It has been revealed that our Navy frigate program is facing big problems, with fears they will be underpowered, unable to run propulsion and radar at the same time and have serious flooding design flaws. 

One Nation led calls with other Senators to ditch the expensive French submarine duds. Defence acquisitions doesn’t have a great track record, will these frigates follow the same path as the submarines? 

Transcript

[Chair] Please Senator Roberts, you have the call.

[Roberts] Thank you chair, and thank you for appearing today. We’re pleased that the government has at last listened to and cancelled the submarine contract. What was the cost to Australia as a result of cancellation of the French submarine contract?

[Dalton]Senator Roberts expenditure to date on the attack class submarine programme was $2.4 billion. We’re in a process of negotiating with the two prime contracts, Naval group and Lockheed Martin Australia, the transition out of those contracts, that they’re sensitive negotiations, you’ll understand,

[Roberts] Yeah, I can. that we don’t want to talk about how that might play out in terms of dollar figures.

[Roberts] Sometimes I might argue, but not then. What progress has been made in determining the future of Naval defence procurement of submarines and other hardware options?

[Dalton] In what sense?

[Roberts] How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?

[Mead] Senator, Vice Admiral, Jonathan Mead, I’m the chief of the nuclear power submarine task force. And I’ve been empowered to deliver a nuclear powered submarine capability for the Australian government, for Australia. So since the 16th of September, 2021 the task force working with other government departments and working with our US and UK partners, have made excellent progress in order to get to an important milestone, in beginning of 2023 so that we can identify the optimal pathway for Australia to acquire these nuclear powered submarines. I would just like to sort of emphasise that the pathway is more than just the actual platform. The platform is something that we can readily identify

[Roberts] Excuse me, platform being the boat itself?

[Mead] Correct, the actual submarine itself there Senator. But first and foremost, we need to satisfy a number of prerequisites. I can’t emphasise this enough, the safety and the security aspects associated with anything nuclear, but particularly nuclear powered submarines, need to be recognised with every aspect of the programme. And we, you Senator, the Australian public would absolutely expect that the department and the government would keep safety and security at the top of our requirements. So we’re working with our US and UK partners. There is a very significant series of delegations in Australia right now, combined US and UK teams. There are three specific delegations that are in Australia, two right now, they’ve been in Canberra talking to defence officials, obviously talking to the task force, talking to other government departments. They have gone down to Melbourne. They’ve gone down to Adelaide and had significant discussions with ASC, ANI, they’ve looked at the shipyards. They’re talking to workers down there. There is an another delegation, from the US and UK, that have just arrived. And late next week, there’ll be an even more senior delegation where I will take them down to Adelaide, and I will host, what’s called a joint steering group. That is a key decision body, a recommending body, that assesses the risks and the progress of what we are working on. This will be the third such steering group, I went to Washington in December of last year, where we had the first joint steering group. We did a virtual one in January of this year, and I’ll host the third one in late February. We are making very good progress. There are a number of key areas that we are working on right now. I’ll put the platform aside. But these absolutely support the platform itself. We are working on strategy and legal aspects and we are working on education, training, opportunities, the workforce. So you’ll know we’ve identified a scholarship programme, 300 scholarships over the next five years. We’re sending people as I speak, Australian Navy officers, to University of New South Wales to do nuclear engineering degrees, nuclear science degrees. We’re sending people overseas to do degrees at MIT. We’ve got a scholarship programme within the department of defence. We are a scholarship programme with STEM for cadets.

[Roberts] All right, what aren’t you doing?

[Roberts] So I welcome your comments about safety. As far as I know, the nuclear powered submarines have been around for decades. So, and coming from the Americans and the British.

[Mead] That’s correct. So US, UK have been operating nuclear powered submarines for about 60 years. We intend to leverage off their impeccable safety record, but I do want to emphasise that safety and security, when you’re dealing with nuclear, nuclear power, nuclear powered submarines must be afforded absolute priority, Senator.

[Roberts] We’re pleased to hear that. Senator Hanson and I support the nuclear decision, it seems very sensible to us, so that’s not a concern, but it is something new to Australia, so that’s obviously a risk. Has Australia done it again, this is in general to defence again, has Australia done it again by entering into the $45 billion contract for the hunter class frigates, already described as expensive duds by some, that will be slower than called for and underpowered, in terms of running its radar systems at the same time as operational propulsion systems?

Senator Roberts I’ll invite Mr. Dalton, seeing as he’s still at the table to respond, at least at a high level to that commentary, noting that quite a bit of detail has been covered already this morning on that project.

[Dalton] Senator, I think we’ve spent the last hour and a half discussing in quite some detail, some of those issues that we’re managing around the hunter class frigate. I would say that the projected total acquisition cost of the programme is $45 billion. That is not the contract value, and that is not the current approved value. So we’re taking much smaller bites as we go along, but

[Roberts] Depending upon success?

[Dalton] Yeah, that’s part of it. But I think you know, the discussion that we’ve had today demonstrates that we’re on a process, a design process, that is structured to manage risks and we, and the chief of Navy, has already testified this morning that he is confident that the hunter class frigate will fulfil the needs that the Navy has for a modern, state of the art frigate, optimised for anti-submarine warfare.

[Roberts] Okay. So I’ll keep my questions short out of respect for everyone here. Is it true that there are risks to the crew in the event of flooding or fires?

[Dalton] Again, Senator we don’t think that’s a likely outcome in the final design. We’re working through some risks that have come up, in the design process and looking at what’s happened.

[Roberts] So there are some risks, but you’re hoping to manage them?

[Dalton] There’s always risk. These are war ships, they go in harm’s way. And what we’re looking at is how do we mitigate best those risks and what happens when the ship is damaged. So we are making sure that when the ship is damaged, that the risks are absolutely mitigated as much as we possibly can. But we should not be fooled. These ships are designed to go into combat and combat can create damage.

[Roberts] I accept that, but if there are inherent flaws, before they even reach combat, that make them even more vulnerable, that’s my concern.

[Dalton] Senator what we’ve canvased this morning, at some length is in terms of those media reports being informed off of some documentation, which was work done by defence, seeking to identify extensively the potential risks faced in relation to the Type 26 and the hunter class that will be built across the type 26. Importantly, as officials have outlined, that report didn’t go into the detail of the type of mitigations and other work that is equally being done to manage and address those risks, which importantly is being done on the type 26 platform and of course on the hunter class platform.

[Roberts] So thank you, minister, it seems then that these problems were foreseen before the contracts were entered into, in review?

[Woman] No.

Senator Roberts, as a few people have addressed already this morning, these are always highly complicated procurement activities, design and build activities, that all come with risk. Nobody should think that there is a risk-free proposition in relation to building a highly sophisticated war ship.

[Roberts] We’ve just come off several, and the submarines we’ve been talking about this morning, several damaging processes in defence, so will the frigates go the same way as the sub’s, what’s your level of confidence?

[Birmingham] No Senator, they won’t, we do have a level of confidence there and the systems in terms of design finalisation and moving into the build stages, are systems that are built having learnt lessons from previous procurement decisions. The fact that defence is clearly undertaking the type of risk assessment work that has been discussed this morning is a plus. We should all be pleased for the fact that they are identifying those risks and working through them at these early stages, while we are still in design stages, where such mitigations can be pursued. These are some of – it’s similar in the sense that, you know this is a project, where right now the work that is being undertaken in Australia, is prototyping work. That’s a lesson learnt from the past, in terms of ensuring that we test those build systems before we get to a point where you have actually created a bigger problem in the build undertaking that could have been rectified if you’d learnt those lessons before through activities such as prototyping.

[Roberts] So these are my last questions on this topic. Are these fresh designs or are they rebuilding or modifying an established design?

[Birmingham] Perhaps I’ll let Mr. Dalton explain that again.

[Dalton] So the frigate, the hunter class frigate is based on the United Kingdom’s type 26 reference ship design. That is different from what we were doing in the attack class submarine programme, where the attack class submarine was a new design submarine. It evolves from previous ones, but it was a new design for Australia. And I would say Senator, that the attack class submarine programme, you know the government has made, you know, a very brave decision in light of changing strategic circumstances and that revolves around how we could employ conventionally powered submarines in high risk environments, high threat environments in the 2040’s, in 2050’s. The decision to move away from the attack class submarine programme was not based on the performance of the attack class submarine project, it’s based on the changing strategic circumstances that Australia finds itself in. So I don’t think you can compare those, you know to say that the programmes are broken because we’ve moved on from the attack class submarine programme.

[Roberts] The changing strategic circumstances we find ourselves in and the changing availability of capability to Australia.

[Dalton] Exactly.

[Roberts] Yeah. The last question.

I’ll come back. Do you want me to do it now?

[Ross] You have the changing security control requirements getting worse, but a delivery date.

[Chair] Tells me about another five minutes so we might just sit over time for a short while.

[Roberts] Last question on submarines. Has a live torpedo ever been fired from a Collins class sub?

[Dalton] Yes.

[Roberts] Have all the torpedo’s been unarmed dummies?

[Dalton] We can show you pictures Senator.

[Roberts] Sorry?

[Dalton] Yes.