Editorial: A new definition of home | ADM Apr 2010
Katherine Ziesing | Canberra
As Defence and Industry prepare to reform how various ship classes are maintained and undergo repairs under the new batching concept, it may be worthwhile examining the home port concept.
As DMO's head of maritime systems RADM Peter Marshall explains, it is a Navy concept that is very important to Navy sailors.
No one wants to work far away from his or her home and family and yet this is exactly what happens; it's the nature of the uniformed job.
But does home port have to be home for sailors?
Defence has already begun experimenting with skeleton crews on board ships while in port for maintenance, giving crew the opportunity to take on other tasks.
Do full crews really need to be on hand while the ship is being repaired?
A fly in fly out approach could service the capability just as well.
Moving costs for a two to three-year posting would be about the same as the flights, commercial or military, around the nation over the same period.
Families would not have to move every few years, a disruption that causes much angst.
Business as usual cannot go on, nor should it.
As the capability evolves, so should the management of the people and structures around it.
As reported earlier in ADM, LHD 01 is due to be launched in March 2011, less than a year away, and ready for the RAN in 2014.
But where is her crew?
Have they any access to equipment, simulated or otherwise, that they will be using on board?
Are they trained?
The LHD build program may be head of schedule but arguably the training for the men and women from the different services that will run this game changing capability are still at large.
As Chief of Navy VADM Russ Crane pointed out at Pacific2010 in January, "There is currently no formal assessment process to determine the readiness and/or preparedness of our amphibious capability, and there needs to be."
There are so many projects and Defence elements affected by the LHD that it could be hard to bind them into a coherent whole.
The effects on basing, training, logistics and through life support are huge and are still being examined but all by different teams, services and processes.
The LHD has the potential to fundamentally change the way the Army and Navy work together on all these fronts but only if the opportunity is embraced.
Joined-up acquisition
Gregor Ferguson | Sydney
The recent decision that the new Naval Combat Helicopter under Phase 8 of Project Air 9000 would be chosen after a competitive tender represents a victory for "joined-up acquisition" - for coherent policy and process.
Coming after a similar decision to open up Phase 4 of Land 121 - Overlander to local bids, it also highlights a lingering contradiction between the defence capability development and acquisition communities.
It's easy to sympathise with advocates of a sole-source, off-the-shelf acquisition, especially where an obvious and adequate solution is available at relatively low risk.
But it can be dangerous to take the path of least resistance.
Notwithstanding the sole-source C-17 Globemaster III acquisition, it's dangerous to assume that an obvious solution is necessarily the correct one - especially when the relative merits of the two helicopters under consideration are so asymmetric.
It's been easy in the past to accuse the Defence Materiel Organisation of pursuing competition blindly for its own sake.
Applied incorrectly, this approach can harm the ADF by presenting inappropriate choices (such as the Super Seasprite helicopter) or damage the local industry base by trying to maintain artificially some competitive tension between sub-optimal, uncompetitive companies in defiance of market forces which would drive controlled rationalisation.
However, simply acquiring equipment off the shelf, almost on an ad hoc basis, can also result in a flawed outcome with a diversified fleet of small numbers of different equipment, fragmented and uneconomical training, logistics and support arrangements and earlier obsolescence.
That said, the short-term, off-the-shelf approach is demonstrably the correct one for Rapid Acquisition Projects which fall outside the DCP.
In Air 9000 Ph.8 the choice is between two very good and quite different aircraft; this wasn't the case with the C-17.
The decision to hold a competitive tender is an example of joined-up acquisition: it enables the contenders to be compared dispassionately.
However, the fact that Defence felt a choice in this case between holding a competitive tender and acquiring a new helicopter on a sole-source basis suggests the measures of project success used by the separate players differ quite significantly, and Defence is still struggling to develop a holistic approach that reconciles all of the conflicting agendas while avoiding unwanted outcomes.