Adelaide-built air warfare destroyer Hobart completes first stage of sea trials

AUSTRALIA’S most advanced warship, built in Adelaide by a workforce once derided as unfit to build a canoe, has successfully completed first-stage sea trials.

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AUSTRALIA’S most advanced warship, built in Adelaide by a workforce once derided as unfit to build a canoe, has successfully completed first-stage sea trials.

The 146.7m-long air warfare destroyer Hobart, launched by Osborne shipbuilder ASC in May last year, has finished almost a fortnight of trials in South Australian waters.

Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne will today, Saturday, declare the trials’ success a significant milestone for the nation and the $9 billion air warfare destroyer project, under which three ships are being built by ASC.

His former ministerial colleague David Johnston in 2014 lashed ASC by declaring he would not trust it to “build a canoe”. The destroyer project was also rocked by the release a day before the Hobart’s launch of scathing federal audit results showing a $1.2 billion, two to three-year project blowout.

But Mr Pyne today will say the trials’ success demonstrates the capacity of Australia’s homegrown defence industry to build and integrate ships for the nation’s specific needs.

“Hobart has now proven its hull, propulsion and navigation systems after several days of testing in local SA waters,” says Mr Pyne, the MP for Sturt.

“Further sea trials will take place in early 2017, when Hobart conducts more advanced testing of the ship’s combat and communications systems.”

The combat system is being loaded on the second destroyer, Brisbane, ahead of a launch at Osborne’s Techport Australia shipyard in December, while hull consolidation of the third ship, Sydney, is well advanced.

PASSING THE TEST: The air warfare destroyer Hobart has completed her first sea trials with flying colours. PICTURE: AIR WARFARE DESTROYER ALLIANCE

Mr Pyne will congratulate the AWD Alliance managing the project — the Defence Department, ASC and Raytheon Australia — highlighting their progress toward delivering “the most capable warships ever to be operated” by the Navy.

The destroyer project is now meeting revised cost and schedule targets, under which the Hobart is expected to be handed over to the Navy in June next year after a final stage of sea trials.

Ahead of the sea trials’ start on September 12, ASC revealed 175 jobs would be axed from the air warfare destroyer workforce by October. The AWD Alliance employs about 2000 people in SA.

Labor and independent Senator Nick Xenophon have pressed the federal Government to save jobs by spelling out timetables for construction of two Offshore Patrol Vessels promised to Adelaide from 2018.

This is to stem a valley of death before nine frigates and 12 submarines are built at Techport in projects worth more than $90 billion, starting with the frigates from 2020.