The Collins Class Submarine Story

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The Collins Class Submarine Story Page 11

by Peter Yule


  requirements, technical risks and engineering suitability of the

  designs, logistics support, Australian industry involvement, pro-

  duction methods, company viability and costs. The teams’ reports

  were then used by the Tender Evaluation Board to make an overall

  assessment of the proposals.7

  Evaluating the designs was a new and complex challenge for

  the Australian navy and one that many thought was beyond

  its competence. Terry Roach, who was then director of subma-

  rine policy and who oversaw the navy’s interests in the project,

  remembers Admiral Sandy Woodward, head of the Royal Navy’s

  submarine squadron, telling him that: ‘Australia should think

  carefully about the consequences of not buying the British subma-

  rine. How would you judge them?’ To which Roach responded:

  ‘We will judge them by the lessons you have taught us.’ This typi-

  fied the Australian submarine community’s confidence that exper-

  tise gained from their British training, operational experience and

  the success of the Oberon weapons update gave them the ability

  to choose Australia’s new submarine.

  It has often been claimed that many of the principal actors

  came to the decision-making process with strong prejudices. In

  particular the alleged anti-British and pro-German sentiment of

  senior members of the submarine project team was said to have

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  63

  greatly affected the evaluation.8 Those involved naturally brought

  their own experience to the process and argue that their views

  were based on their experience and their professional judgments

  of the quality of the bid.9 For example, Harry Dalrymple, who

  was in charge of naval design and a significant decision maker in

  the process, recalls that his initial preference was for IKL/HDW

  on engineering grounds – he had visited them and was impressed

  by IKL/HDW’s design processes, competence and track record.

  Dalrymple considered their experience of building in other coun-

  tries was an important point for the project. He supported the

  British Type 2400 design as a safeguard against risk and cost.

  Other senior officers such as Bill Rourke and Graham White

  were also impressed by the German design and manufacturing

  processes, and White considered that the Germans’ engineering

  was superior to the other contenders. Bill Rourke was not con-

  vinced that Kockums could design a large submarine, because he

  had seen one of the small Swedish boats being lifted from the

  water by a crane.10

  Rourke’s evaluation plan was designed to temper such sub-

  jective viewpoints, but inevitably the views of senior officers car-

  ried great weight and some refinement was needed to balance the

  weighting of the various judgments leading to a decision. Oscar

  Hughes, who was in charge of naval production at the time, recalls

  that at one evaluation meeting Kockums was about to be excluded

  because its design had insufficient space for Mark 48 torpedoes

  and Harpoon missiles, but it was realised that Kockums’ design

  was based on inaccurate information provided by the navy and it

  had to be allowed to adjust the design.

  Hughes says that this incident led to the adoption of a new

  approach, with problems in a proposal being categorised as criti-

  cal, important or less important.11 The Tender Evaluation Board

  Report followed this procedure meticulously, producing at the end

  of each section a matrix combining the proposals and their perfor-

  mance against the relevant criteria. Nonetheless, this process did

  not necessarily clarify the reasons for decisions in the minds of all

  participants, with even some of those who participated in the final

  report finding that judgments they had made in their particular

  section were not necessarily reflected in the ultimate choice of the

  definition study participants.

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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  Each proposal was judged against the relevant criteria and an

  assessment was made of the cost and risk to remedy each unsatis-

  factory aspect. This approach was inevitable to a degree, because

  each bid reflected company design practice and none followed

  closely the ship’s characteristics outlined in the tender request.

  For instance, the navy had specified freshwater cooling systems,

  mostly inside the pressure hull, primarily to reduce the risk of

  flooding. Yet most proposals featured external seawater cooling

  systems.

  Inevitably, as the cost and risk of correcting each deficiency

  was considered, proposals the navy was prepared to accept moved

  further away from any submarine that already existed. Thus the

  requirement that the new submarine had to be based on a boat

  soon to be in service with a foreign navy was gradually worked out

  of the process. Oscar Hughes, noting the increasing irrelevance of

  these conditions, privately concluded that they should be dropped

  from the evaluation criteria. To Hughes the ‘in-service’ condition

  was asking for an outdated design, as any boat that met it would

  date from the 1970s, while the navy was looking for a submarine

  for the 1990s and beyond. Significantly, the government was never

  officially told that the nature of the new submarine project had

  fundamentally changed – but from this time on Australia was

  committed to developing and building a new class of submarine,

  with all the risks that this entailed.12

  The Italian proposal provided little of the data required for

  evaluation, failed to consider production in Australia and was

  quickly discarded.

  The French design based on the Rubis class nuclear submarine

  offered an impressive performance in several areas, exceeding the

  requirements significantly in range, battery endurance, deep diving

  depth and indiscretion rate.13 However, there were some serious

  problems with the design. The arrangements for stowing, han-

  dling and discharging the weapons were designed around French

  equipment and naval practices and were incapable of handling

  the Australian navy’s American weapons; the design’s noise per-

  formance was little better than the Oberons; and it did not provide

  adequate electrical power or space for a combat system of the type

  required. Further, the logistics planning to support the vessel was

  considered inadequate and it appeared that the French had not

  understood the requirement to give detailed plans for building in

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  65

  Australia.14 These problems were considered so serious that the

  French design was deemed to be unsatisfactory.

  The German Thyssen TR 1700A also exceeded expectations

  in some areas. Slightly enlarged from the Argentinean version, the

  design’s battery endurance was excellent and, although no detailed

  construction plan was provided, Thyssen claimed that the Aus-

  tralian proportion of construction would reach 80 per cent by the

  sixth boat.
However, the TR 1700A was noisier than some types of

  submarine already operating in the Asia-Pacific area and an exten-

  sive redesign, involving high cost and risk, would be required to

  overcome this problem.15 The board concluded that it looked like

  the first design of a company with limited independent research

  and development capacity and rated it as unsatisfactory.16

  British company Vickers offered two closely related designs:

  the Type 2400A, a version of the Upholder class then being devel-

  oped for the Royal Navy, and the Upholder itself as the Type

  2400B for ‘cost’ – in other words, an alternative should the pro-

  curement of an entirely new submarine design prove to be too

  expensive. This was useful for comparing the performance of an

  existing design with the required ship’s characteristics.

  The evaluation found that the standard Upholder had critical

  performance deficiencies in endurance, range, indiscretion rate

  and deep diving depth. It was designed to patrol the Iceland–

  Faeroes Gap in the North Atlantic and had only 60 per cent

  of the required range and endurance. The British boat had only

  two diesel engines and generator sets, resulting in slow battery

  recharging. The Oberons had a similar limitation, and many

  involved in the Australian project regarded the Upholder as lit-

  tle better than the Oberons. The board concluded that selecting

  the Upholder would ‘eliminate the majority of forward operat-

  ing areas’ used by the navy and they rated it unsuitable for the

  project.17

  The Type 2400A was a redesign of the Upholder class stretched

  by 10 metres to accommodate a third diesel engine. Both Rod

  Fayle and Eoin Asker [later to be the submarine project director

  but during this period submarine liaison officer in Britain] saw

  the Type 2400A as inefficiently designed – ‘clunky’, in Asker’s

  words. Fayle thought that Vickers had used many components

  from nuclear submarines in the Type 2400A and that these were

  inefficient in a conventional submarine.

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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  The board noted that the 2400A failed to meet the require-

  ments for submerged endurance by as much as 30 per cent

  because it lacked sufficient battery storage.18 Electrical generat-

  ing capacity was inadequate and during snorting both converters

  would be required to keep systems functioning while the batteries

  recharged.19 An overload would cut power to lighting, commu-

  nications, hydraulics, air conditioning and the combat system.

  Despite its size, the Type 2400A lacked space to carry the weapon

  load the navy wanted.

  While considerable redesign would be necessary to accommo-

  date the four additional weapons required, the evaluation board

  considered that the technology of the Type 2400A was of a high

  level and acknowledged the value of continuing Australia’s close

  ties to the Royal Navy and Britain’s military research and devel-

  opment program. The 2400A was rated overall as a ‘marginal’

  proposal.

  The Kockums proposal, the Type 471, was also a design for a

  large submarine of 2215 tons. It was the only design apart from

  the Type 2400A that could fit the large bow sonar that was part

  of the Rockwell combat system. With a high volume allocated

  to batteries the assessment indicated that the battery endurance

  requirement could be exceeded by 75 per cent. It was also capable

  of exceeding the deep diving depth by 18 per cent. On the other

  hand, at periscope depth the Type 471 could reach only 75 per cent

  of the specified speed before the propeller started to cavitate.20

  Noting that the design ‘has not undertaken any tank testing’,

  the board thought that the cavitation problem could be recti-

  fied by such testing, perhaps in conjunction with a new propeller

  design.21 A number of other problems were identified, including

  the use of seawater cooling systems and unsuitable high-pressure

  air distribution.22

  It was the ‘novelty’ of the Swedish proposal and Kockums’ lack

  of experience with large submarines that most worried the board.

  Furthermore, Sweden was not part of NATO and this raised

  concerns that the United States might refuse to supply informa-

  tion about American weapons and systems. Indeed, the US Navy

  had advised Admiral Rourke in May 1984 that it was unlikely

  the United States would release technology to Sweden. Kock-

  ums’ response was to propose sub-contracting the development

  of the weapons handling system and torpedo tubes to the British

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  67

  company Strachan & Henshaw. Although Harry Dalrymple

  argued the Kockums’ boat was unsuitable for further consider-

  ation, the majority of the board considered it to be a marginal

  proposal.23

  The proposal for the Walrus was virtually the same as that

  being developed for the Royal Netherlands Navy, but without the

  Dutch combat system. Despite its reputation, the Walrus had only

  75 per cent of the required battery endurance and its indiscretion

  rate at 10 knots was more than 20 per cent below that required.

  Submerged speed was inadequate, as the Walrus had only a slightly

  larger main motor than the smaller Zwaardvis class.24 The Walrus

  had only four torpedo tubes, where six tubes had been specified, so

  a redesign was proposed for the definition phase. Air-conditioning

  and refrigeration capacities were also well below requirements.

  Although the board acknowledged that the Walrus was well-

  designed and very manoeuvrable with good stability, it needed

  considerable redesign to meet the required ship’s characteristics

  and the board concluded this would involve substantial techni-

  cal risk and cost. It assessed both the Dutch navy version and

  that being offered to Australia and judged both designs to be fair

  contenders.

  The other German design, the IKL Type 2000, generally met

  most of the navy’s expectations. It was considered to be an excep-

  tionally quiet submarine, with well-insulated machinery spaces

  and substantially exceeding the speed at which the onset of cavita-

  tion was expected. The proposal featured an outstanding logistics

  support plan, promising 80 per cent availability, a great improve-

  ment on that of the Oberons and exceeding the requirement by

  around 18 per cent. The board was advised that some of IKL’s per-

  formance figures were overly optimistic, and revised downwards

  the German’s claims for endurance and range by about 8 per cent

  while increasing the claimed indiscretion rate by 6 per cent, so

  that the boat no longer met the requirement.25

  The board was satisfied that IKL could rectify all the short-

  comings it had identified and do so for less than the cost of the

  changes it had stipulated for the others. The board was impressed

  by the overall quality of the German bid and rated it a very strong

  proposal.

  Thus the evaluation ass
essed one proposal as very strong but

  of the remainder only one was rated fair and two were marginal.

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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  Even the favoured IKL design failed to meet all of the required

  ship’s characteristics. Considerable additional effort would be

  required during the definition study to design the submarine that

  the navy wanted. The problem confronting the Tender Evaluation

  Board was to identify the companies that could best undertake

  that task.

  The invitation to express interest in supplying the combat

  systems for the new submarines attracted five acceptable pro-

  posals. These were from the Dutch firm of Hollandse Signaal-

  apparaten (Signaal); a German-British consortium of Krupp Atlas

  Elektronik and Ferranti Computer Systems; the British company

  Plessey; the French company Sintra Alcatel; and a consortium

  led by the American Rockwell Corporation, consisting of Singer

  Librascope, French sonar manufacturer Thomson CSF and the

  partially Australian-owned software company Computer Sciences

  of Australia.

  While the initial evaluation of the submarine designs left the

  final decision up in the air, the choice of combat system seemed to

  be far clearer.

  There were some important limitations to all the combat sys-

  tem proposals. The request was for designs based on a distributed

  architecture. Yet there was no widely accepted definition of what

  constituted distributed processing, merely a generally accepted set

  of characteristics: that particular functions were not dependent on

  a single processor, that system databases were replicated around

  a network, and that there was automatic backup around the net-

  work in the event of a partial failure.26

  The requirement also called for the system to be written in

  Ada, an untested software language defined by American defence

  development guidelines since no functional specifications existed.

  Harry Dalrymple recognised that the selection of systems language

  was crucial because it would drive the future costs and support

  requirements of the combat system, so, after an evaluation of pro-

  gramming languages by DSTO, each supplier was asked to provide

  prices for using Ada or alternative programming languages.

  Faced by conceptual novelty and technological risk, none of

  the tenderers used a distributed architecture and two chose not to

 

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