by Peter Yule
teries. Other requirements of a submarine’s ‘hotel load’ provided
the main demand for power. A submarine could greatly extend
104
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
its range by reducing ‘hotel load’ but it could not function as a
warship. In fact, the designers were following different method-
ologies based on the operational practices of their national navies.
German submariners operated in ultra-quiet state, where only
equipment essential for the safety of the submarine was switched
on. The Swedes, in contrast, assumed all except noisy equipment
operating.
Ultimately the designs had to be judged in relation to the way
the Australian navy operated. The basis of the German calcula-
tions was unacceptable to Australian submariners, who deployed
at great range and stayed submerged for over two months. The
Swedish approach was considered too generous, so the evaluation
team developed criteria representing Australian operational pro-
cedures. These were based on a strict interpretation of the required
ship’s characteristics plus use of the minimum essential support
systems and equipment.5 On this basis the Kockums design per-
formed better in some areas than claimed by the designers, while
significant shortfalls were revealed in the German boat’s perfor-
mance.
While the evaluators were wrestling with the perceived dis-
crepancies of the claimed performance, further discrepancies were
identified in the Germans’ power loadings claims. The evaluation
team concluded that the designers had made a mistake and the
German boat would require 50 per cent more power to snort at
the desired speed.
The Type 2000 needed considerable redesign before it would be
accepted. Although not technically demanding, a redesign would
be expensive and risk delay. The evaluation team calculated that
it would cost around $280 million to bring the German design
to the navy’s standard, thus wiping out the price advantage that
AMS had thought would win the contract.
The German team has always disputed the criticisms made
of its design, and particularly the alteration of its figures. J ürgen
Ritterhoff argues that the Germans’ design philosophy enabled
them to meet the requirements with a smaller but more capable
boat. In his view Kockums responded to the requirements by mak-
ing their submarine larger, but it was no more capable and not as
safe. Ritterhoff is convinced that the capacity of his designs to min-
imise energy consumption was underestimated during the assess-
ment process. The displacement of West German submarines had
P I C K I N G W I N N E R S 1 9 8 7
105
been limited by treaty, so superior energy efficiency was vital to
increase their capability, and this has been a continuing discipline
with IKL’s designs.
Hans Saeger, HDW’s representative during the project defini-
tion study, explained that since 1969 HDW
used to contract offered parameters . . . and to prove
contractual fulfilment by performing the related tests with its
own submarine crews before delivery and acceptance and at
its own technical and economic risk . . .
We never contracted more than we offered, and we did
not contract less than offered.
On the critical issue of the alteration of their figures, Saeger argues
that:
Applying a method of ‘assuming’ power efficiency or power
consumptions and/or defining ‘normal/usual/traditional’
operational cycles or ‘one does in our navy’, allows – if not
discussed in depth and based on measurable facts – to vary
any resulting outcome drastically. To achieve agreement in
such discussions requires patience even among understanding
specialists due to the number of parameters involved.6
The Germans do not accept that the Australian evaluation teams
could have assessed the figures adequately in the time available,
and query their technical expertise to do so.
Members of the evaluation team bristle at these accusations,
recalling a period of enormous effort with no leave and regular
weekend and late night work. Further, they claim there was con-
siderable submarine expertise in Australia. Greg Stuart points out
that the navy ‘had heavily invested in skilling people involved
in the submarine force [to be] competent in the RAN’s subma-
rine decisions, which included significant enhancement of the
Oberons and operating Oberons at extreme range and under
extreme conditions’.7
While the predicted performance of the Swedish submarine
design was not quite up to the standard that the navy had desired,
the evaluation found little to dislike. It particularly approved of
the engineering approach to assembling the boats and admired the
rugged durability of the massive seatings on which major pieces
of equipment were mounted. The ship design evaluation team
106
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
considered that the Swedish construction methods offered greater
potential for building a quiet submarine. There was little differ-
ence between the claimed noise levels of the two designs but, after
comparisons that involved meetings with the experts from both
companies, the evaluation favoured the Type 471 as being quieter
both when snorting and while submerged.
The Germans had believed that reducing the size of their
design would be an advantage; Juergen Ritterhoff designed his
submarines on the adage that the smaller the boat the more diffi-
cult it was to detect. On the contrary, the evaluation team thought
that the greater displacement of the Type 471 was an advantage.
To them, while the German design loosely met the required ship’s
characteristics, it did not meet the navy’s actual operating needs,
‘principally because the designer failed to acknowledge RAN sub-
marine operating areas, modes and procedures leading to under-
estimation of hotel load and battery capacity’. In contrast, the
team thought that Kockums had not relied simply on the required
characteristics, but developed its design with an understanding of
Australian submarine operations and ‘not a purely commercial
approach because it resulted in a higher unit cost and a weight
limited design’.8
The only aspect of the Kockums design that caused concern
was the proposed Saab ship control and management system,9 one
thing on which Kockums had steadfastly refused to compromise.
Before the original request for tenders the company had dismissed
the idea of an integrated ship control and combat system and dur-
ing the definition study Kockums resisted the Australians’ desire
to perform ship control functions from only two stations, insist-
ing that the emergency surfacing function remain under manual
control. Pelle Stenberg recalls that Peter Briggs’s response was:
‘We’ll take your sub and rip out the ship control syste
m and put
in the one we want.’10 But Kockums refused to go further than it
believed was technologically feasible at the time.11
This is one of the many aspects of the history of the Collins class
on which there is furious disagreement. People from Kockums and
Saab and several Australians working for the submarine project
believe that the SWSC wanted a totally automated submarine with
the combat system and the ship management system being fully
integrated. Peter Hatcher, for example, recalls that:
P I C K I N G W I N N E R S 1 9 8 7
107
There had been a very strong push from SWSC before
contract signature to have a single distributed data
processing system for the whole submarine: combat system
and platform system. In other words all ship control would
have been done on the same system as the combat system.
Kockums had rejected that concept. They said it was too
risky. And we were very fortunate they did, otherwise we
would have had a complete disaster on our hands.
Greg Stuart agrees with this assessment, but people from the centre
deny this was their aim, claiming that the combat system was
designed to have links with the ship management system but that
they were always intended to be separate systems.
In essence, the final conclusion of the evaluation of the sub-
marines was that Kockums had designed a warship where the
Germans had designed a product:
The RAN assessment of the HDW/IKL Type 2000
performance illustrates the perception gained by some
members of the Submarine Evaluation Team that the
Type 2000 is a commercial proposal to a price, whereas the
Type 471 is the sort of proposal which would be made to the
parent navy, containing a degree of flexibility for design
development.12
This opinion reflected an appreciation of the Swedish navy’s
professionalism that had developed during the definition stage.
Swedish navy standards were to be written into the contract as
appropriate guides for the development of the new submarine
design.
The evaluation of the combat systems picked up the hec-
tic nature of the attempt to pull the Signaal bid together after
the company’s late change of approach, the report considering
the response ‘disjointed, unnecessarily bulky and in part un-
coordinated’.13 Ron Dicker, Signaal’s submarine program man-
ager and representative in Australia, felt the proposal suffered
because the Dutch company did not present its proposals in ‘Mil-
spec’, the American standard for defining procurement proposals.
The use of words in Milspec is contractually central, but Signaal
did not understand this and was criticised for the looseness of the
108
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
terminology in its proposal. Dicker thinks that the liaison team
should have guided Signaal to write its specifications in the appro-
priate language.
Rockwell was familiar with the Milspec system and its pro-
posal consequently looked far more specific, but both were found
largely to have met expectations, despite neither response being
fully developed. Signaal had changed the architecture of its system,
and Rockwell its team structure, well into the definition study. The
assessment concluded that Rockwell’s system was closest to the
specifications. Mick Millington believed that Rockwell had not
developed a truly distributed architecture, describing Rockwell’s
data bus as more of a star arrangement. Furthermore, the system
could guide a maximum of only four torpedoes simultaneously,
not the six that had been specified.
Signaal was also considered to have complied with the spec-
ifications, although the report listed a greater number of short-
comings; the workload for operators in the detection, tracking
and classification of sonar contacts was greater than the navy
expected. But the main problem with the Dutch proposal was not
technological, but rather its imprecise language and the perceived
inadequacy of the proposals for testing the system’s performance.
These were considered sufficiently serious that they would have to
be resolved before Signaal could take part in further contractual
negotiations.
The navy decided it could accept either system, although it had
a preference for Rockwell on performance and price grounds. In
fact, the biggest concern raised by the evaluation was not the qual-
ity of the offerings by the systems houses but that they had not
cooperated closely enough with the submarine designers in prepar-
ing the integration of system and submarine. This was something
of an understatement. Security arrangements had been made to
reassure the Americans that their technology would not be com-
promised by exposure to a company in a non-NATO country.
Kockums was to be given only the information needed for it to
fit the combat system ‘boxes’ into the submarine, but Rockwell
was reluctant to even do this. Signaal, on the other hand, tired of
the inefficiency of the restrictions and worked out informal agree-
ments with both IKL and Kockums to transfer more information
than was strictly required.14
P I C K I N G W I N N E R S 1 9 8 7
109
The report concluded with a warning:
The importance of integration should not be disregarded and
it will be necessary for Navy to participate in this area if risk
factors are to be kept manageable and performance
responsibilities are to be defined. It is recommended that this
be recognised in contract development and subsequent
negotiations.15
The navy was satisfied with the technology that the definition
study had delivered. Both combat systems appeared to meet the
navy’s ambitious objectives, were within budget and appeared to
need no major modification. It was only later that members of the
evaluation team reflected that the time available for the definition
study evaluation had been far too short to form an accurate picture
of the likely performance of either.16
With the submarine design, the project had again produced
an unexpected result. Many submariners felt that the evaluation
was flawed and that the German design should have won, but
others involved thought the result unsurprising and the quality
of the two designs as different as chalk and cheese.17 The senior
naval command felt that the outcome was sufficiently unusual to
order a review to see if the required ship’s characteristics were
misleading. Kim Beazley, too, was surprised and a little concerned
as, like most others, he had expected the German bid to win. He
was reassured when told that the Americans had been informed
of the choice of Kockums and had supported it. Significantly, Kim
Beazley recalls being told that: ‘The Americans were surprised at
the Swedish quietening techniques and in some aspects they saw
them as well in advance of their own and they were going to
seek
further information on them.’ Further, he says: ‘I have a bit of
a suspicion that they [the Americans] may have played a much
larger role than even I suspected at the time.’18
Surprised though it might be at the results of the evaluation,
the navy now faced a more serious and unexpected problem. The
definition study had failed to produce its central outcome, a set
of firm performance and production details that could easily be
turned into contractual form. The proposals were considered to
be at the preliminary design stage and ‘requiring substantial devel-
opment before a build specification could be prepared’. This was
110
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
unavoidable to a degree because the final design depended on other
decisions, such as the choice of the combat system. As things stood,
however, the evaluation report warned that if the government’s
contract deadline of mid-1987 was pursued, a baseline specifica-
tion for either submarine design could not be reached until several
months into the contract.19
The principal concern of the senior naval staff was, therefore,
how to push the project along to a stage where it could gain gov-
ernment approval. If the deadline was to be met, further develop-
ment of the contractors’ proposals and the contract negotiations
would have to proceed in parallel. In mid-January 1987, negoti-
ations began with ASC and AMS to turn the statements of intent
lodged with their final offers into contractually valid definitions
of deliverable outcomes.
The naval staff also had to make some decisions to shape
the future of the project outside of the responsibilities that
would later be given to the consortia. The most important of
these was to develop plans for the integrated logistics support
for the future operations of the submarines. The costs had not
been determined but the acquisition strategy meant that virtually
all documentation, training, support infrastructure, supply and
other elements of integrated logistics support had to be specially
developed.20
The director general of support for the navy was directed to
estimate the cost of integrated logistics support. His report con-
cluded that this would be not less than $700 million plus a 15 per
cent contingency, unless the contract negotiations could remove
