Government ignores its own 'rescue' report created to fix Air Warfare Destroyer woes

(Some guy with stripes on his arm, Nelson and Houston. 2007)

The government is ignoring the results of its own "rescue" report it requested to find a fix for the troubled Air Warfare Destroyer project reports The Australian.

The Air Warfare Project is currently billions, not millions over budget. If the DMO ever gets past fixing the fabrication phase of the ship design, it still has to get its obsolete weapons integrated and working.

*** (See also:, "A Great Day for the Navy", 2007) ***

The problems with the program are many. Australia went out and selected a design; claimed it was a sound shipbuilding plan and then crippled the design with a large raft of Australian-specific features. Really, almost a different ship class.

The Winter Report, a confidential document requested by the government to get a way forward out of this mess was delivered early in the year. It put a timeline of about 6 months to get recommendations in effect. One of those was to fire ASC from the management of the program and have BAE take it over.

Months past the 6-month deadline and little has been done to take hold of the problems and fix them in regard to the Winter Report recommendations.

The Australian goes on to report that there has been infighting between Defence, Finance and the original Spanish ship design company. That company is worried that a management change from ASC to BAE could compromise their intellectual property.

The Australian Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy has a bad record with protecting the intellectual property of companies.

What does the PM have to say of this?

Mr Abbott said he had full confidence in Senator Johnston and that the AWD project was now in “reasonable” shape.

And somehow, DefMin Johnston stating that ASC wasn't fit to build a canoe is offensive.

I predict that this project can get up to $10B.

For 3 ships.

That in war, could get sunk vs. emerging threats.

War requires that you have enough resources to take attrition and still win.

None of that is present in any Australian war planning.



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