Despite being delayed by around four months on the original schedule signed in 2007, Australia’s first Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ship is due to begin the next important phase of testing in late February or early March, when sea trials get underway.
With the hull of the second vessel now in Williamstown, both LHDs will now be alongside at BAE Systems’ Williamstown facility by late February for a period of time.
The sea trials of LHD01 will begin with initial ship handling routines in Port Phillip Bay before proceeding out to sea and carrying out further handling and navigational testing on the way to Sydney.
Following dry-docking in the Captain Cook Graving Dock at Garden Island, the ship will return to Melbourne in April, conducting further testing during the transit.
In Sydney the ship will have its hull cleaned and painted prior to the commencement of speed trials, as the marine growth accumulated during its time alongside at Williamstown would render any measurements inaccurate.
While the recent delay will mean the first vessel will now be delivered to Navy in the June timeframe, the overall program remains on track to deliver the full capability to the Commonwealth in the third quarter of 2017.
Project overview
The two LHDs, to become HMA Ships Canberra and Adelaide respectively after acceptance, are being acquired under the Joint Project 2048 Phases 4A and 4B.
They are essentially Spanish Armada ‘Juan Carlos’ class LHDs, with some modification to suit Australian operating conditions and therefore largely Military Off The Shelf vessels.
A separate phase, JP2048 Phase 3 is acquiring 12 Navantia LCM-1E landing craft as the primary surface ‘ship to shore connectors’ and four will be deployed aboard each LHD.
The Final Operating Capability milestone in the third quarter of 2017 will be preceded by the participation of both ships in the bilateral Talisman Sabre exercise, a major amphibious warfare serial which will test the ADFs capability to conduct large scale amphibious operations.
Delay to sea trials
LHD01 was scheduled to commence sea trials towards the end of December last year, following six weeks of Harbour Acceptance testing and Basin Trials alongside at Williamstown, but delays to propulsion pod finalisation resulted in several key elements of the schedule no longer aligning, so another window had to be found.
By early December it was understood that late completion of the pod installation in the dockyard would cause sea trials to slip beyond the window of opportunity for the Sydney dry dock. The delay also meant that key personnel from Siemens, in Australia to functionally test the pods prior to the ship being manoeuvred away from the pier, had to return to Germany before they were ready.
As a result of the complex nature of the interrelated activities, the Project Office had to juggle dock availability, OEM availability and system availability with the earliest possible time identified as the mid-March period.
Loading trials
The delay in commencement of sea trials does not mean all testing work as stopped and in early October last year, LHD01 was towed to Webb Dock in the Port of Melbourne, for a series of trials involving the loading and parking of many of Army’s vehicles which will be deployed on operations.
These trials included M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks, M88A2 Hercules Recovery Vehicles, Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles and a range of trucks and light vehicles.
“We utilised the ship’s heavy vehicle lift and ramp system for moving vehicles between the heavy vehicle garage and the light vehicle hangar,” explained JP2048 4A/4B Project Manager Captain Craig Bourke.
“The load trial went exceptionally well and we proved that we can get all those vehicles in and out, we can stow them and we can manoeuvre them around several locations within the ship.”
Harbour acceptance testing has also continued through the period, which basically energises each system within the ship, first by itself and then in conjunction with other systems.
CAPT Bourke reports that while testing was still ongoing in late January, issues discovered to that time were not significant.
“All the issues we have uncovered so far have been addressed with either an engineering solution or an update to software. We’ve had to update drivers and protocols and that sort of thing, but we made allowances for those types of issues. We haven’t found anything yet that we have not been able to solve,” he said to ADM.
“At the moment we are still expecting to deliver the capability that we contracted for and approved by government. The radar system is capable of detecting with the sensitivity we expected for example, and the generators are producing the required power but actually at slightly better efficiency than we predicted. In general the trials so far have been very successful.”
Sea trials described
In conjunction with harbour acceptance trials due for completion in February, the propulsion pods will require alignment and functional testing, which CAPT Bourke compares to a wheel alignment on a motor vehicle.
“The first element of that is conducted alongside the wharf and will take around three days,” he explained. “Then we will sail into the middle of Port Phillip Bay and set up things like the turning circle and response times. Once we prove that we have positive control of the vessel we will go through navigationally challenging areas such as through The Rip, out of Port Phillip Bay and into the ocean.”
The voyage to Sydney will be used to further test out the propulsion system as well as basic navigation and communications systems, prior to the ship spending three or four weeks at Garden Island for the hull clean and finalisation of the paint scheme. Predominantly grey would be a relatively safe bet.
The return trip to Melbourne will see the completion of the Block Two sea trials, which will involve endurance and efficiency testing, including the maximum speed, both full ahead and full astern.
“We also have to measure how far it will take us to stop; if you call for full stern power, how quick you can go backwards and all those things,” CAPT Bourke detailed. “Block Two will include the performance of the ship and also the combat system trials.”
All being well, LHD01 will return to Williamstown in late April or early May, where there is the technical expertise, equipment and knowledge to rectify any shortcomings highlighted on the trip. There is further provision for Block Three sea trials, to repeat any earlier tests if required.
LHD02 arrival
At the time of writing, the hull of LHD02 was somewhere between one third and half way across the Indian Ocean and, subject to weather, was due to enter Port Phillip Bay in early February, where it will be removed from the heavy lift vessel Blue Marlin and towed to Nelson Pier in Williamstown.
Because LHD01 will still be resident at Williamstown when it arrives, BAE Systems has enacted a contingency plan to relocate it to the other side of the pier prior to the arrival of LHD02.
One side of the pier has been strengthened to allow the superstructure blocks to be lifted aboard by crane, so the LHD shuffle will ensure that work to LHD02 will not be delayed by the continued presence of the first vessel.
“The move enables us to do the lifting of the superstructure blocks on the LHD02, which is predominantly work carried out by the metal trades. At the same time we’re doing the completion and production and handover of systems for sea trials on LHD01, which heavily involves the electrical specialists,” he said.
Training, delivery and future work
Training of the first crew and support staff will be ongoing at BAE Systems’ purpose built training facility in Mascot (see the October 2013 copy of ADM for a full run down on the Mascot simulation/training facility) until the end of April which, given the recent delayed handover of LHD01, represents no further risk to the program.
“The training has been pretty well received; there have been a few corrections to things we identified earlier. We’ve essentially trained everyone in their primary role and now we’re training them in their secondary roles,” CAPT Bourke reported.
One of the major components of an amphibious capability is the operation of large numbers of helicopters from the deck and this element is not due to begin operational test and evaluation until after the vessel is handed over to Navy.
First of Class Aviation trials will concentrate on qualifying the MRH 90 battlefield airlift and utility helicopter, as this will be the mainstay of an Army amphibious aviation group. Beginning with a single helicopter, each spot on the deck will be qualified by Navy’s Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Trials Unit (AMAFTU) before progressively adding more helicopters.
Following on from MRH 90 trials, other helicopter types such as Army’s CH-47D/F Chinooks and Tiger Armed Reconnaissance helicopters will be introduced.
Although the sea trials delay is frustrating, given the complexity of the LHD program and a shipbuilding industry which had to ramp up rapidly, a four month delay in delivery of the first vessel would not seem a bad outcome.
“In 2007 when we signed the contract, we said we were going to have the major delivery of the first ship in February 2014 and we are going to deliver it in June which, by any standard for a complex strategic project, is not a bad outcome,” CAPT Bourke concluded.
“LHD02 is going to arrive in Australia earlier than planned and the superstructure blocks are ahead of schedule. We’ve learned from the things that delayed us with ship one and we’ve implemented them into the plan for ship two. So overall we’re still on track to deliver the entire program to our agreed schedule.”
