Patrick Durrant | Sydney
Reports indicating the German bid pitched by TKMS for the Sea 1000 Future Submarine program was no longer in contention need to be treated with some scepticism, according to ADM.
The initial report which quoted unnamed expert sources suggested the TKMS bid was in jeopardy because the German builders had no experience building submarines of the size required for Sea 1000, and that upscaling existing designs such as the Type 214 presented “exponential” technological challenges.
ADM would hasten to suggest that the Collins design represented an upscaled version of an existing Swedish boat, a design widely accepted by those familiar with Collins as being fundamentally sound.
One thing remains clear at this stage of the tender – all the bidders have their pros and cons. The Japanese may have the right sized boats with the silent endorsement of the US, but they have no experience exporting their technology to a foreign partner and they, like the others, must also overcome the range and habitability hurdles presented by the Australian requirement. The French are well used to building submarines of all sizes but altering a tried and proven nuclear design to a conventional one is not without its challenges. The Germans, for their part, have been building and exporting submarines for decades and are widely considered the experts when it comes to digital design.
If the Defence Minister has made one thing absolutely clear, it is that the Competitive Evaluation Process will be run with the utmost probity and ADM considers the prospect of any leakage from the evaluation team to be highly unlikely.
So, without the benefit of seeing what has been placed before the eyes of that team, we, like many others eagerly anticipating the announcement on Sea 1000, will have to wait and see what time will tell – but let's not jump to any rash conclusions.