Defence Business: Navantia eyes future opportunities in Australia | ADM Apr 2010
Gregor Ferguson | Sydney
Spanish shipyard Navantia plans to use the leverage it has created for itself in the Australian market to pursue at least four major opportunities here.
While its credibility will depend to a considerable degree on the success (or otherwise) of Australia's Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) and amphibious landing ship (LHD) programs, these will help position Navantia for four major projects, and ongoing sustainment work on a range of RAN platforms.
Navantia is the platform designer for the Hobart-class AWDs, which are based on its F-100 design for the Spanish Navy; it is also building the hulls for the RAN's two Canberra-class LHDs, which are based on the Spanish Navy's BPE design for the Spanish Navy and will be completed and fitted out by BAE Systems Australia at Williamstown dockyard.
The company is also preferred tenderer to manufacture 10 medium landing craft to equip the LHDs as a replacement for the RAN's ageing LCM8s.
Down the track, Navantia has its eyes on four more RAN platform opportunities: the replacement of the RAN's replenishment ship HMAS Success under Project Sea 1654; the Future Submarine Project, Sea 1000; the Future Frigate Project, Sea 5000; and the Offshore Combat Vessel Project, Sea 1180.
In each case Navantia has a product, or a project under way, which it believes could be adapted to meet the RAN's needs.
Navantia's business position is bolstered through its public ownership (by Spain's Economic Ministry) and by Spain's defence industry policy.
According to the Spanish Ministry of Defence's Director of Naval Construction, Admiral Sanjurjo, this explicitly acknowledges that Spain cannot afford to sustain several competing shipyards with fragmented and sub-optimal capabilities.
There is insufficient work to enable even two yards to maintain critical mass in the high-end design, systems integration and cost-effective construction skills required to deliver a technologically demanding Spanish Navy construction program.
Therefore, he says, Spain's naval industry model is for a sole-source shipyard contractually bound to deliver the best possible value for money and which builds relationships with the best technology partners the Spanish naval community can afford.
The company's rolling restructuring program over the past decade (including two name changes) has seen a concentration of shipbuilding and systems integration capabilities at three sites: El Ferrol, Cartagena and Cadiz, all of them adjacent to the Spanish Navy's principal bases.
This approach appears to be bearing fruit inasmuch as Navantia has been able to focus the resources to deliver what Sanjurjo calls a "most ambitious and technically advanced shipbuilding program for the Armada Espanola."
This includes the F-100 destroyers, S-80 submarines, the BPE, the new BAM-class corvettes and a new Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment (AOR) vessel.
On top of this, Navantia is also building five Nansen-class frigates for Norway, six Scorpene-class submarines for India (in a consortium with French yard DCNS) and eight patrol vessels for Venezuela.
Australian opportunities
The first new Australian opportunity for Navantia will be Project Sea 1000, for which the company has made a proposal based on its S-80 submarine for the Spanish Navy; if appropriate, it could even offer the S-80 itself, though the RAN's requirements demand something bigger and more capable.
Navantia is prime contractor and platform designer for the S-80, which will enter service in 2013.
It is a conventional diesel-electric boat displacing 2,800 tonnes with a 32-man crew and designed from the outset with a 300kW Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system based on fuel cells and ethanol.
It is armed with Sub Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles as well as STN Atlas DM2A4 heavyweight torpedoes.
The program has taken 15 years to reach the present point, and Navantia and the Spanish Navy have selected their technical partners carefully - they are all from the US: Lockheed Martin is the partner for the combat system; United Technologies is the partner for the fuel cell technology; and the US Navy is the technology partner for establishing Spain's indigenous SubSafe program as well as for integration of the Tomahawk.
The four-boat S-80 program is built on three principal contracts - with Navantia for platform design and build, combat system, Integrated Logistics Support and the sonars; an R&D contract supporting development of the AIP system and sensor suite (including EW and sonars); and the US FMS contract covering SubSafe, sub-Harpoon and Tomahawk.
The S-80 is the first modern boat to combine Tomahawk and AIP and, helpfully from Australia's point of view, embodies a range of US sonar and combat system hardware compatible with growth path for the Collins-class submarine's AN/BYG-1 combat system and integrated by Navantia's FABA subsidiary with support from Lockheed Martin.
The AIP system employs Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells fed with liquid oxygen (which is stored onboard) and hydrogen which is derived from bio-ethanol.
The ethanol is also stored onboard and processed to extract the hydrogen; the resulting CO2 waste is then disposed of discreetly.
Why ethanol?
Because, says Navantia, it is safe, non-toxic and plentiful and the handling, storage and extraction technologies are mature.
PEM fuel cell technology offers a long service life - over 5,000 hours, with high current density and a quick response to load and importantly, says Navantia, it occupies a relatively small volume.
The first pilot production system for the S-80 will be tested this northern summer at Cartagena, which places it close to the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) seven required by Australia for 1st pass approval in Sea 1000.
Acknowledging that the S-80 doesn't meet the RAN's full operational requirement, Navantia says it is one of four options it presented to Australia in response to a recent RFI under the initial definition phase of Sea 1000: the baseline S-80; an enhanced S-80 design; and two separate "Design to Requirements" options.
The latter incorporate flexible payload concepts to support special forces delivery and other capabilities: one places all the extra equipment inside the pressure hull, while the other provides "wetted" stowage partially outside the pressure hull.
Navantia hasn't divulged further details, except that the enhanced S-80 lies in the maturity/capability/risk trade-off space between the baseline submarine and the Design to Requirements solution.
At the heart of Navantia's credentials, it says, are its experience of integrating US Combat Systems and weapons into surface combatants and submarines: the S-80's Integrated Combat System Core, jointly developed by Lockheed Martin and FBA, is one example; so is the S-80's Tomahawk missile system; so is the AWD's Aegis air warfare system.
Allied to this, Navantia has conventional submarine design and construction expertise including, crucially, an AIP system which will shortly go into production.
Other opportunities
For the other opportunities, Navantia is leveraging its current construction program for the Spanish and Venezuelan Navies.
The current order book includes a single F-105 Frigate (in effect ‘Flight 2' of the F-100 class), one Juan Carlos-class BPE, one MARPOL-compliant AOR, and four 2,500-tonne BAM (Buque de Accion Maritima) corvettes, which are due to start entering service this year.
The company is awaiting the detailed requirements for the replacement of HMAS Success under Phase 2B of Sea 1654; this is likely to demand a specialist military design rather than a modified merchant vessel, such as HMAS Sirius.
Navantia has a baseline design already, in its Cantabria-class AOR which is due to enter service this year.
This double-hulled 174m ship displaces 19,600 tonnes, with a 20kt maximum speed; she has five replenishments stations capable of replenishing up to three ships simultaneously.
The Cantabria carries 8,000m3 of bunker oil, 1,500m3 of aviation fuel and 170m3 of fresh water, as well as dry storage capacity for ammunition, spares and food.
It's not clear at this stage what the RAN's specific requirements will be; the Cantabria-class slightly exceeds the performance and capacity of the 18,000 tonne, 157m, 19kt HMAS Success.
The latter's liquid storage capacity is likely to be reduced by an internal double-hull upgrade, for which an RFT was released in December 2009.
This would install an internal second hull for MARPOL compliance, with a possible return to service next year and a planned withdrawal date of around 2015, but it may also prove to be more cost-effective to simply replace her with a new, compliant design.
The RAN's Future Frigate program is some distance off and requirements definition work isn't yet finished.
Of more immediate interest to Navantia is Defence's Project Sea 1180, which seeks to replace the RAN's current force of 305 tonne Armidale-class patrol boats, 315 tonne survey motor launches, 2,550 tonne hydrographic ships and 720 tonne Huon-class minehunters with a single class of multi-role Offshore Combatant Vessel (OCV) displacing up to 2,000 tonnes.
Australia isn't alone in seeking such a ship.
The Royal Navy has a requirement for a single-class Minehunting, Hydrography and Patrol Capability (MHPC) ship, and the Spanish Navy's BAM class is designed to meet many of these requirements also, including hydrographic research, diver support and submarine rescue on top of their primary patrol and security roles.
Shipbuilding trends
The recent trend has been for light, fast patrol vessels to be replaced by bigger, slightly slower but more versatile ships with better sea keeping, endurance and crew comfort for extended patrols, and the ability to embark a light helicopter.
Even so, it's not clear that a single design could satisfactorily reconcile all of the conflicting design requirements across the full spectrum of Project Sea 1180 and Navantia's approach to this universal problem has been to develop a family of vessels based on a common design, but of differing displacements, ranging from 300 to 3,000 tonnes.
The so-called Avante family incorporates the Spanish navy's BAM design as well as the offshore patrol and flexible support ship designs it is building for Venezuela.
They share the same hull lines, compartment division, arrangement of common spaces and propulsion systems and machinery, with an emphasis on automation and crew comfort.
The 2,700 tonne BAM has a ship's crew of just 35, augmented by up to 35 additional mission crew, and is configured with a large flight deck and a large, open poop or ‘working' deck which can be fitted out with containerized mission equipment.
It's debatable whether a multi-role ship could shine as a Mine Counter-Measures (MCM) platform also, given the need for an MCM vessel to have a minimal magnetic signature.
Nevertheless, a family of ships using the same hull form, machinery and combat systems and fitted with modularised mission systems could provide important synergies and through-life cost savings in manning, training and maintenance.
With the first members of its Avante family about to enter service, Navantia may be the first international yard that is able to provide hard evidence to back up its sales pitch.
Navantia's footprint in Australia is small at present, but this reflects the work share between the company's Spanish yards and the local yards responsible for delivering the AWDs and LHDs.
The likely trigger for a significant extension of that footprint might be the in-service support contracts for the AWDs and LHDs.
A subsequent bid for Projects such as Sea 1180, Sea 1644 Ph.4 and Sea 1000 would increase the footprint still further, especially when the company starts seeking out local technology and construction partners for these programs.
It's unlikely to be short of suitors.