The announcement that the next generation of patrol boats for Navy will be fast-tracked has now thrown somewhat of a question-mark over project Sea 1180, which was to deliver a modular solution for three types of vessel: Patrol boats, mine warfare ships and hydrographic survey vessels.
While the patrol boat program has been brought forward to meet an urgent operational need to replace the existing Armidale-class boats by 2020, which incidentally surprised no-one in industry, there has been very little said about what it will mean for the remaining aspects of Sea 1180.
For the present time, the project remains in the current Defence Capability Plan (DCP), but there are several options for the future and again, noone will be very surprised if the scope, timing or both are changed in the forthcoming DCP.
Defence overview
Defence for its part says that the patrol boat fast-track plan, announced in the 2013 Defence White Paper has had no affect on the scope of the wider Sea 1180 project.
“The scope of Sea 1180 Phase 1 remains unchanged,” said a Defence spokesperson in response to ADM’s question. “As per Defence White Paper 2013, ‘a modular multirole vessel remains a possible longer-term capability outcome, subject to technological maturity and an ability to provide operational flexibility with lower costs of ownership’. Defence plans to continue developing requirements and undertaking de-risking activities (trials, proof-of-concept, etc) in support of that longer-term capability outcome.
“Some of the existing DCP projects, such as Sea 1778 Phase 1 Deployable MCM—Organic Mine Counter Measures (in-service date of FY15-16 to FY16-17), represent important ‘lead-in’ capabilities that will assist in the de-risking of modular mission systems and robotic technologies that are central to the Sea 1180 Phase 1 concept. The new projects to deliver replacement patrol boats and service-life extensions to the Mine Hunters Coastal and hydrographic Survey Motor Launches foreshadowed in Defence White Paper 2013 will also be assessed for their potential to contribute to the transition to the future modular multirole vessel.”
There is a school of thought which believes that the modular concept was ahead of its time when Sea 1180 was first proposed in 2009, and some of the technologies required were not mature enough then (and not mature enough now) to support an Initial Operating Capability of between 2018 and 2021, as stated in the current DCP.
Fast-tracking the patrol boat replacement and seeking to upgrade the existing MHC and hydrographic SMLs as foreshadowed by Defence is therefore a logical step, but if the future scope of Sea 1180 is to remain unchanged (which includes a modular solution to all three types of requirement), then what will be the new timeline?
“No decision has been made on the revised timeline for Sea 1180 Phase 1, other than that it will be at a time when the technological maturity of mission systems (especially for mine countermeasures) is at an acceptable level and operational flexibility and life-cycle cost efficiencies can be demonstrated,” continued the Defence spokesperson.
“With the intent expressed in Defence White Paper 2013 to introduce the new projects to replace or upgrade existing capabilities as described above, the timing of these new projects and the intended lifecycle of the vessels they deliver or upgrade will be carefully considered with a view to their relationship with, and effect on, the timing of Sea 1180 Phase 1.”
With the concept dependent upon projects such as Sea 1778 Phase 1, which themselves carry a reasonable degree of technological risk, it would appear that the full scope desired of Sea 1180 back in 2009 will not be properly even understood until the later years of this decade.
Upgrade or replace?
Bringing the patrol boat replacement program forward has created further problems for Sea 1180 as originally conceived (see P50 for more on this). The questions being asked by industry include whether the timeline will be pushed to the right to align with the life of type of the new vessels and if so, what will their expected life of type be?
Another consideration may be to commence the MHC and hydrographic ships earlier and ‘tack’ the patrol boats to the end, hopefully coinciding with the planned withdrawal of the new vessels. But this then requires the technology (and its attendant demands on power and cooling etc) to remain as relevant at the end of the project as it was at the beginning and begs the question of whether the patrol boats to be built over the next few years will be regarded (and funded) as an interim solution.
If the current mine-warfare and hydrographic survey ships undergo some form of life extension program as foreshadowed by Defence above, what will be their scope and for how long will they be expected to remain relevant?
The consensus within industry is that the Glass-Reinforced Plastic (GRP) hulls of the Huon-class MHCs are basically sound and will require little work to stretch their service lives well beyond the 2020 timeframe, but their propulsion and mission systems will require significant upgrades before the end of the decade if they are to enable the vessels to remain relevant, reliable and supportable.
Given the focus on the patrol boat replacement, if Sea 1180 remains in its current form how much of the project resources will be allocated to the minehunter and survey ship upgrades?
If the project is split into at least two, as industry suggests will occur, will Sea 1180 oversee upgrade, replacement, or both?
Overseas experience
Although not a direct parallel with Sea 1180, the US has embarked upon what it terms its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, which are modular designs aimed at performing a range of different missions in the littoral environment, many of which overlap the desired outcomes for the Australian project.
The two LCS designs, the Independence-class aluminium trimaran built by Austal and the steel hulled Freedom-class manufactured by Lockheed Martin are larger than that envisaged by Sea 1180, but the modular mission concept is obviously similar.
In 2010, the UK launched its Mine-countermeasure, Hydrography and Patrol Capability (MHPC) program which once again larger than the 1,600-tonne vessel envisaged by Sea 1180, also aims to replace up to four classes of surface combatant with a single hull design.
While industry agrees that the modular mission concept could well revolutionise naval shipbuilding, insiders point out the technology is not yet mature and point to the mixed-experience the US Navy has had with the LCS program to date.
“Pushing Sea 1180 out by a decade would not be unreasonable, there is no operational imperative for government to invest heavily at this point in time,” one industry analyst told ADM. “The decision to split the project into the patrol boat option and then go back at a later time and reconsider the modular mission system makes a lot of sense. Australia doesn’t need to be the pioneer on this.”
Assuming the fast-tracked patrol boats will be acquired under the much-rumoured Sea 1179 and Sea 1180 will one day realise the modular holy grail originally envisaged, will a third and interim project oversee the upgrades to the MHCs and hydrographic survey vessels? The answer will hopefully be revealed in the 2013 DCP.
