Philip Smart | Adelaide
With development of Australia’s Future Submarine now underway with French manufacturer DCNS, the 2017 Submarine Institute of Australia (SIA) November conference will focus on consolidating emerging technologies and developing the submarine workforce.
“This year’s event will be the fourth Submarine Science, Technology and Engineering Conference, SubSTEC4, and it’s shaping up to be our best technical conference yet,” said SIA executive director David Nicholls.
A conference like ours is a place where all sorts of good ideas get floated
“While there will be presentations at the conference on a range of submarine matters, the issue of sovereignty will be one of the highest profile issues, given the importance of Australia maintaining a sovereign submarine capability.”
While the first plenary session on November 14 will touch on both sovereignty and managing the transfer from the Collins class to the Future Submarine, following sessions offer a wide range of presentations on technical, scientific and political aspects of Australia’s future submarine force.
Domain experts will present technical papers on subjects from acoustics and sonar to materials, battery technologies and combat systems, including intellectual property management, applied research, development, test and evaluation, systems integration and team/individual training and development.
Australian Industry Group Head of Workforce Development Megan Lilly and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union National President Andrew Dettmer will offer views on expanding and managing Australia’s shipbuilding workforce, while former UK Astute submarine program manager, Real Admiral Steve Lloyd (RN, retd) will speak on the issues associated with international interchange of a skilled workforce.
On day three DCNS Australia Chief Technical Officer Gerard Autret will detail the DCNS approach to designing the Future Submarine, with retired RAN Commodore Paul Greenfield reflecting on the Collins program and lessons learned that could be applied to the future submarine program.
Day four will see Acacia Research managing director Ted Huber presenting “a lightweight mechanism for building heavyweight systems,”, with Airspeed Managing Director Steve Barlow detailing improving toughness of composites.
“A conference like ours is a place where all sorts of good ideas get floated,” said David Nicholls. “Many of the topics describe innovative new systems and materials, drawing on international experience.”
Billed as the leading forum in the Asia-Pacific region for information-sharing and debate on submarine matters, the Submarine Institute of Australia (SIA) conference will run from November 13 to 16 in Adelaide.