Australians should be proud
of Collins Submarines
Australians should be proud of Collins Submarines
Australians should be proud of Collins Submarines
The Collins Class submarines are internationally considered
among the best conventional submarines in the world. The
Collins submarines are also the most effective and important
strategic assets to ensuring our nation’s sovereignty, security and future economic prosperity.
When the project commenced, the Collins were a new design of a highly complicated piece of equipment, second
in complexity only to a space shuttle, built for Australia’s
unique needs in a brand new shipyard with a highly skilled
workforce created from scratch.
We were inexperienced at submarine building and, as with
almost all new technology and projects, there were challenges along the way. However, they were all eventually
System. However, what many do not realise is that the great-
solved, mostly from in-house local ingenuity, and the Collins
est challenge related to how the project was established and
project has proven to be a huge success industrially and op-
managed by the Government of the day, which prevented
erationally. 1
the easy fix of many of the less complicated challenges.4
2
Two former submarine commanding officers (Rod Fayle
and Peter Briggs3) who spent years operating the subma-
Noise Levels
rines and working closely with the Collins project (giving
The Collins initially had problems with the level of noise they
them the best overall knowledge of the submarines) have
made, which was quite a serious issue as the key to a suc-
both attested to the capability of the Collins’ and Australia’s
cessful submarine is its stealth. The high level of noise was
ability to build submarines again.
mainly due to issues with the propeller (how it was made and
what it was made from) and the shape of the hull and how
The Challenges Encountered
water flowed over it. These two major issues have long been
fixed through clever adaption by ASC, and the Collins’ now
make less noise than the background noise of the ocean.5
It is well known that there were a number of challenges encountered on the Collins project with the two biggest technical challenges relating to noise levels and the Combat
2
Australians should be proud of Collins Submarines
Combat System
The Combat System encompasses a variety of different
tools essential for a submarine to operate; sensors, including sonars for underwater listening, two different types of
radars and the periscope, navigation, communications, the
weapons system and the ‘Tactical Data Handling System’
which processes then displays the array of information for
the submariners.
These systems presented many challenges as in the late 80s
and early 90s when the submarines were first being built,
both the technology and the way we were developing it was
uncharted territory. These systems involve a lot of software
and advanced technology that simply was not around, as
one retired submarine commander pointed out, laptops
weren’t even available at the time and smart phones didn’t
exist until the mid-2000s.6 In a world where technology was
rapidly evolving, we were trying to predict and cater for the
needs of the future. With help from the US (who also had
numerous problems with their own combat systems around
this time) the Combat System challenges were overcome,
giving the Collins’ a highly capable system that allows the
submarines to challenge even the US.7
10 facts about the Collins class submarine
1
2
The Government’s original requirement
was for ten Collins submarines, however
they later settled on six submarines, with
the option to order two more.
Seven companies submitted proposals
for the Collins submarine design; the
combined submissions weighed over four
tonnes.
3
A Collins submarine weighs 3,100 tonnes
when it is surfaced and 3,400 tonnes
when it is submerged.
4
A Collins submarine can travel up to 19
kmh when surfaced and up to 37 kmh
when submerged.
5
The first Collins submarine was
commissioned in 1996 the sixth in 2003
6
A Collins submarine can carry up to 58
crew members for as long as 70 days
7
A Collins submarine carries 21 torpedoes
8
Collins submarines are covered in a
skin of tiles to minimise detection
(stealth). These tiles were developed in
Australia from scratch because no other
country would share their technology.
9
During the late 1990s the Navy only had
40% of the trained Collins submariners
it required. By 2008 the Navy could
only provide crews for three of the six
submarines.
10 By 2006, A$5.071 billion had been spent
to build the Collins submarines; after
taking inflation into account, the project
had run A$40 million (less than 1%) over
contract.
3
Australians should be proud of Collins Submarines
Project Establishment
A lot of the problems and delays with the Collins project did
not stem from the inability of Australian workers or a lack
of skill, but from the way the entire project was established
and managed.
The contracts between the Government and its contractors
(namely ASC, Rockwell’s and their sub-contractors) were inflexible and poorly structured. As a result, when minor and
major problems arose, it was unclear who was responsible
for fixing them and who was going to foot the bill for it. This
mistakes: the maintenance and rebuilding of the Collins submarines are now meeting international standards. After decades of learning and achievement, Australians should be
proud that we now possess the capacity and capability to
build and rebuild internationally acclaimed, leading edge
submarines.
As one expert proclaimed ‘It is, therefore, difficult not to acknowledge the success of the Collins project in building from
scratch something never achieved before in Australia, and
which required complex processes and advanced technology that few other nations have mastered.’9
meant that even some of the most basic problems took an
unreasonable amount of time to fix.8
The contracts also failed to take into consideration the long
lifespan of the project and were not flexible enough to allow
for changes in needs and technology that occur over such
time periods. As a result, when the Navy realised it needed
upgraded capabilities built into the submarines, there were
no provisions to allow for this.
Making this issue worse, was how the project management
was organised. The overall management structure was weak
and did not facilitate getting all the parties involved on the
same page. There was poor communication between the organisations involved in building the Collins submarines making problem solving even harder.
These problems were again mostly due to the Australian
Government’s inexperience with both purchasing and building such a large scale project, and again we learnt from these
Notes
1 Fayle, Rod, An Open Letter on submarines, 13
February 2015, available at: [http://indaily.com.au/
opinion/2015/03/11/former-subs-commander-stopthe-political-spin/]
6 Fayle, Open Letter
7 For more detail on US Weapons Systems troubles
see: Woolner, Derek, ‘Taking the Past to the Future’,
Security Challenges, vol 5, no 3, 2009, p 53.
2 Fayle, Open Letter
3 Briggs, Peter, ‘Why Australia should build its own
submarines (2)’, The Strategist (online), 22 January
2015, available at [http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/
why-australia-should-build-its-own-submarines-2]
For more on the Collins ability vs US see: Thompson,
Roger, Lessons not learned: the U.S. Navy’s status quo
culture, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2007, p 26 &
28.
4 See: McIntosh, Malcolm and Prescott, John, ‘Report
to the Minister for Defence on the Collins Class
Submarine and related matters”, June 1999.
8 For more detail see; Malcolm McIntosh and John
Prescott’s ‘Report to the Minister for Defence on the
Collins Class Submarine and related matters”, June
1999.
5 Fayle, Open Letter
9 Woolner, ‘Taking the Past to the Future’, pp 49-50.