$8bn navy flagship founders. From The Australian
THE failure to correctly build the central keel block on Australia's first air warfare destroyer in Melbourne is a dismal start to the nation's largest defence project.
It is also a wake-up call to the defence industry here.
If local naval shipbuilders have trouble constructing three AWDs, based on a tested Spanish design, what hope will they have of carrying out the government's plan to build 12 new submarines here virtually from scratch?
This setback in the $8 billion AWD project is a serious one, but it also provides an opportunity for early lessons to be learned before the warships start to take shape.
Australian navy shipbuilders are out of practice. Much expertise has been lost since the ANZAC frigates and the Collins-class submarines were built in the 1990s.
Defence is trying to work out who is to blame for the faulty keel block and who should be held accountable.
Is it the Melbourne sub-contractor, the ship's designer Navantia or the Adelaide-based AWD project managers? Whichever way, the problem proves the need for much more rigour in applying best-practice standards in our shipyards because the country can't afford a rerun of the problems that haunted the building of the Collins-class submarines.
Lets just buy one off the shelf shall we.
