Air Warfare Destroyers
‘Hobart’ class Air Warfare Destroyers to be upgraded to ‘Aegis’ Baseline 9
The end of the construction phase of Australia’s Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) program is in sight. The second of three ships of the Hobart-class has left the builder’s yard and arrived at its new home in Sydney following its handing over to the Navy, with the last ship on track to be delivered late next year after its official launch in May.
In the meantime, the lead ship HMAS Hobart, which was handed over to the Navy in June 2017 and commissioned in September that year, following a troubled build phase which saw schedules slip by 30 months and costs balloon to more than $870 million over the original budget by 2015. A re-baselining of the program announced in December that year looks to have solved most of the issues surrounding the program, and early this year the AWD was removed from the dreaded Projects of Concern list.
Originally ordered as part of Australia’s SEA 4000 program for a new class of Air Warfare Destroyers to replace the Royal Australian Navy’s Adelaide-class (Oliver Hazard Perry) frigates and its stopgap Air Warfare Capability with the Raytheon SM-2 surface to air missile as part of requirements outlined in the 2000 Australian Defence White Paper, the Hobart-class AWDs are based on a Spanish Navantia F100 frigate hull modified to Australian requirements, chief of which is a Lockheed-Martin Aegis combat system.
Aegis was identified by Defence in 2004 as the system the AWDs were to be built around. The use of a U.S. Navy combat system was formally approved in April 2005, and Raytheon Australia was brought into the Air Warfare Destroyers project with the responsibility of integrating the Aegis system into the selected design, along with modifications to accommodate RAN-preferred electronic warfare equipment, underwater sensors, and weapons.
That year also saw the AWD Alliance being formed to organise and implement the project soon after ASC, based in Osborne, South Australia was selected to build the ships. The alliance is a contract arrangement between the Commonwealth of Australia represented by the Capabilities and Sustainment Group (formerly the Defence Materiel Organisation) of the Department of Defence as owner-participant, shipbuilder ASC and Raytheon Australia, with the latter also the Mission Systems Integrator for the ships. Navantia, for its part, declined to be part of the Alliance, instead opting to sign a Platform System Design contract with the Alliance.
Navantia’s design won selection as the hull-form for the Air Warfare Destroyers in June 2007 and the $8 billion contract was signed in October that year, despite U.S naval company Gibbs and Cox having previously been considered the favourite with an offer of an evolved, scaled-down variant of the Arleigh-Burke Flight II class design.
It was thought at the time that the Spanish ships were considered a less risky option as, unlike the Evolved Arleigh Burkes (which then existed only on paper), the Navantia design had been built and was operational with the Spanish Navy. The Álvaro de Bazán derivatives were predicted to be in service four years earlier than the American-designed ships, and would cost AU $1 billion less to build, with further financial and technical benefits in ordering the AWDs and the Canberra-class landing helicopter dock ships from the same supplier.
As subsequent events have shown, that was not necessarily the case, and it is fair to say a lot of lessons have been learnt by the various parties about best practices in project management, contracting, technology transfer and shipbuilding. If anything, the silver lining of the problems associated with the AWDs is that the Commonwealth would have come away from the program with three very capable ships along with valuable lessons as it starts on an ambitious shipbuilding program that will last for the next few decades.
Delivering ships and capability
The first of the ships, the Hobart, was originally due to be commissioned into service in December 2014. The aforementioned issues, which have been covered previously by APDR and can also be read in all its gory detail in the Australian National Audit Office report on the AWD program, saw commissioning of the Hobart pushed back in September 2012 to March 2016, then again in May 2015 to June 2017. The ship was officially commissioned into the Navy in September 23rd that year at Fleet Base East, and in service is known as a guided missile destroyer or DDG instead of AWD, a term that is instead associated with the development and construction program.
HMAS Hobart is now in the midst of its Navy Operational Test and Evaluation (NOTE) trials, which include first of class platform trials, integration of the MH-60R Seahawk Romeo helicopter, gunnery and combat system qualification trials. This will continue into the U.S. Navy combat system ship qualification trials (CSSQT) that will be conducted on the instrumented range off the US west coast and success there will result in the ship attaining IOC.
The Hobart has now been joined at Fleet Base East by the second ship, HMAS Brisbane. She was handed over to the Navy by the AWD Alliance at the end of July following a series of sea trials on completion of construction, subsequently making her way to Sydney in early September and is scheduled to be commissioned into service at the end of October. Following commissioning she will also partake in her own trials to work her systems and crew up to IOC, although FOC will only be declared when all three DDGs are ready for operations.
In the meantime, plans are already afoot to improve the combat capabilities for the class under Project SEA 4000 Phase 6, with the 2016 Defence Integrated Investment Plan expected to cost some $4-5 billion between 2017 and 2028. The ships will have Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) installed, with both Hobart and Brisbane receiving their respective systems earlier this year. CEC is a sensor network with integrated fire control capability that combines data from multiple battle force air search sensors on CEC-equipped units into a single, real-time, composite track picture.
This allows targets detected by one ship, as well as potentially those detected by aircraft like the Lockheed-Martin F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, to be identified by another ship and fired upon with long-range missiles like the Raytheon RIM-174 Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) without that vessel having to actually detect it themselves. This potentially means a shorter sensor-to-shooter loop for the ship doing the shooting, and allows for targets to be engaged from longer ranges and from an unexpected direction (as the shooter will not be emitting with its own sensors) and enables a whole fleet to intercept threats like high-speed cruise missiles, once only a single ship sees them.
However, Australia does not currently have the SM-6 in its inventory nor is there an ongoing program on record to acquire the missile as far as APDR is aware although we understand that there is certainly interest within Defence to do so. The U.S. Naval Institute has reported in January 2017 that Australia, Japan, and South Korea have all been cleared by the Pentagon to acquire the SM-6 if these countries make the decision do so.
Australia is the first nation outside the U.S. to receive the CEC, and the system was successfully tested on board both destroyers off the coast of South Australia during sea trials for the Brisbane between March and April this year. CEC is one technology that will form a part of the Australian Joint Integrated Fires Capability being implemented in the Australian Defence Force and will be part of the effort to transform the ADF into a fully integrated, networked, joint force.
The Australian Government is seeking to integrate CEC into other ADF capabilities, including the E-7A Wedgetail aircraft and our Integrated Air and Missile Defence program, and will also be integrated into the Future Frigate’s Aegis combat management system together with its Saab Australia-developed interface and the CEAFAR phased array radar. It is envisaged that this technology will provide the ADF with longer range, cooperative and layered air defence.
The installation of CEC will also be a significant step to improve the interoperability of the DDGs with Australia’s allies. CEC is already in the process of being deployed on U.S. Navy ships, Northrop-Grumman E-2D Hawkeye early warning aircraft and the U.S. Marine Corps network systems and will provide the ships and aircraft of both countries to potentially share targeting data and solutions in the event of a conflict. In addition, Japan has also indicated interest in fitting its own ships and E-2Ds with CEC, potentially further enhancing the efficacy of the system regionally.
Another of the planned upgrades will be the introduction of Aegis Baseline 9 to the DDGs. The ships are currently fitted with the Aegis Baseline 7.1 Refresh 2, ordered in the early days of the AWD program and some time before Baseline 9 was developed. It has been reported elsewhere that the SPY-1D(V) radar and SPQ-9B horizon search radar fitted on board the Hobart-class would bring the system closer to the U.S. Navy’s Baseline 8, but incorporating Baseline 9 will mark a big step up in capability for the DDGs.
Baseline 9 brings a true open architecture computer framework into the Aegis system, which allows easier integration of new improvements to capability than before, as well as what the U.S. Navy calls Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) which allows aircraft like the F-35 and Block III Super Hornet to identify and provide targeting solutions for ship-launched missiles to engage targets beyond the horizon and over land.
However, the biggest change is the addition of Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) capability to Baseline 9-equipped ships. Previously, U.S. Navy ships running earlier Aegis Baselines were either dedicated to the air warfare or missile defence missions only. IAMD will mean the ships will be able to perform both missions concurrently, bringing a big step change in versatility to the capability of the DDGs particularly in light of both China’s and North Korea’s stockpiles of ballistic missiles, although both the SM-6 and Raytheon RIM-161 SM-3 missile will be needed to take full advantage of the IAMD’s Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) capability.
Sydney progressing
The third ship, NUSHIP Sydney, is now the only one left at the yard following the departure of the Brisbane. According to Air Warfare Destroyers Alliance General Manager Paul Evans, who gave APDR an update on construction of the Sydney, she is now 85% complete, with Combat System Light off starting in August and work still left to do on her platform and combat systems such as the navigational, communications, Combat Management systems as well as the radars.
She was launched into the water in May this year when she was 80% complete, following Main Generator Light Off in April, which saw the successful commissioning of all four generators on board that are used to produce electrical power that in turn will supply all electrical equipment throughout the ship. Work is now ongoing to finish up the remaining trade work, which includes the final painting and work on the interior compartments of the vessel.
The construction of the last ship is now “a well understood and smooth process” according to Evans, although the Alliance is still making some minor improvements during work on the NUSHIP Sydney. Nevertheless, one of the aims is to replicate success with the Brisbane, which was provisionally accepted more than a week before schedule, with a significant reduction in the required design changes and rework compared to the first ship. The program itself has kept within cost and schedule milestones since the 2015 re-baselining, with former ASC chief executive officer Mark Lamarre previously saying that the Brisbane was 40 per cent less expensive than ship one and he anticipated the Sydney would see a further 36 per cent improvement on ship two from ASC’s side of the project.
Evans told APDR that the main aim of the Alliance was to deliver the NUSHIP Sydney according to schedule sometime in the latter half of 2019, following a series of trials that will begin in the second quarter of that year. These include trials of the propulsion, steering and other systems while moored alongside, before going out to sea for builder’s sea trials and then eventually to Cat 5 sea trials that will involve all of the ship’s combat systems and making sure everything on board performs within tolerances and specifications.
These activities will take place in parallel with the shutting down of the Air Warfare Destroyers program, as the construction phase gives way to the sustainment phase. This will involve the transfer of the data and other information required to support and sustain the ship to the Commonwealth and the support organization in Sydney where the ships are based, as part of a list of deliverables to be handed over. The structure of the Alliance with the Commonwealth as an integral part of it, has often been maligned, but Evans feels that it is helpful to the close-up phase given that the Commonwealth’s people are embedded into the organization and are involved in the day to day activities, thus fully cognizant of what lies behind the build of a major complex naval platform, along with what data is required for the sustainment phase.
Transition to SEA1180 and SEA5000
The government’s Continuous Shipbuilding Plan will see the shipbuilding enterprise continue in South Australia even after the Air Warfare Destroyers project wraps up, with two of the Offshore Patrol Vessels under SEA1180 and the nine Hunter-class Future Frigates under SEA 5000 due to start construction in South Australia in 2018 and 2020 respectively.
The main driving force behind this decision was to ensure that at least a core of shipbuilding jobs remain in South Australia in the period between the end of the AWD program and the start of SEA5000’s construction phase. One of the reasons cited for the AWD’s earlier troubles was the hollowing out of the shipbuilding industry after the Anzac-class frigates were built and AWD construction began, leaving the shipbuilders with the lack of a skilled workforce available especially given the ongoing resources boom elsewhere in Australia at the time.
Warren King, who was head of the DMO at the time and is now Chairman at Navantia Australia, had said everyone, himself included, underestimated how run down shipbuilders had become in the period between 2004 and 2012. Indeed, as the AWD program starts to wind down, ASC has started to shed jobs, with more than 200 redundancies reported in June this year and another 90 in August.
Despite this, the lack of any sizeable gap between the AWD shipbuilding phase and the start of OPV construction which will then roll into the SEA 5000 build phase should also see institutional knowledge remain with the industry as well as the Commonwealth. The AWD Alliance’s Evans told APDR that be is confident that “the Continuous Shipbuilding Plan will be able to leverage on a running start this program has provided through the knowledge base and experience gained”, adding that the Alliance’s system of an ongoing review process during the AWD builds has led to a thorough understanding “of the system, the design, and the build in a deeper way, which means you pick up improved ways of doing things and we expect that will be a major part of the journey through the CSP that will lead up to SEA5000”.
