Patrick Durrant | Sydney
Project Sea 1354 Phase 1 Submarine Rescue Service (SRS) has been granted First Pass government approval to solicit the market with an invitation to register (ITR) now out.
According to Austender, the project “seeks a contractor owned/operated or government owned/operated SRS which is intended to operate for 25 years in support of both the Collins Class and Future Submarine Fleets. A request for tender (RFT) is planned for release between December and February 2016.
ADM caught up with submarine rescue expert and managing director of InDepth Project Management, Frank Owen, to discuss recent history of submarine rescue capability in Australia and the options on the table for Sea 1354.
“They may not go with the options they are seeking via this ITR, as the unspoken option would be to further develop and upgrade the existing capability they have with the LR-5.”
Owen was heavily involved in the attempts to establish a sovereign capability for submarine rescue in the early 1990s, first with the Oberon class and then also the Collins submarines. The Australian Submarine Rescue Vehicle Remora was one of the first rescue vehicles used, based on the technology used by the offshore industry.
After operating successfully for ten years, the rescue vehicle suffered an accident during trials in 2006 and, despite being recovered and refurbished, the system was unable to regain certification for its launch and recovery system (LARS). The government then opted for the UK’s LR-5 SRV, owned and operated by James Fisher Defence (or James Fisher Divex as it is now known). Remora actually formed the inspiration for the US Navy (USN) successful program, the Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System (SRDRS).
Australia has had the free swimming submersible LR-5 in country since 2009, with a five year rolling contract operated by James Fisher Divex. The LR-5 is air-transportable and exercises regularly with the RAN submarines every year. They operate in conjunction with a recently refurbished pair of decompression chambers that can seat up to 36 personnel each.
But Owen says that LR-5 is getting to the point where it needs to be either replaced or upgraded.
“The command module of LR-5 is getting old and these are the two options as it approaches the end of its life.”
Owen says the reason for the ITR now is because the government wants to have a mature capability that will be able to work with the new class of submarines when they come into service during the 2020s.
“They may not go with the options they are seeking via this ITR, as the unspoken option would be to further develop and upgrade the existing capability they have with the LR-5,” Owen says.
He points to the fact that the DMO (now CASG) has already spent a considerable sum of money adjusting the length by 10m of one of the two
submarine rescue ships recently acquired, so it could accommodate the UK-owned Type B decompression chambers adapted to work with the LR-5.
Owen says there are three potential suppliers of a new system.
“The first is James Fisher Divex. They have built two SRVs in 2009 for both Singapore and the Republic of South Korea which, although slightly smaller than the LR-5, are still very good vehicles.”
Owen says one disadvantage of such free swimming submersibles is that if a problem occurs there is a very limited commercial skillset within industry (other than for research submersibles which represent a very small percentage) to call upon for assistance.
The other option is for a tethered, remotely operated SRV, similar to Remora and the US SRDRS. This would likely be offered by Oceanworks which has formed the Submarine Rescue Alliance incorporating Oceanworks, Phoenix (the operators of the SRDRS) and Magpie, a body of experts aligned with Phoenix.
“Their version would perhaps be built to commercial standards as opposed to the milspec model used by the USN, but very similar,” Owen says.
“This would provide compatibility options and the ability to plug and play between US and Australia. You can also keep a vast pool of operators/pilots and draw upon them as required for an incident,” he says.
Another potential supplier, according to Owen, is Perry Slingsby, which have built early submersibles for the RAN, the current NATO Submarine Rescue System (NSRS) and also one currently used by the People’s Liberation Army’s Navy of China.
Owen says there are a lot of submarine rescue systems in the Asia Pacific region but there is no umbrella organisation to enable collaboration (for example under NATO’s umbrella the UK, France and Norway share a rescue system). While there is some cooperation, for instance between Singapore and Malaysia, Owen says many navies operate their own systems.
“Because of our geographic isolation, we really need to have our own sovereign capability. The time it takes to get a vehicle onto an incident location via an airlift and then transit on a mother ship is inevitably considerable, especially in terms of the Australian context.”