New warships with bigger manning needs means big manning problems

The RAN and senior Defence leadership are in a dreamland if they think the 3 Hobart-class air warfare destroyers and 2 Canberra-class amphibious ships will have enough manpower to run them.

Why? Current known manning performance in today's fleet.

A shortage of technical sailors, blamed on the resources boom, has forced the navy to tie up two frontline warships indefinitely while its remaining 10 frigates lost 459 days in just six months this year due to "unscheduled" repairs and maintenance.

The navy describes the temporary withdrawal from service of the WA-based frigate HMAS Arunta and the Sydney-based HMAS Stuart as "extended readiness" and it blames the mining boom's high wages for cornering the market in highly qualified technicians.

He said the impact of the loss of two frigates would be minimal because three of the ships would be out of service receiving an anti-ship missile upgrade. "We still have a problem with technical sailors and retaining technical sailors," Admiral Griggs said.

"It is going to be a long-term thing to recover from."

And as a long-time observer of Defence issues informed me, the excuse of the resources boom is old. It has existed for at least 10 years.

H/T-SR

Trying to fix a bad idea

Update on Littoral Combat Ship manning...

Yes ... decades of modern manning requirements told us the number was wrong from the beginning, but happy talk & toxic command climates - standard gruel of the transformationalists - killed any of this while the program was still early enough to make it beck.

ANZAC Day ADF topic--bloat

The ratio of civilians to military in the Australian Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy (EDB) is not good.

Civilian count is around 21~22k. While cuts have been proposed, they are not enough.

Military personnel numbers are as follows:

Besides the civilian service bloat, look at all this top-rank dead weight.

So where do we get some inspiration for trimming this nonsense?

Cdr Salamander has an idea. The Italians.

"We currently have 183,000 soldiers and 30,000 civilians in defence. We will gradually bring that down to 150,000 soldiers and 20,000 civlians, with a reduction of around 43,000," Defence Minister Giampaolo Di Paola said. "This target can be achieved in a decade with a 20-percent or 30-percent reduction in hirings, transfers to other civil service jobs and temporary work options," Di Paola told lawmakers at a defence committee hearing. The number of admirals and generals would also be reduced by "more than 30 percent" from the 425 currently in service, Di Paola said.

And, how much of the now $27B per year budget spent by the EDB delivers real combat value?