Thursday, May 26, 2011

Home industry has to re-work its shipbuilding plan for new warships

Just imagine if this was the project to build the 12 subs that will replace the Collins class.

Home industry has maxed out the amount of skill available to do the work here in Australia for new warships. There will probably be delays.

Australia's new air warfare destroyers (AWDs) are set to run a year late with some construction work to be re-allocated from the stretched Melbourne BAE Systems shipyard to yards in Adelaide and Newcastle.

As well, some work worth millions of dollars will now be performed in Spain rather than Australia.

This will avoid what would have been an even worse delay of two years.

For those in the Defence Material Organisation (DMO), stay with me, these ships are much less complex than subs.

Also, ASPI has seen the light (sort-of) admitting that the 2009 Defence White Paper has serious problems. Along with that, they advise increases in Defence spending should not happen. I agree. Defence spending should only increase if there is a realistic strategic plan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You can lay this at the feet of DMO as well. Why would any organistion invest in any long term planning, training, investment in technology when all you get is stop start contracts.
How could you keep a skilled workforce with apprentices etc with the on off projects thrown at industry.
No intelligent thought has gone into this matter.
In addition you may notice from the latest information from the the Profit and Loss from DMO, out of their operating budget last year of 1.2 billion, they gave 8.3 million to Australian industry for innovation.
I wonder how much was spent on junkets and lunches