Pacific 2010: Full steam ahead for AWD | ADM Dec 09/Jan 10

Julian Kerr | Sydney

The $14 million crane will tower over ASC's shipyard at Osborne on the outskirts of Adelaide and will have a boom nearly 100 metres in length.

Its maximum capacity of 900 tonnes will enable it to lift and manoeuvre with ease the pre-outfitted blocks weighing up to 250 tonnes each from which the three 6,250-tonne Hobart-class AWDs will be constructed.

Contracts for the construction of the blocks themselves caused the only obvious bump in the smooth progress of the program to date when BAE Systems Australia announced in June that it would be building a total of 36 blocks for all three destroyers, comprising the hull machinery compartments and the bow and stern sections of each ship.

This work had previously been awarded by the AWD Alliance, comprising the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), ASC and Raytheon Australia, to Cairns-based NQEA, which subsequently advised it was restructuring its business and needed more time to meet its financial obligations.

The 36 blocks will be manufactured at BAE Systems Defence's shipyard at Williamstown.

According to the company, the work is worth $300 million and will secure the positions of 400 employees for the next five years.

The Forgacs group, based at Newcastle, is to build 27 blocks worth about $150 million and the remaining 24 centre modules, containing the most sensitive equipment, will be constructed by ASC at Osborne.

When completed the Forgacs and BAE Systems' blocks will be transported by ship or barge to the ASC facility where block erection and integration will take place.

Work began in October on the construction of so-called ‘pilot blocks' at Osborne and Williamtown.

As of December ASC had completed and BAE Systems had nearly completed platecutting and plate fabrication and were in the process of proving block assembly.

Forgacs was gearing up to do the same.

John Gallacher, Chief Executive of the AWD Alliance, told ADM that the purpose of the pilot process was to test the systems by which blueprints completed in Spain by ship designer Navantia were electronically transferred to Australia and then distributed to different sites and converted into CAM data for plate cutting.

"As you'd expect you get some problems with data transfers or things that don't quite fit but that's why you do a pilot, and it's actually gone very well," he commented.

Looming in the first week of December was the Critical Design Review (CDR), a process described by Gallacher as determining whether the AWD design - based on that of the Spanish Navy's F-100 guided missile frigate - was sufficiently defined and mature to move into production.

The review was to be conducted jointly by the Alliance and a Commonwealth team comprising the DMO and external stakeholders such as Capability Development and regulators.

While the whole-system CDR represents a crucial program milestone, the chances of it uncovering a neglected or faulty area seem slight, given a two-month buildup of lead-in reviews in which the DMO, as part of the Alliance, was actively involved.

"We've had a lead-in review with Navantia on the design, with the combat system team and its various elements, with the shipbuilding guys and the various elements they need to contribute to it," Gallacher said.

"All these processes have had extensive preparation and reviews that build up to the CDR itself.

"The lead-ins are intended to take the first look at each area in terms of all the checklists we do, and they effectively weed out actions and other things that need to be closed out to do the formal review.

"We've already completed the actual CDR for the design and for the combat system, and now all that is brought together in the whole-system review."

The CDR would be judged successful if the reviewing panel was either happy for production to proceed based on what had been reviewed, or, alternatively, for production to proceed subject to any actions being closed by a certain date, Gallacher said.

Contracts signed in May mean that the Alliance has in place agreements for the majority of the AWDs' combat systems.

The latest contracts comprised a $40 million agreement with Raytheon Missile Systems for the Phalanx Block 1B close-in weapons system to provide terminal defence against anti-ship missiles and other threats that penetrate other fleet defences.

Phalanx Block 1B is in many respects a new generation weapon with many enhancements over the Block 1A currently in service with the RAN.

These include a new integrated forward looking infrared system (FLIR) and optimised gun barrels that allow the weapon to be used against littoral warfare threats such as helicopters and small, high-speed boats.

Mk 32 Mod9 torpedo launch tubes to deploy the Eurotorp MU90 lightweight torpedo are to be provided by Adelaide-based Babcock Strachan and Henshaw Australia under a $10 million contract.

Yet to be selected are the ships' external and international communications equipment and their Electronic Warfare (EW) suite.

Gallacher said decisions on these will not be made until late in the first quarter of 2010, but baseline solutions had been incorporated in the platform design for CDR purposes.

The EW system will comprise electronic attack jammers, electronic support sensors, countermeasures launchers for infrared and chaff cartridges, the Australian-developed Nulka hovering decoy system, and a subsystem control system.

The full system is required to intercept radar and radio frequency emissions via passive means (ESM); identify, classify and track emissions; deny hostile platforms access to accurate own-platform surveillance radar information by using microwave electronic attack to jam or deceive the radar; and deny hostile platforms access to RF communications data by using sub-microwave electronic attack to jam receivers.

Competing are Elisra Electronic Systems of Israel, Thales Australia, ITT Corporation of the US and Indra Sistemas AS of Spain teamed with BAE Systems Australia, which retains the domestic defence industry's strongest EW capability.

Challenges faced by the AWD program were set out in the DMO's Major Projects Report published in November, among them the need to achieve a mature design on schedule including the successful integration of the Australianised weapons and sensor package in the existing platform.

In Gallacher's view, achieving this objective to date has been a result of the close working relationship in place with Navantia and the US Navy (USN).

"Developing such relationships is absolutely critical to major endeavours; we really have put a lot of effort into this," he said.

"Navantia is not officially within the Alliance framework and the USN has a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) contract with the Commonwealth, but we made it an objective from Day One to treat them both as part of the Alliance.

"We've got an FMS director who would normally be sitting in a Commonwealth office somewhere but he's sitting within our team in Adelaide and interfacing directly with the USN which means it's not being done centrally and we've got management oversight, control, review and responsibility.

"Navantia's design contract is with the Commonwealth but from a day-to-day management point of view, interfacing with Navantia, reviewing their design, approving their design, it's all done within the Alliance."

Gallacher said Navantia's design strategy for the F-100, and consequently the AWD, was built around the 29 blocks in each ship.

However, the Spanish company assembled their ships on a slipway whereas the AWDs would be assembled at Osborne on a level dry berth.

"This means we can install more equipment, we can do more alignments, although not the final combat system alignments until we're in the water," he said.

"We do have an agreement with Navantia that we follow their build strategy as closely as possible but we do tweak it because of the nature of our environment here."

About 800 staff are currently involved in the AWD program, all of whom are in Adelaide apart from a 100-strong cell in Sydney and a small resident team in Spain.

Most of these involve project management and engineering staff, and the ramp up of production personnel would begin from early next year.

The Alliance will eventually employ about 1,400 staff, with BAE Systems and Forgacs employing about 450 workers on block construction and another 150 being accounted for with miscellaneous subcontractors, Gallacher said.

The first AWD is scheduled for delivery to the RAN in December 2014 , the second in early 2016 and the last ship in June 2017, although Gallacher said the Alliance was hoping to improve on that timetable.

It would be in its interest to do so, since the two industry members of the Alliance stand to benefit from financial incentives linked to key performance indicators and early provisional acceptance of the ships.