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Earlier this month the baseline design drawings for Phase 2 (Forward Projector) of the Advanced Stabilised Glide Slope Indicator (ASGSI) project on the Canberra class Landing Helicopter Docks (LHD) were delivered by a team of Navantia Australia engineers, bringing the project to a close after over 10 long months and over 3,500 hours of engineering labour. The Forward ASGSI system is now fully installed on both LHDs and was recently used to support the First of Class Flight Trials for the MH-60R helicopters.

A consortium of Navy, CASG, Naval Ship Management, Owen International, AGI and Navantia Australia collaboratively worked through an engineering change to install the new Advanced SGSI system in a very tight timeline. Navantia Australia performed the platform integration design necessary to integrate the ASGSI into the Canberra class LHD design.

The team began working on the project in September 2019 and delivered revisions to 27 LHD baseline engineering drawings, three Installation Work Packs as well as alignment documentation, test procedures, a detailed design report, Designer’s Certificate, Validation and Verification artefacts, PDR and DDR design reviews, and all the ILS deliverables required for RAN to operate and maintain this system.

 “This integrated effort has been a real credit to Navantia and a good indication to Navy of how well our team is working together,” Navantia Australia’s managing director Alfonso Garcia-Valdes said. “The ASGSI system had emerging obsolescence issues that were making supportability very difficult and causing concern for the LHD Aviation capability. Navantia Australia’s engineering design team were integral to achieving the change, readily accepted the challenge, but were agile in approach as problems such as material availability during COVID-19, [which] threatened restoration of the SGSI capability.”

In June, Defence recognised Navantia Australia as a Design Authority for four classes of RAN ships under a Strategic Agreement Principles document. Under the agreement, Navantia Australia will provide platform system design and integration services, ensuring that the design integrity, configuration control, upgrades and modernisation of Navantia designed ships and supplied systems and equipment is fully supported in Australia.

More on this is available in the August/September edition of ADM.

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