Defence is certainly a big ticket item in the national budget, but in most cases we quickly see value for the money spent. Most items are bought on a " ready to use " basis from a friendly foreign country, and equipping the Royal Australian Air Force illustrates that option.
Since the end of the second world war its fighter aircraft have been sourced from Britain, France and America. They are expensive " toys " , but buying " ready made " keeps our fighting force up to date. Unfortunately, that dictum does not apply to our navy.
Our defence planners decided that the navy needed a fleet of twelve " Attack " class submarines to guard the waters surrounding this continent. The procurement process entailed an intensive evaluation of the submarines produced by a wide variety of countries and the final choice was between Japan and France.
A deal was struck with France and it was a complex arrangement. The pressure hull for the submarines would be built in France and then brought to our Osborne naval dockyard Adelaide for the final internal fitting out and installation of defence and offense systems and. its internal structure. This was intended to give the workers in Adelaide the skills necessary to maintain this new submarine fleet in the future years of this century.
A mix of production delays and cost blow outs has Australia thinking of walking away from this deal. The first of these twelve submarines is now not expected to become operational until the mid 1930's and our underwater defence rests in the hands of the dysfunctional Collins class boats which are well past their " use by " date.
The cost factor is also causing increasing alarm. When this submarine option was approved by parliament the public was told the final price would be fifty Million dollars. That had moved upward to eighty million by 2015 and the pundits now estimate that it will reach ninety million by the time the first boat is ready to be handed over to our navy.
The problem with contracts of this nature is that defence needs are constantly changing as new technology applies to submarine warfare and needs to be incorporated in these new boats. Keeping design up to date will now involve adding Lockheed Martins new combat system which will be an added cost and add further complexity to the construction process.
It would have been a lot quicker and cheaper to buy submarines " off the shelf " from either Japan or France and simply add the warfare systems here, but that would have reduced the job skills and labour content we wanted to create in Australia. It is a lesson we should have learned from a similar experience when we obtained our existing Collins class boats in a similar manner, only to find that they failed to endure to expectations.
This long lead time leaves a gaping hole in our sea defences that will not be filled far into the future. Perhaps trying to fit too many objectives adds to the complexity, and a rethink is necessary. If so, this contract delay has already cost us two billion dollars !
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