The Collins Class Submarine Story

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