Naval Group sinks hopes of 90pc Aussie content in Future Submarines

AUSTRALIA’S $50 billion Future Submarines were never going to have 90 per cent Australian content, French designers Naval Group have confirmed.

• SA set for tiny part of $89 billion Future Submarines
• Secret documents show minimum 50 per cent Australian build

AUSTRALIA’S $50 billion Future Submarines were never going to have 90 per cent Australian content, French designers Naval Group have confirmed.

Amid wild speculation over just how “Australian” the French-designed Barracuda diesel-electric submarines would be, former Naval Group boss Sean Costello said about 90 per cent would be Australian, a figure picked up by people including Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne.

Naval Group special adviser Brent Clark said yesterday that figure was not in any documents and that he believed his predecessor was referring to production, such as getting metal and rolling and welding it into a hull. There are many other processes including providing and inserting the components of a submarine that will need overseas input.

The Advertiser revealed earlier this year that for the project before the submarines, the $35 billion Future Frigates, the minimum Australian input is 50 per cent, while the Government defines a local build as at least 60 per cent, and says in general their aim is to maximise the local contribution.

In a hearing into the future of the Australian naval shipbuilding industry yesterday, a physics and defence expert told senators that Naval Group’s choice of a pump-jet propulsion system for the submarines was a “genuinely strange choice” because the accepted science shows they are less efficient, meaning a submarine would have to “snort”, or surface more often. That risks detection.

Mr Aidan Morrison has been studying pump-jet propulsion and yesterday said that without the “superpower” of a nuclear engine they were a substandard choice.

There has been an ongoing discussion about the propulsion system, with some suggesting it needed to be changed and that in turn would mean a redesign of the submarines.

But insiders say critics don’t know the technical detail and Mr Clark told the inquiry those details were classified. Meanwhile Adelaide shipbuilders ASC had some good news with Naval Group calling them an experienced company that would be able to “commit and compete for any work it wishes” on the submarines.

“The workforce at ASC will have a role … as submarine experts when the Government decides the future of the sustainment of the (existing Collins class) fleet,” he said.

ASC bosses also said that, of 223 jobs expected to go, 137 have been redeployed to other positions at the shipyard. With more than 30 having already left, more than 40 jobs will go next week.

There have been voluntary and involuntary redundancies as work on the Air Warfare Destroyers winds down, and before work on the Offshore Patrol Vessels and Future Frigates winds up.

Labor Senator Kim Carr attacked ASC for letting anyone go, but ASC argued were some jobs no longer needed.

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