Adelaide-built air warfare destroyer Hobart set to begin key first sea trials

AUSTRALIA’S most powerful warship — the Adelaide-built destroyer Hobart — is about to take to the open seas for the first time, as schedule and cost blowouts are reined in on the $9 billion project.

• Radiation leak from Adelaide built destroyer Hobart
• ASC to axe jobs as destroyer project winds down
• First look aboard Adelaide-built destroyer

AUSTRALIA’S most powerful warship — the Adelaide-built air warfare destroyer Hobart — is about to take to the open seas for the first time as schedule and cost blowouts are reined in on the $9 billion project.

The Hobart, built at Osborne’s naval shipyard, will undergo sea trials over three to four days in waters off South Australia, starting in about a fortnight.

Controversy dogged the launch of the 146.7m-long Hobart in May last year, a day after the release of scathing federal audit results showing a $1.2 billion and two to three-year project blowout.

But the project is now meeting revised cost and schedule targets, under which Hobart will be delivered to the Navy in June next year after a final stage of sea trials, AWD Alliance general manager Lloyd Beckett told The Advertiser.

Key combat systems have been activated aboard the Hobart, which has been tied up at Techport’s pier. These include missile launchers and a high-powered radar capable of tracking more than 100 targets more than 250 nautical miles away.

“There’s a number of systems on the ship (and) you can’t fully test them while you’re tied up at the pier. To make sure that the ship does the things it’s supposed to do, you have to go out and run it,” Mr Beckett said.

The destroyer Hobart at Osborne.

“Propulsion, running at speed, manoeuvring, steering — it’s really ship operational testing.”

Shipbuilder ASC — a member of the AWD Alliance along with Raytheon Australia and the Defence Department — this week revealed 175 jobs would be axed from its air warfare destroyer workforce by October. The AWD Alliance has a workforce of about 2000 in South Australia.

Labor and key 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.

Mr Beckett said the AWD workforce could transfer efficiently to the next project, because skill sets were almost identical.

“The question will be timing — how quickly we can get the OPV work on contract and in here so that that can transition up as we transition down?” he said.

Mr Beckett also said stable electricity supplies at Osborne were critical for submarine and shipbuilding programs worth more than $90 billion, which will be centred on Osborne during the next 30 years.

Techport was not affected by a power crisis in July, during which some big businesses were on the verge of shutdown, but Mr Beckett urged further discussion of a planned high-voltage interconnector cable between SA and New South Wales.

“Shipyards are large consumers of electrical power. Having a stable contract price over a five or ten-year period and being able to have stable electrical power is very, very important,” Mr Beckett said.

“If we want a large industrial capability in this area, then the interconnector and power stability is a strategic investment for infrastructure.”