By Alastair Cooper
Vice Admiral Peter Jones gave a typically insightful view of Australia’s manufacturing capability and shipbuilding capacity at the Australian Naval Institute’s most recent Goldrick Seminar – a copy of his speech is here.
The combination of these two issues – manufacturing and warship construction – is one of the biggest issues for the Australian Defence Force. Yes, the Government has committed to a continuous shipbuilding program, for the future surface combatants at least and a decision on submarines will happen soon. But the elephant in the room is that we’ve been here before. The question is can we – the Navy, the ADF and the Government – stick to a program which yields value and benefits over decades? We’ve been building ships the hard way for so long (start, stop, start, stop in small numbers of different designs) that the Australian collective understanding of what is possible is very limited. Can we now maintain the direction that was set in 2015?
The value and efficiencies to be found in a continuous shipbuilding program (and not just continuous building, but continuous design effort as well) are very well known. All serious navies know and understand them. A continuous shipbuilding program is a fundamental input into Australia’s defence capability – one that will grow in value over time.
As the current Chief of Navy and Vice Admiral Jones have pointed out, deterrence, lethality, availability, sustainability and affordability are all connected. A continuous shipbuilding program is a vital part of the defence capability which links them together. And that is something we should all be able to advocate.
I agree with Peter Jones comments. Especially since Australia decided to go it alone with unique classes of ships and submarines, albeit derived from overseas designs, it was incumbent of governments to establish, nurture and sustain a world-class shipbuilding industry in-country to deliver, support and maintain the required availability of the operational capability. Intrinsic in such an environment, is the cost of “parenting” any such class of platform designed to meet Australia’s often unique capability requirements, costs which were not adequately funded in the COLLINS program, for example. While these costs have to be paid, they can become significantly more economical over time by continuous activity.
Australia still faces a commitment it should have made some decades ago.