BAE Systems Australia has appointed David Shepherd as its new Managing Director of Surface Ships.
The appointment comes at a critical time for the Royal Australian Navy’s Hunter-class frigate program as it transitions from design to construction at Osborne, with the first of six ships on track to be delivered to the Navy in 2032.
The Hunter-class frigate is a variant of the UK’s Type 26 Global Combat Ship (GCS), eight of which will be built for the Royal Navy. In addition, Norway has recently announced that it has selected the design as its future Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) capability with a requirement for five ships and, like Australia, Canada is building 15 Type 26 variants, known as the Canadian Surface Combatant, or River-class.
Shepherd was previously the head of the UK’s Type 26 frigate program in Glasgow, where he oversaw the transition of the first three Type 26 ships under Batch One of the program from design to construction and, more recently, working with the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to finalise the contract for Batch Two.
Prior to that, Shepherd worked on BAE Systems’ project to deliver two 80,000-tone Quen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers to the Royal Navy, and the build of Batch Two of the UK’s River-class Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) program.
The company currently has five Type 26 ships under construction in Glasgow, with the first, HMS Glasgow, undergoing final fit-out and acceptance, prior to beginning her sea trials. The second frigate, HMS Cardiff, is also in the water and beginning here fit-out process.
“After some challenges a number of years ago, when we were mobilising the engineering phase, I picked up the program just when we were in the middle of the COVID pandemic,” Shepherd says.
“But we’re through that now and I can see the program accelerating. We have all the different stages of lifecycle going on at the moment in Glasgow and the first of class is into its dynamic commissioning phase, which is always really exciting.”
Shepherd many technical lessons were learned on a ship-by-ship basis in BAE Systems’ yards in Govan and Scotstoun and Australia’s Hunter-class program will benefit from these as the build ramps up at Osborne.
“There’s an excellent team (at Osborne) and they are getting the yard buzzing with the Hunter program,” he explains.
“I’m extremely impressed by the energy, the drive and the determination to deliver for the customer there. What I’m looking to do is bring my experience to this particular phase - coming out of design and ramping up production rate - to augment an excellent team.”