settle it. But it has been an eye opener.
There is a very big difference between the political and supporting media narrative and the reality seen by the people working on the projects and with the platforms.

Reading the news online during my lunch break one day at work in Adelaide South Australia in the late 2000s I discovered HMAS Farncomb was the only Collins Class boat currently in service and was training off the WA coast. It was an article by the Ian McPhedran News Limiteds senior defence journalist and the main media driver of the anti Collins Brigade, he literally coined the catch phrase "dud subs". I finished my coffee, pulled on my boots and grabbed my hardhat, walked out to the hangars, climbed the scaffolding and boarded HMAS Farncomb, that was at that point several months into a Mid Cycle Docking and the installation of the major replacement combat system and heavy weight torpedo upgrades.

That's why I refer to submarines as a political football, the truth doesn't matter, journalists and politicians say whatever they want and because the the deployments and availability of submarines is classified, no-one in the know can refute any of the fairy land BS that comes out in the media or parliament. The irony is the Federal government bought out Kuckums shares in ASC in the early 2000s and has been the sole owner ever since, they are the owner, the builder, the design authority, and the customer, they appoint the company board (usually political sycophants or even MPs who lost their seats), they set the budget, they decide what work is down and what work isn't, then its all the companies fault, they are the company!

On the Coles Report, I was already on the destroyer project when that kicked off but the chief engineer and I, like many others were ex Collins project, so were across what was happening. the simplest synopsis of the Coles Report was "If you want a fleet of six submarines, you need to fund the sustainment of a fleet of six submarines" and "you have some of the most highly regarded experts in the submarine field working for you, listen to them instead of the bean counters and journalists". The biggest impact of Coles was ASC was finally allowed to conduct availabilities the way that had always wanted to, cut the hull and pull everything out you can pull out and replace as required using a rotable parts pool. Have all the new gear prepped tested and ready before the start of the availability. The result, almost instant turn around on budget, schedule and availability. The reason they didn't do it earlier, the government didn't trust ASC and didn't approve the required changes until a consultant from overseas told them the same thing.

The joke is ASC is like the United Nations, they have always hired the best and brightest from around the world, but to get the security clearance to do their jobs they have to become citizens. They as newly minted Australians apparently forgot everything they had ever known about submarines and instantly became incompetent, the lucky ones returned to their birth countries, suddenly regained all the knowledge and experience they lost in Australia and entered senior roles on national submarine projects.
 
Wow, I can't tell you how much this video depresses me - not the actual video or the narrator, but the fact that this whole important submarine program is obviously more to do with "business" and Australia's own little dirty 'Military/Political Complex' rather than a true fighting vessel for the RAN.

Peter Costello and old mate of Scomo - David Gazard WTF!!!

I truly can't believe after the hard learnt lessons from building the Collins class and the in-depth nature and intent of the Coles Review, we as a nation, as a government and as a Navy could f#@% up this second bite of the cherry!!
I'm now adimit that Australian has lost it's right to build submarines in Australia and that the Collins class should be replaced by an off-the-shelf design, tailored for the RAN's needs.!!!

Regards
Pioneer
Japanese and German options were found not to meet the stated requirements, legacy design features in each (both were the result of continuous evolution over decades) made them less advanced in many ways than the existing Collins Class (which was a clean sheet design from the late 80s early 90s), and more importantly, than the French offering.
I barely know where to begin here. The Collins is an enlarged evolution of Västergötland, with far greater range and completely different combat sytem, and that class is itself an evolution of the earlier Näcken class. It was never a clean-sheet design, or anything like it. The current state of the Collins, which has made a quite proud class out of some pretty questionable early decisions, isn't due to any inherent "advanced" design so much as a multi-national effort to turn them into the effective boats they are today. The idea that Sōryū is "less advanced" than Collins in basic design is fairly silly.
Soryu is an evolution of Barbel, a 1950s US design. According to my contacts, i.e. people still working on subs, they lack the fully rafted design of Collins and include many legacy features that have been superseded in Collins.
Soryu has a far, far superior hullform for Pacific operations and dramatically more modern propulsion than the Collins class. The Collins has good machinery isolation and a better combat system, neither of which is inherent to the design as it existed in the original competition.

Claiming the Collins is simply an enlarged evolution of the Vastergotland is like saying the Boeing 787 is an enlarged evolution of the 737 because they have similar configurations and come from the same designer. The Collins and Gotland have far more features in common and are more closely related as they were designed by the same team at the same time, it is understood in the game that the Collins contract gave Sweden the money they required to design the Gotland. That said, scaling up the Vastergotland is what was sold to the political classes but the issues encountered with the Collins development and build demonstrate just how inaccurate this was.
So Soryu is a Barbel but Collins is SeaQuest DSV because...reasons? The iterative evolution of the JMSDF SSKs is bad and holds them back but the superior Swedish iterative evolution of their SSKs empowers them to make great leaps? The larger dimensions of the Collins aren't the result of a sudden technological breakthrough, and the design is a considerable break from earlier Swedish boats primarily in ways which it has been adapted to the Australian requirements for endurance and range. This is why the Gotland, despite following the Chad Collins, returned to the more compact dimensions favored by the SM.

An example of the fundamental differences can be seen in the welding issues found in the Swedish fabricated sections for the first hull, the design and fabrication techniques required were so different that the highly experienced Swedish sub builders delivered dangerously substandard sections that had to be completely reworked during the first full cycle docking. Ironically the new Australian workforce, which due to its inexperience worked within a much more highly controlled environment as a mitigation to their inexperience, delivered conforming product. Had it been a simple evolution the experienced Kockums fabricators would have had no problems and actually had no issues building the related Gotlands.
This is just fantasy. Type 471 was bid using the same hull SAAB HSLA steel and partial-penetration welding featured on SM boats, after award specifications were changed to full-penetration welds and the steel changed as it was to be supplied by Bisalloy in NSW. Kockums was notified late of the change, thanks to communications issues caused by immense distance between the two countries and tight development timeline, and the steel for Hull 1 was late getting to Sweden. In the resulting rush to meet the delivery deadline work quality took a nosedive. Kockums' engineers, well aware of the issues, recommended delivery be delayed while they corrected the issues but they were overruled in favor of delivering on time and attempting repairs at ASC during assembly. This is partially due to the way the contracting was constructed, Kockums was entitled to be paid for additional time working on a problem at least partially caused by delays due to the steel delivery, but ASC could not bill that to the Australian Government or otherwise recoup the cost.

Ultimately, the ASC repairs during construction failed to address the issues, though it wasn't until the 2001 drydocking showed how bad things were getting that a proper job was done of it. The Kockums-trained ASC workforce was able to produce the remaining hulls with only about 1% of welds failing inspection, of course the construction time for each of those boats was much longer than for Collins herself, reducing the time crunch.

The riskiest path forward is scaling up and down a design. By all means pick and use improved and evolved systems in a new hull, if you have a MOTS solution for the hull that meets requirements then go for that, but if you don't you are better off with a clean sheet for the platform. Anything else is a complex and risky compromise with many unforeseen consequences, as proved by the Collins build.
There are a lot more factors than just scaling, but my point is that you can't credit the Collins as being "more advanced" simply because it is "different." You can absolutely build an "old design" new, just look at China's second Aircraft Carrier, or create a lot of work enlarging something without actually producing the same result as a "clean sheet of paper."

What you have fallen into is the political narrative that a broken design was fixed, rather than the truth known to everyone who has ever worked on a major project, there will always be development issues that need to be addressed, no matter who the designer or who the builder is. In the middle of a review into another project I worked the designer / builder of the product we were building under licence was caught out when we discovered and proved that they had encountered the exact same issue we had during their build, the thing is they had lied to our customer and told them that it was our incompetence and not their design at fault.
I keep myself informed, a "narrative" is one thing but facts are another.

That is the Collins project in a nutshell and the same is happening with the Attack, there are issues that occur on every project that are happening on this one but the narrative, depending on your bias is either Aussies can't build submarines, the French are bullies, should have gone Astute/Virginia/Soryu/Type 214/6 etc.
I keep myself informed as well though I haven't worked on subs in just over a decade. Keeping myself informed includes regular discussions with senior people working on Attacks and Collins, including backgrounding them on new hires they are looking at and providing leeds for difficult to fill engineering specialties. No I'm not in labour hire or recruiting, I just happen to work in an environment where I come across a lot of different people, including some quite exceptional ones whose skills are being badly under utilised.

Would love to get back in the game but geography makes that impossible and changing geography doesn't fit family needs so I will continue in the world of clerical engineering, being continually amazed at how quickly incompetent, unaccountable managers can ruin a contract when there is no-one more senior around to rein them in.

We obviously have a difference of opinion on this but if your name isn't Gary, Andrew, Bill, Steve, Simon, Hans, Margaret or Paul (just to name a few) we will have to agree to disagree. I have had senior people explain things to me in great detail in a highly plausible manner then discovered they were talking out their backside when I have drilled down to find the root cause and fix the problem. I have been right and I have been wrong, but I have learned how to get pretty good at working out who actually knows what they are talking about and where and how to find the required information, an advantage of being autistic. By the way, I have seen the 3D model of the welds replaced on Collins FCD1, it was an eye opener, it was virtually a structural model of the Kockums sections with a handful of random welds showing elsewhere.
 
Volkodav
Your posts show how essential this site for those of us who are "laymen". Though as a former civil servant I recognise much of what you describe as all too familiar.
 
Volkodav
Your posts show how essential this site for those of us who are "laymen". Though as a former civil servant I recognise much of what you describe as all too familiar.
I am no expert, rather someone from a trade / technical, then systems engineering background, who has had exposure to many different aspects of a couple of projects. I have never gone to the depth that many others have and they can easily talk rings around me on specific details, I mean we had a principle technical officer who specialised solely in fixtures and Loctite for pressure hull applications, even the Principle Naval Architect deferred to him on his specialty.

That's what most people don't get, anyone who claims to know it all is delusional, the human brain just can't hold, let alone retrieve it all. As such, most of us either specialise or become generalists who are able to identify which specialists are required and know where (or at least who) to look to find the definitive answer. I suck at rote learning and regurgitating verbatim, but am competent at identifying, classifying and deferring to greater expertise. Those with greater expertise have made it clear to me on many occasions that the Collins is in many ways superior to the Soryu, including acoustic signature, and the Soryu has retained elements from the old design it was evolved from that are less advanced than the Collins.

I suppose one way to look at it is the Soryu is a fleet submarine evolved through multiple iterations from a fleet submarine, the Barbel. i.e. the Barbel is grandads axe with a wooden handle and a steel head, while Soryu has a composite handle and an advanced alloy stainless steel head, but it is still an axe, a much better one but still basically the same. Collins on the other hand is an advanced axe, but it was evolved from grandads much smaller hatchet, looks similar but is quite different.

One of the greatest ironies is the Dutch Walrus Class, itself evolved from Barbel, was in many ways a better option than the Type 471 from Kockums, it even had a highly usable combat system that was a much better option than the original Rockwell fiasco. I suspect however, due to politics, even had the submarine project had a miraculous run, delivered on schedule and budget, and exceeded performance expectations, irrespective of the selected design, problems would have still been found and exploited to fit the narrative that we should have done something else instead.
 
We are stuck with the BARRACUDA.

Hmmm... I think a LOT of navies would like to be "stuck" with Barracudas :p

There are worse submarines out there, just ask North Korea.

And now the tongue-in-cheek proposal... France is retiring the Rubis nuclear attack subs (except the one that pulled a Bonhomme Richard last year).
How about a mixed fleet of new Barracudas and second-hand Rubis ?
Archibald, did you read what I said about nuclear boats for downunder? It appears not. Nuclear boats have all sorts of problems associated with them, ranging from the need for nuclear engineers and technicians to run their reactors through to a need for a nuclear industry to service their reactors and someplace, secure, to store their reactors once their lives are over. Australia has long had a history of anti-nuclear feelings in our population, both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground and relatively close and more recent use of Moruroa atoll as a testing ground. We are hardly likely to purchase a nuclear powered boat from France. Particularly one which was rejected by the Canadians,

The Rubis-class as designed failed to meet the Canadian Statement of Requirement (SOR) as it was noisy underwater and slow. It also came with the caveat that the first 4-5 submarines would have to be built in France. Unlike the British Trafalgar-class, the Rubis design did not require USA permission to transfer the nuclear propulsion technology, as the Americans were certain to invoke their veto of the sale to Canada. The French brought back a revision to their design, added an "ice pick" so the submarine could operate under ice and were developing a modification for their torpedo tubes which were too short to use the Mark 48 torpedoes.[8] The purchase was finally abandoned in April 1989 due to high costs, particularly with the end of the Cold War.


AMETHYSTE rebuild​

The initial design of the Rubis proved to be problematic with unexpectedly high noise levels. This led to the Améthyste silencing program (AMÉlioration Tactique HYdrodynamique Silence Transmission Ecoute, literally Silent Acoustic Transmission Tactical Hydrodynamic Improvement) which was applied to the fifth (S605 Améthyste) and sixth (S606 Perle) hulls.

Améthyste and Perle were both longer that the original Rubis, 73.6 metres (241 ft) as compared with 72 metres (236 ft) and the program included upgrades to the sonar, reshaping of the hull form and bow to improve silencing and additional upgrades of the electronics. With the upgrades tested and proven, the original 4 boats were rebuilt to the same standards between 1989 and 1995.
[Source]

Nuclear submarines are noisier in themselves, compared to conventional powered ones. Australia has operated the Oberon class and one of those (HMAS OVENS) during a joint exercise with the US Navy basically "sunk" the USS Enterprise a CVN carrier in Kangaroo 2. She entered Sydney Harbour flying a broom from her attack mast. COLLINS class were designed to be twice as quiet as the O Class boats. COLLINS failed to be twice as quiet but she is nearly as quiet. We are hardly going to replace the COLLINS class with a boat as noisy it appears the Rubis is.

Australia suffers from a media much dominated by the Murdock press. They love to publish basically bullshit as Voladov has indicated about the ADF. Take anything they have published with a big handful of salt.
 
both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
Australia has operated the Oberon class and one of those (HMAS OVENS) during a joint exercise with the US Navy basically "sunk" the USS Enterprise a CVN carrier in Kangaroo 2.
For some context, this incident occurred in October 1976, over 44yrs ago!
 
both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
Of course it was done with the permission of the Australian Government of the day, lead by an Australian who once declared that he was "British to his bootstraps" in Parliament. Australia was once led by a sycophantic group of Politicians and scientists who didn't believe anything the UK did was possibly bad. The Royal Commission undertaken in the 1980s discovered that the Chief Australian Scientist Earnest Titterton was "more British than Australian."

Australia has operated the Oberon class and one of those (HMAS OVENS) during a joint exercise with the US Navy basically "sunk" the USS Enterprise a CVN carrier in Kangaroo 2.
For some context, this incident occurred in October 1976, over 44yrs ago!

Still relevant. The US Navy likes to portray itself as being the most advanced in the world. Unfortunately, that reputation is all too often betrayed by the sailors who fail to detect submarines. First the RAN's and then the PLAN's.
 
both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
I heard this done at least partly with idea towards providing Australia with nuclear weapons. But then the US stepped in to prevent another wave of nuclear proliferation.
 
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both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
I heard this done at least partly with idea towards providing Australia with nuclear weapons. But then the US step in to prevent another wave of nuclear proliferation.

Not to stop proliferation at all. What happened was the UK was barred from sharing the US's nuclear secrets. So it embarked on it's own nuclear search. As part of that, it was decided to include Commonwealth nations in the programme. Australia was the main one. It was, in return for allowing the UK to test it's bombs downunder, to share in the secrets that were revealed. It created the ANU (to train the physicists and engineers), the Snow Mountain Hydro Scheme (to provide power to enrich Uranium), Rum Jungle and other mines (to mine Uranium) and the test sites for the UK to use to test it's bombs. The US reversed it's decision on the proviso that the UK not share the secrets with anybody. Australia was not trusted, believed to be riddled with Soviet spies (the Petrov affair) and so they were barred from receiving any nuclear secrets. So, effectively, the US invited the UK into it's nuclear club and shut the door on them sharing any secrets.
 
both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
Of course it was done with the permission of the Australian Government of the day, lead by an Australian who once declared that he was "British to his bootstraps" in Parliament. Australia was once led by a sycophantic group of Politicians and scientists who didn't believe anything the UK did was possibly bad. The Royal Commission undertaken in the 1980s discovered that the Chief Australian Scientist Earnest Titterton was "more British than Australian."

Australia has operated the Oberon class and one of those (HMAS OVENS) during a joint exercise with the US Navy basically "sunk" the USS Enterprise a CVN carrier in Kangaroo 2.
For some context, this incident occurred in October 1976, over 44yrs ago!

Still relevant. The US Navy likes to portray itself as being the most advanced in the world. Unfortunately, that reputation is all too often betrayed by the sailors who fail to detect submarines. First the RAN's and then the PLAN's.
All that proves is that diesel-electric subs have a huge advantage, not that the USN is bad.
 
both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
Of course it was done with the permission of the Australian Government of the day, lead by an Australian who once declared that he was "British to his bootstraps" in Parliament. Australia was once led by a sycophantic group of Politicians and scientists who didn't believe anything the UK did was possibly bad. The Royal Commission undertaken in the 1980s discovered that the Chief Australian Scientist Earnest Titterton was "more British than Australian."

Australia has operated the Oberon class and one of those (HMAS OVENS) during a joint exercise with the US Navy basically "sunk" the USS Enterprise a CVN carrier in Kangaroo 2.
For some context, this incident occurred in October 1976, over 44yrs ago!

Still relevant. The US Navy likes to portray itself as being the most advanced in the world. Unfortunately, that reputation is all too often betrayed by the sailors who fail to detect submarines. First the RAN's and then the PLAN's.
All that proves is that diesel-electric subs have a huge advantage, not that the USN is bad.
Yes and no. Yes it proves that conventional powered submarines are better than nuclear powered ones. No, it doesn't prove that the US Navy is all that bad, just foolish enough to believe it is better than it is...
 
both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
Of course it was done with the permission of the Australian Government of the day, lead by an Australian who once declared that he was "British to his bootstraps" in Parliament. Australia was once led by a sycophantic group of Politicians and scientists who didn't believe anything the UK did was possibly bad. The Royal Commission undertaken in the 1980s discovered that the Chief Australian Scientist Earnest Titterton was "more British than Australian."
Still basically blaming the British aren't you. Pathetic!


Australia has operated the Oberon class and one of those (HMAS OVENS) during a joint exercise with the US Navy basically "sunk" the USS Enterprise a CVN carrier in Kangaroo 2.
For some context, this incident occurred in October 1976, over 44yrs ago!

Still relevant. The US Navy likes to portray itself as being the most advanced in the world. Unfortunately, that reputation is all too often betrayed by the sailors who fail to detect submarines. First the RAN's and then the PLAN's.
How is something 44 yrs ago using a design from over 60yrs ago have relevance to a design for a new submarine designed to enter service in another 10yrs? I might as well complain that the F-35 is useless because it uses air-to-air missiles because everyone knows missiles from 1960 were poor performers.
 
both from the British use of our continent as a testing ground
Again, please acknowledge that this was done with the with the permission of the Australian gov't at the time.
Of course it was done with the permission of the Australian Government of the day, lead by an Australian who once declared that he was "British to his bootstraps" in Parliament. Australia was once led by a sycophantic group of Politicians and scientists who didn't believe anything the UK did was possibly bad. The Royal Commission undertaken in the 1980s discovered that the Chief Australian Scientist Earnest Titterton was "more British than Australian."
Still basically blaming the British aren't you. Pathetic!
And why not? The A-Bombs were for their use exclusively and Australia was, in their opinion, only an empty land worth dropping the A-Bombs on to test them. The Australian Government believed they were going to basically be given Atomic secrets which the British encouraged. We paid the price. If they had tested their bombs in the UK, I'd have been perfectly for them to do it...
Australia has operated the Oberon class and one of those (HMAS OVENS) during a joint exercise with the US Navy basically "sunk" the USS Enterprise a CVN carrier in Kangaroo 2.
For some context, this incident occurred in October 1976, over 44yrs ago!

Still relevant. The US Navy likes to portray itself as being the most advanced in the world. Unfortunately, that reputation is all too often betrayed by the sailors who fail to detect submarines. First the RAN's and then the PLAN's.
How is something 44 yrs ago using a design from over 60yrs ago have relevance to a design for a new submarine designed to enter service in another 10yrs? I might as well complain that the F-35 is useless because it uses air-to-air missiles because everyone knows missiles from 1960 were poor performers.
It was demonstration of what conventional powered submarines are capable of. Perhaps you'd prefer I illustrated it with the Swedish submarine foxing the US Navy from a few years ago? Alternatively I suppose I could have talked about the PLAN's encounter with a US Navy Carrier in the South China Sea?
 
Technically diesel subs have been sinking carriers since 17th September 1939.

Actually a nuke sub has yet to sink anything (though alarmingly more than a few have sunk themselves and a few have rammed fishing boats and ferries).

Get back to being serious, I don't know how Australia will extricate itself from this mess. There seems to be blame on both sides (customer and supplier). It might just be a case of shelling out the cash and see what happens. It might all work out fine in the end with a capable submarine.
Like all niche defence products, trying to keep home-grown expertise is hard when you buy half a dozen of something once every three decades.
 
 
i read that news and wonder... if 1600-1800 ton class as U-214 would be enough as interim....
 
I can’t imagine the RAN will abandon all its requirements like that. Honestly I can’t imagine they back out of the deal unless they are willing to scrap the requirements that production occurs in Oz. At this point anything but a direct buy of Soryus is pretty much dead on arrival.

I always wondered why they didn’t go for an improved Collins as a more modest production goal; after the propulsion and FC issues were resolved they became uniquely capable boats.
 
Be careful to not take things at face value. There might be some deliberate signaling going on here...
That's my take on it too but then again we did have a cabinet reshuffle and a few people trying to make their mark. I don't think anyone would actually set the project back another several years but who knows, a previous government did try to scrap the Collins in favour of buying the Upholders from the Rn before Canada did.
 
Be careful to not take things at face value. There might be some deliberate signaling going on here...
That's my take on it too but then again we did have a cabinet reshuffle and a few people trying to make their mark. I don't think anyone would actually set the project back another several years but who knows, a previous government did try to scrap the Collins in favour of buying the Upholders from the Rn before Canada did.
As bad as it might sound, the Canadians took a bullet for us in that deal. The Upholders have turned into a bit of a disaster for them.
 
I wouldn't be surprised for that pathetic affair to end with something like "Oh the Collins are not so bad after all, let's extend their lives by a decade or more"

Considering how much maligned the poor things were 25 years ago when they entered service and over the next decade - my irony counter has just blown off scale; well past the proverbial "up to eleven" (Spinal Tap, how we love you).

And thus a decade in the future, circa 2031, the "collins replacement affair" will start all over again with everybody having conveniently forgot the lessons - or blaming "the goddam french".

(Grabs popcorn and waits for the next developments)
 
Did the RAN ever consider just building a follow on Collins?
I believe the Australian government went out of it's way to exclude a Swedish submission from the get-go - Politics 101!!

Hopefully the following article might give some insight:




Regards
Pioneer
 
Okaaaay so, to the controversial-and-expensive Collins, and the expensive-and-controversial French submarines, they will add interim German submarines.

To spoof Star Wars cult punchline "I have a bad feeling about this..." :eek::eek:
 
Presumably the French boats would be dropped if German ones were adopted?
 
No idea if it is "only a stopgap" or "let's look for an alternative".

In the second case, I cannot help thinking that, after the Swedes on the Collins and the French now, it will be the Germans turn to take the blame... we will see.

Note that, as far as SSK major players are concerned, if the RAAN screws (or anger or reject, pick your choice) the Germans like the two others before them - they will be left only with Japan and The Netherlands.
 
I hope they will reconsider a home grown product, it might save some pride, especially if they can drop the self interest aspects of this type of project and actually get what they need rather than what some people want. I would ask any board that decides this issue, "Which of these projects would you send your kids into harms way in"?
 

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