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AdelaideNow:
Collins Class a Triumph
DEREK WOOLNER
May 12, 2008 12:15am
PEOPLE in the street and some sections of the media
dismiss the navy's Adelaide-built Collins Class submarines as
monumental duds.
In stark contrast, most insiders
we interviewed, as the authors of the history of the project,
consider them a naval engineering triumph and a monument of
Australian nation-building.
From its inception in 1978 the project was seldom far from
controversy and it was mercilessly attacked by the media and the
Howard government for a myriad of technical failings – real,
exaggerated and imagined.
It is widely believed to have been a financial disaster,
yet it is one of the few
military purchases where the original budget was still relevant at
the end of the project.
Further, Australian
industry responded successfully to the challenge of building
submarines in this country, an achievement widely believed to be
beyond Australian capabilities and one in which many other
countries have failed disastrously.
During the 1970s the Australian Navy operated British-built
Oberon diesel-electric submarines on some of the most secret
intelligence-gathering missions of the ColdWar.
Nuclear submarines lacked the stealth for these covert
operations, and the U.S. Navy encouraged Australian military
planners and politicians to maintain the long-range
intelligence-gathering capability in the Oberons' successor
vessels.
At the same time the Australian submariners developed convincing
arguments that submarines were the most effective vessels for use
in long-range offensive operations in enemy waters.
Thus was born the desire to build the most modern long-range
conventional submarine in the world.
Modernity would be attained through a then-revolutionary idea:
Instead of taking whatever options for a combat system came with
the design, the navy would specify the combat system which best met
its needs and this would be developed separately from the
submarine.
Further, following intense debate, it was decided to build the
submarines in Adelaide as a focus for industrial regeneration and
to provide better long-term maintenance and support than was
usually received from overseas shipyards.
These factors determined
the nature of the Collins project. To U.S. submariner Admiral Phil
Davis, the project was a huge undertaking, a "monumental
feat".
"There is really nothing
in the history of submarine construction that has been done like
that," he said of the transformation of a small Swedish submarine
into a "radical new design", built 18,000km from the designer's
office "in a new yard with a new workforce".
Amazingly, the project's
objectives were largely delivered. Today, the Australian Navy
operates sophisticated long-range submarines.
Peter Sinclair, the first skipper of HMAS Collins, who has wide
experience with other conventional submarines, believes the Collins
is more capable than any conventional submarine at sea, with a
turning circle second to none and "super quiet at slow speed,
quieter than anything else in the world".
Few thought that
Australia's recession-ravaged industries of the early 1980s could
build a submarine. Yet, with the introduction of modern techniques
that accompanied the project, over 70 per cent of its value was
produced in Australia by hundreds of subcontractors who embraced
the exacting defence quality standards. The welding standards
remain some of the best achieved in the world.
THE project suffered its
share of problems but the only surprise, given the ambition of the
project, was that they were not better
anticipated.
With problems overcome through some remarkable defence science
and assistance from the U.S., the submarines were delivered close
to budget and an average of 26 months behind schedule.
This is one of the
shortest delays with any military purchase and remarkable for the
largest systems integration project in Australian
history.
The persisting failure has been the combat system, a testament
to both the inadequacies of some of the world's major arms
corporations and the unchecked ambition of Australian
submariners.
Even this disaster was salvaged by the expertise and ingenuity of
Australia's project engineers and defence scientists, cobbling
together a system to provide an acceptable
performance.
Derek Woolner is an expert on defence procurement
projects, and is Visiting Fellow at the Strategic and Defence
Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He is
co-author, with Peter Yule, of The Collins Class Submarine Story –
Steel, Spies and Spin.
