Project Review: Riding the shipbuilding wave | ADM Dec 2010/Jan 2011

Not since the 1980s and early 1990s has Australia seen two major ship construction programs under way simultaneously.

Back then it was the ANZAC frigates and Collins-class submarines; today it is the Hobart-class AWDs and Canberra-class LHDs.

Industry is riding a new cycle of activity.

Gregor Ferguson | Sydney

Shortly before this edition of ADM closed for press, BAE Systems Australia began work at its Williamstown dockyard on the superstructure modules for the first of the Navy’s Canberra-class Landing ships Helicopter Dock (LHD).

Not long after this edition is published, on 17 February, Navantia will launch the hull for that first ship at its Ferrol yard in northern Spain roughly two months ahead of schedule.

The hull of the future HMAS Canberra is due to be transferred to Williamstown by heavy lift ship in August 2012, according to BAE Systems, and the completed vessel is due to be handed over to the Navy in January 2014.

The following month, the hull for the future HMAS Adelaide will arrive at Williamstown for completion and fitout; she will be handed over 18 months later.

The momentum on this project is building progressively: at the time of writing Navantia had completed and was consolidating 90 of the 105 steel hull blocks for Canberra’s hull, with 40 blocks for Adelaide now under construction.

In parallel Navantia has been producing the drawings, work package details and bills of materials to enable BAE Systems to start work on the superstructure.

Navantia is the platform design contractor and so has been integrating the ‘combat system’ elements selected by the Commonwealth into the superstructure and hull design.

This includes the L-3 Communications internal and external communications suite along with the navigation system (much of these installed in the hull by Navantia) the Combat Management System derived from Saab Systems’s enhanced 9LV Mk3E Combat Management System (CMS) for the Anzac frigate ASMD program, and the associated sensors and weapons.

As with the Hobart-class Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project, Navantia is responsible for the detail design and timely issue of drawings for both ships, and the Australian project teams are therefore responsible for ensuring Navantia gets essential product information on sensors, consoles, power supplies and cooling requirements and the like as early as possible so that this can be worked into the design.

In turn, that means a very comprehensive design and liaison approach is required to avoid delays, unexpected problems and design ambiguities.

The Commonwealth’s comfort zone grew significantly back in September when the Spanish Navy commissioned its Buque de Projeccion Estrategica, or BPE, the SPS Juan Carlos I.

She is essentially the same to the Canberra-class ships and completed her builder’s trials in July last year.

As one would expect, the trials program for this ‘first of class’ vessel identified a couple of significant issues, in particular cavitation and vibration related to the propulsion system.

The BPE/LHD design uses Siemens podded propulsors with electrical power generated by a single 19,000kW LM2500 gas turbine and two MAN 7,500kW diesels which will drive the ship along at some 21 knots.

The trials resulted in minor design changes to the propellers; these and other minor changes are being incorporated in the Canberra-class design at no extra cost to the Commonwealth.

The Achilles heel for most modern platform projects is the combat system.

Adelaide-based Saab Systems is prime contractor for this element and will provide a significantly enhanced version of the Anzac frigate CMS.

The differences are important and involve the LHD sensor fit and the Air Traffic Control (ATC) function essential for LHD operations.

While an Anzac frigate has only a single helicopter spot on a small flight deck and doesn’t operate watercraft, the LHD will have six flight deck spots to operate multiple waves of helicopters.

It will also operate four medium landing craft from its well dock in the stern.

These represent significant ATC and water traffic management challenges for the operations crew aboard the ship.

So the Combat Direction System has been extended to cope with these functions, including interfaces to the necessary sensors which BAE Systems will integrate into the superstructure.

The operations area (in two adjoining operations rooms) will accommodate some 70 personnel in all conducting ship, ATC and watercraft operations as well as operational and amphibious planning.

A key element, and separate from the CMS, is the C4I system which will support the embarked amphibious force HQ.

At present this consists of the same Joint Command Support Environment aboard the LPAs HMAS Manoora and Kanimbla, and will be enhanced when Phase 9 of JP2030 is (described in ADM’s October 2010 edition) is rolled out; The necessary 2nd Pass approvals for this aren’t due until 2012-15, and deliveries aren’t scheduled  until 2014-16.

According to Defence sources, an Amphibious Warfare Command Support System (AmWCSS) won’t be provided under the LHD contract as this will also be Government Furnished Equipment.

Work is underway between CDG and DSTO to define requirements for an AmWCSS.

This involves linkages with Army’s future digitised battlespace under Projects Land 75 / 125, the Land 17 Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) element and other C2 systems currently being acquired or developed.

Options for development and acquisition will flow from this work but it is too early to say whether JP2030 Ph9 will be the mechanism by which they will be acquired and delivered.

Meanwhile Factory Acceptance Testing for the major subsystems of the Platform, Combat and Communications Systems is well advanced and deliveries have already begun of combat and communications system hardware to both Williamstown and Ferrol to enable early installation.

The first ship set of CMS hardware from Saab Systems is already at Williamstown, with Land Based Test Site integration due to get under way in early 2011 and final delivery due in 2012.

AWD
In parallel, the Hobart-class Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) program is gathering momentum with construction under way of hull blocks by BAE Systems at Williamstown, Forgacs at Tomago in Newcastle, and at ASC in Adelaide.

In October last year, news broke that a section of the first of the keel blocks being fabricated at Williamstown for the future HMAS Hobart needed significant rectification work due to weld quality issues and heat distortion to meet demanding dimensional control requirements.

This will have a knock-on effect on the project and cause delays, though it’s not clear even to the AWD Alliance how great these might ultimately be.

According to AWD Alliance CEO Rod Equid, who took over from John Gallacher early in 2010, there is no single cause for these problems and BAE Systems had been “exceptionally open and cooperative” in working with the Alliance in trying to rectify the problems.

But ADM understands there is considerable disquiet within the DMO at some of the weld quality on this block and BAE Systems has moved quickly to address the issue by reshuffling the management in its maritime systems division.

BAE Systems is responsible for all seven of the keel blocks on the AWDs, covering the entire water line length of the ship.

Forgacs is responsible for the upper layer, roughly between the water line and main deck.

The Block in Question, Block 107, is one of the most complex of the keel blocks, requiring significant bending and precise shaping of the shell plate.

It is made up from four major sub-assemblies and incorporates approximately 2,000 pipe parts in addition to Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) ducting and electrical cabling trays.

Within the overall ship design, this block also contains the stabilisers and their operating mechanisms, part of the bilge keels, and also supports one of the ship’s two propulsion diesels, one of its LM25000 gas turbines, one of its gearboxes and one of its propellers shafts.

The dimensional control problem affected a sub-block which is the ‘double bottom’ of the keel block, a relatively dense structure approximately 20 metres long and 17 metres wide. 

The top of the sub-block needs to be very flat as it supports machinery foundations for items including a gas-turbine, a main propulsion diesel and one of the reduction gears. 

The surface was just outside the required tight tolerance, says Equid; and so a decision was taken to re-work the sub-block to bring it back within tolerance on this first ship, and then apply the lessons for the benefit of future blocks.

The drawings from Navantia are fine, he told ADM, though the build sequence has been modified slightly as well.

Navantia builds its ships on an inclined slipway and launches them prior to completion of the fit-out phase.

The AWD will be built ashore on a level base, which allows more fitting out to be done before the ship enters the water and is far more efficient.

There’s another issue here as well, which Equid declined to be drawn into but which various industry sources have highlighted with increasing urgency: the stop-start character of Australian shipbuilding has seen Williamstown’s workforce, which delivered 10 well-constructed Anzac frigates, shrink to less than a hundred technical and trades personnel before ramping up again to start fabricating blocks for the AWD and, now, the LHDs.

ADM understands that in ASC Shipbuilder, for the same reason, up to 95 per cent of the technical and trades work force consists of new hires, leavened and led by experienced supervisors from the submarine side of the business.

This highlights one of the risks facing the government and the naval industry in tackling the next round of maritime projects; with 12 submarines, eight future frigates and 20 Offshore Combatants on the plan, amounting to nearly 140,000 tonnes of shipping, Australia cannot afford to allow expensively created skills and expertise to simply wither and atrophy between frantic bursts of construction activity.

It’s not economical and the almost-inevitable teething difficulties when skills and capacity start ramping up again are not good for the reputation of either the DMO or the industry.

All that said, the rest of the AWD program is progressing well, says Equid.

The project has a substantial schedule ‘buffer’ – last year it was four months ahead of its own schedule – and notwithstanding the drama with Block 107 the schedule and budget buffers remain in a healthy position, he told ADM, though he declined to elaborate.

Provisional Acceptance for the Hobart and her two sisters is scheduled for 2014, 2016 and 2017, and he’s aiming for a trouble-free acceptance process.

This should be achievable, Equid believes, because the AWD Alliance has been closely engaged with the customer, operators, regulators and key stakeholders all the way through the program.

There should be very little about these ships that isn’t already known to the DMO and the RAN when they are handed over.

The heart of the AWDs is their combat system and Aegis air warfare system.

ASC is building the so-called ‘Aegis Tower’ element of the ships – the blocks containing the ships’ operations room, consoles, transmitter and receiver elements and the wave guides.

This is a more complex fabrication and fit-out task, and the company has Lockheed Martin and Bath Iron Works experts on hand to advise it.

The ‘Tower’ is the same as that of the Spanish F105 destroyer, SPS Cristobal Colon, on which the AWD design is based and which was launched earlier this year.

Most of the major combat system elements have been selected, with the exception of the internal communications system.

One of the most important elements has been the testing and certification of the Australian tactical Interface (ATI), developed by Kongsberg.

This passes target track data to the Aegis system from the non-Aegis sensor and communications suite and has been tested in both directions, but not yet end-to-end: Kongsberg and Lockheed Martin have used emulators to verify interfaces between it and the Aegis Baseline 7.1 system, and the various non-Aegis peripherals such as the sonar, EW and communications systems.

End to end testing is due to begin early in 2011 using the Through Life Support Facility and ATI laboratory located in Sydney, as a land based test site.

The date for the first Aegis ‘light-off’ on the future HMAS Hobart hasn’t been confirmed yet, Equid said, and nor has the date for the launch.

This is likely to be as much a symbolic milestone as a technical one and the AWD Alliance partners won’t compromise their schedule and budget for the sake of symbolism: a formal launch ceremony will happen at the right time for the project, and not before.