Suchergebnisse

The Australian Government recently announced that France's Direction des Constructions Navales Services (DCNS) had been selected to design and build Australia's future submarine, known as the Shortfin Barracuda. Starting in 2016 when an initial design contract is signed, this will be the major developmental Defence project for Australia over the next ten years. This paper reviews the possible developmental approach options that come next for Australia's future submarine project using the U.S. Defense acquisition life cycles, and finds a preferred approach to be the U.S. acquisition model of Engineering Manufacture Development (EMD), before any production contract. EMD does not align in all regards with Australia's existing political, military, industrial, technological and economic design processes, which are identified and compared against existing aqcuisition models. The paper also reviews major lessons learned in Australian acquisitions regarding early preview test and evaluation (T&E), which has been the focus of serious reviews by the Senate, Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and the Department of Defence (DoD) since 2012. Such review includes public testimony by Australia's DoD in March 2016 to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts and Audit, once again, regarding the absolute limits of paper-based down-selection from contender submissions even when the acquisitions are allegedly mature off-the-shelf acquisitions. The paper recommends that DCNS as the preferred contender work through a detailed series of preview evaluations before an EMD contract is signed. Lessons learned from the Collins Class Submarine and example preview T&E activities are provided to help justify this caution for Australia's DoD. Such preview T&E would practically and independently confirm for both DCNS and Australia's DoD exactly what are the major technical and operational risks driving modification of Australia's submarine from its baseline French design – and do so before they both get locked into contract! The paper distils all these factors into eleven recommended T&E goals for the Shortfin Barracuda design, principally based around early commitment to an estimated five land-based test sites and two in-water test sites. Finally, the paper proposes more broadly that there be greater investment in the social spaces for critical thinking to guide the submarine design towards a continuous evolving design and build rather than blocks of design and build. Modelling of this approach out to 2050 shows an earlier initial capability might be achieved by as much as six to eight years and involve up to forty percent less submarine rework.

If Australia's Future Submarine Program is to deliver, it needs to rapidly develop a comprehensive Systems Security Engineering (SSE) and Cybersecurity Test and Evaluation (CT&E) Strategy that provisions Australian owned and operated infrastructure to design, build, demonstrate and sustain cyber-resilience in critical submarine systems. Failure to act swiftly creates significant program risk that can only be mitigated through costly design rework and in the near term will result incapability limitations. Submarine T&E Sites and Cyber Resiliency are interdependent and inter-related. The Program Director has committed to building land based test infrastructure, however a serious concern is that if there are any delays in the development of organic test capability, these will force the French designer and builder, Naval Group (formerly DCNS), to provision French sites solving the near term problem but adversely impacting Australia's ability to take long term ownership of Submarine cyber-resilience. Australia can exploit lessons learned from US DOD Cybersecurity initiatives to help mitigate Australia's Future Submarine Cybersecurity Risks.Cyber has become a supposedly cheap first-strike weapon of political choice by potential adversaries in a milieu placing insurgency, terrorism, international crime and state-based influences in close un-regulated proximity. The merging of electronic and cyber warfare means that no physical artefact such as a submarine, however unconnected or firewalled it may be, is immune to probing. The quantum attack surface (QAS) of the future submarine is as much in the past, as it is in its designs today and operations tomorrow. It must not only survive to be credible, but even before build is part of an offensive cyber capability forcontemporary deterrence. Cybersecurity craft in the U.S. has determined that critical Defence systems, like submarines, nuclear weapons and space surveillance, require robust security systems engineering and Cybersecurity T&E to build and sustain robust cyber-resilient systems. The future submarine, and every current and future Australian DoD capability has cyber-resilience as a requirement, and there is an opportunity to ensure these requirements flow down through to design, build and test by leveraging the approaches used by the U.S. DoD. Secondly, this paper outlines the security systems engineering and Cybersecurity T&E challenge could be addressed by adopting U.S. DoD best practices to engineer, test and sustain cyber-resilient systems.Lessons learned from the U.S. DoD can be used to inform and refine Australia's Future Submarine Cybersecurity program.

Strategic uncertainty in the Asian hemisphere, and thus the prospect of warlike conflict before 2025, is undoubtedly growing. This comes from unfinished conflicts like Korea and Taiwan, and from newer major power tensions that arise primarily from the increasing commercial and military profile of communist China. This paper examines the likely impacts and options of such near-term warfare for Australia's submarine program. The primary three impacts proposed are: (i) improved operational utility of the Collins Class, (ii) enhanced ability to adapt quickly to the expected asymmetric threats of sea-mining and cyber-warfare, and (iii) accelerated delivery of the future submarine with its greater deterrence. Options covered to quickly improve Collins Class utility are: (i) reduction of radius of action and resupply via mobile replenishment ships and submarine docking pens, and (ii) improved preparedness with enhanced training and testing through accelerating tracking range with integrated air and subsea range capabilities. Options to counter expected asymmetric threats are to prioritise collaborations and trials, first in autonomous mine clearing and second in cyber-operations on Collins Class and her key support ships. Finally, options to accelerate the future submarine development mirror development strategies being implemented in the U.S. submarine programs; namely, agile systems development, novel contracting approaches, and investment in the ship-systems test infrastructure and personnel development programs necessary to ably apply agile frameworks to support prototyping efforts. Put simply, what can quickly and significantly improve the current fleet now?

The Oliver Hazard Perry Class (FFG‐7) became the benchmark surface warship design against which subsequent designs, be they Russian, British, Chinese, French, or German, drew their inspiration. Criticised at the time for being underarmed and lacking in redundancy, they were not regarded as being part of President Reagan's 500 ship Navy.Nonetheless, its conceptual design space (CDS) created a fundamental break with pre-existing designs. Consequently, it was more representative of the Information Age (1970‐2015), into which it was conceived and born in the mid‐1970s, than the Industrial Age(1920‐1965) designs that preceded it. This paper argues that subsequent designs, including the Littoral and Global Combat Ships (GCS – the British Type 26 Frigate), are essentially optimised versions of the FFG‐7.Concomitantly, they have fallen into the Pugh‐Augustine trap, whereby fleet numbers halve every 20‐25 years. By contrast, examination of submarine build programmes subject to regularly refreshed conceptual designs – including modularised build and construction – show submarine Basic Mass Empty (BME) costs have remained below those of other weapon systems; only increasing at or below historic inflation. In simple terms, submarines have become more affordable, not less, and this is reflected in countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar actively seeking such capabilities. Theoretically, surface warship BME costs should have kept pace with submarines – but they have not. In actuality, frigate and destroyer numbers have often halved over the same period – unlike submarines, surface warships have become less andnot more affordable. Nearing or at the end of the Information Age, this paper submits that a reconceptualization of the warship design space; shipyards and build techniques – a Revolution in Naval Affairs – is overdue. Only by restoring political, economic and military affordability of ships and potential losses, will usability be restored.

Concerns about risks associated with new conceptual designs of surface warships have led many decision-makers to relyon the parent-design approach. For example, the design of the Oliver Hazard Perry Class (FFG-7) became the standard ofsurface warship design for 71 subsequent vessels in three Navies, e.g. Australia, Spain and Taiwan, even though the FFG-7was initially considered under-armed and vulnerable. This paper finds that following warship designs remain derivationsprimarily of limited parent designs and that generally warship design is now increasingly costly, yet mostly stagnant, andwith fleet numbers in steady decline. By contrast, submarine-build programmes generally show regularly refreshed conceptualdesigns, new modularised build and construction, usually improving affordability and proliferation. Approaching amodern Synthetical Age, this paper submits that a reconceptualisation of the surface warship design space, shipyards andbuild techniques are arguably at a critical design juncture. As such a revolution in warship design, like the FFG-7 designwas, is overdue. This paper provides insights into the ship designs that are necessary and possible from today's emergingtechnologies. Such revolutionary design could inject greater usability and affordability to naval surface fleets and build morepolitical, economic and military affordability of ships and potential warfare losses. This new approach is called 'Versatilemodularisation'.