by Peter Yule
in design, production and planning for long-term support in Aus-
tralia. Saab put a design team of about 50 engineers on the
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Australian project and ASC personnel came to work with the
design group in J önk öping.
Like the combat system, the ship control system used Motorola
processors and like the combat system it ran into problems with
processing capacity, but the efficient architecture of the ship con-
trol system meant that the problem was soluble.12 In December
1992 the project agreed to a ‘no cost upgrade’ of the processors
from the Motorola 68020 to the 68030 and the project’s reports
make no further comments on problems with processing power.
Saab built a prototype of the manoeuvring control console,
primarily to test the use of a joystick as an alternative to the tradi-
tional steering wheel. Saab was concerned that Australians might
have a problem with the keyboard on the right and the joystick
on the left, but both ASC and the navy approved.
At one time in the late 1980s fears about the ship control sys-
tem seemed to be justified, with ASC and the project office believ-
ing that it was heading towards catastrophe. At a time when the
combat system attracted few comments in the project’s quarterly
reports, there were frequent warnings about the ship management
system. ASC was always involved in the ship control system and
responded quickly. Jack Atkinson of ASC recalls that by early to
mid-1989:
We were already seeing some serious problems in the
development of . . . the integrated ship control and
monitoring system – in particular difficulties with the
software design. In early 1989 there were increasing signs of
the project going off the rails – we had a contractor, Saab
Instruments, which was working to a specification produced
by Kockums the submarine designer . . . Both were
sub-contractors to us, so with Kockums essentially the driver
of the design requirements, we had the difficult job of
coordinating the design development between Kockums and
Saab.13
Fundamentally – as Jack Atkinson implies – the problems of the
ship control system were not technical but came back to the
contractual situation, which led to a lack of control and direc-
tion. For G östa Hardebring of Saab, the technical difficulties of
the design phase were not unexpected and could be dealt with,
but the problems that arose were largely due to differences of
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interpretation and approach that persisted until the parties coor-
dinated their work. In order to improve communications Saab set
up a liaison office in Adelaide in April 1990, although it did not
have a contractual obligation to do so.
In January 1989 Oscar Hughes gave Captain Peter Hugonnet
the twin jobs of ship control system manager and safety man-
ager, the tasks being combined because the safe operation of the
ship control system was seen as paramount for submarine safety.
Hugonnet, an experienced submariner, recalls that at the first
meeting he went to with Saab and Kockums it became obvious
that there was a stand-off between the two companies. The project
was going ahead but it was not being coordinated – they were both
leaving the ‘big picture’ to each other.
However, the situation was rapidly turned around. Peter
Hatcher, a submariner who was combat system engineering man-
ager with the project, recalls that the turning point was a design
review at Saab Instruments’ headquarters in J önk öping. Hatcher
recalls that
We had mandated the application of certain US safety
standards and . . . about a year in I suppose . . . we had a
memorable design review that became known as the battle of
J önk öping . . . I was team leader and we got stuck right into
them over their developmental processes – the failure mode
effect analysis and how they were going to control the safety
development risk of the whole thing. Because as you can
imagine you can’t . . . just hope there aren’t any little hidden
glitches in there.14
Afterwards, there was a rapid improvement and the parties began
to work together more constructively. One of the major con-
cerns of the project team was the independent verification of the
software, but Peter Hugonnet concluded that neither Saab nor
Kockums would release the source code for this purpose.15 Con-
sequently he talked to Peter Robinson of Wormald, who proposed
a land-based test site (referred to as ‘stay safe’). The project and
ASC both saw this as providing greater oversight and agreed to
share the cost, with ASC later taking over the site. As Peter Hatcher
puts it, this move ‘really overhauled the whole development pro-
cess’ and allowed them to thoroughly test every part of the ship
control system and iron out all the bugs.
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Jack Atkinson was appointed to a new software engineering
management position, with a team of about 25–30 software engi-
neers whose first task was to work with Saab and Kockums
on the problems of the ship management system. Stirred into
action, ‘the sub-contractors got the right people on and delivered’
and, together with ASC, they ‘engineered their way out of some
real problems’. By March 1991 the submarine project’s quarterly
report was noting significant improvement on the ship control sys-
tem software development ‘due to ASC presence at Saab, increased
Saab resources and the introduction of a combined ASC Saab and
KAB [Kockums] software integration group’.
In tandem with his work on managing the ship control and
management system, Peter Hugonnet was responsible for devel-
oping a comprehensive safety program for the new submarines.
There was no budget for this work, but Oscar Hughes took the
view that safety was critical and found the money that was needed.
In a minute written in 1991 asking for Hugonnet’s appointment
to be extended, Hughes wrote:
Putting aside the extremely large financial investment
involved in the project, the ramifications of a major
submarine incident . . . are horrendous. We simply cannot
afford to take any risks whatsoever when it comes to safety.
It is not of course just only a matter of being seen to manage
safety but of ensuring that the risk of a major incident is
reduced to an acceptable and defined level. This involves a
highly structured and disciplined approach to the
management of safety with tentacles that permeate all aspects
of the project including design, equipment production,
submarine test and trials, operating test and evaluation,
training, etc.16
Hugonnet recalls that the contract specifications said only that
safety should be ‘generally in accord with Mi
lstandard 882’
but this was open-ended and nothing was defined. At that time
there was no navy-wide safety policy so he started with a clean
sheet of paper, using the American ‘Subsafe’ program as a prece-
dent to develop a complete set of safety procedures for the new
submarines. Among other things Subsafe ensured detailed risk
assessment and management, proper qualification of crews and
maintenance staff and the maintenance of hazard logs to ensure
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165
proper reporting of hazardous situations. The Subsafe program
proved highly effective once the submarines went to sea, with all
the safety systems working well even in extreme situations.
In the early 1990s the ship control system project proceeded
smoothly, with only occasional minor hiccups. Crew training went
well and the system was ready to go to sea for the first trials, where
it rapidly proved one of the great successes of the whole project.
C H A P T E R 15
Steel, sonars and tiles:
early technological support
for the submarines
Science has been harnessed to support the defence of Australia
since shortly after federation. In the first half of the 20th cen-
tury this was strongly focused on the munitions industry and
wartime manufacturing, and strong capabilities were developed
in fields such as munitions chemistry, metrology, metallurgy and
aeronautical engineering. After the Second World War defence
science headed in new directions, with a more fundamental
research program across many fields of emerging knowledge. This
led to internationally significant breakthroughs such as colour
photocopying and the black box flight recorder.
The ‘golden age of science’ was curtailed as the economy
stuttered in the late 1970s and 1980s, leading to demands to con-
duct research more closely matched to the needs of the services,
defence industry and various defence ‘customers’. Some activities
(and even whole laboratories) were shed to the civilian sector,
notably CSIRO, but a few were added. The most notable was
the RAN Research Laboratories, which allowed support for naval
operations to be expanded enormously. Support for ships and sub-
marines at the Materials Research Laboratories at Maribyrnong
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emphasised construction and materials, integrity of structures and
ancillary systems, acoustics and vibration, and propulsion.
These new directions helped DSTO provide the navy with the
technical background it needed to become an ‘informed customer’
during the unprecedented ship and submarine acquisition pro-
gram that unfolded after 1980.
DSTO provided research to support all phases of the submarine
project, from John Wallers’ work on the required ship’s charac-
teristics in the early 1980s to assessing and enhancing the two
final tenders, supporting construction, rectifying defects, develop-
ing through-life support and devising capability enhancements.
Defence scientists worked closely with local and overseas aca-
demic and research organisations, the project office, local and
overseas industries, and the international submarine community,
and they played a pivotal role in some of the most significant
periods of the project.
The work carried out by DSTO on steel and welding was crit-
ical to the success of the submarine project. The project team had
found that the Australian steelmaker, BHP, could manufacture
steel for submarine construction but it needed to know much more
to have a feasible construction program. The strength and dura-
bility of the steel chosen had to be proven to withstand repeated
compression and expansion from diving over a 30-year life span.
A testing regime would need to be developed to ensure that all the
steel and the many kilometres of welds in the submarines achieved
the same standard. There were many who believed that the navy
lacked the experience to make judgments on materials, processes
and proof of quality.
In 1985 the project team approached John Ritter and his
team of materials scientists at the DSTO Maribyrnong labora-
tory to solve this problem.1 In the early 1980s the Maribyrnong
team had helped qualify materials for the construction of two
frigates at Williamstown. The job had involved establishing in
Australia an evaluation technique known as the explosion bulge
test. This assesses the resistance of steel against an impact by
observing deformation and fracture in a large piece of 50 mm
thick steel plate (either unwelded or welded) caused by an explo-
sive charge placed close by. The test usually involved the plate
being pre-cooled to −17.8◦C.2 The US Navy acknowledged the
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work of DSTO by granting it special autonomy to conduct the test
independently.
The project definition studies were already underway and the
first task was to assess the performance of the materials offered.
The German proposal seemed the easier to assess. HDW/IKL
would construct its submarine from the then standard US Navy
submarine steel, known as HY80. The characteristics of this steel
were well understood and because it was in wide use there were
established qualification tests and well-known standards of per-
formance for the material. However, the German consortium was
seeking a $5 million royalty for use of this steel.
Kockums’ proposal was radically different. It involved the
use of steel with a 25 per cent higher yield (greater resistance)
stress than the more conventional HY80, which was achieved by
a novel alloy formulation producing a ‘high-strength low-alloy’
steel. Therefore the new steel offered a considerable weight sav-
ing because of its greater strength and promised to be much easier
to weld, offering cost and schedule advantages.
There was some industry resistance to using such a steel with
an unproven history. The recently developed American equivalent,
known as HY100 (stronger than HY80) was not pursued for
submarine construction because of difficult welding characteris-
tics and shortcomings in explosion bulge testing.
However, the greatest problem with Kockums’ steel was that
it had been developed in Sweden, whose testing procedures and
quality standards were different to NATO standards. The project
office had little knowledge with which to develop acceptable per-
formance guidelines and needed expert assistance.
John Ritter and his team accepted that controlling risk meant
complex and expensive approaches would be unacceptable. The
Maribyrnong laboratory was a pioneer in the emerging field of
fracture mechanics – one yet to mature and involving a complex
and expensive testing regime. Ritter decided that both the safety
of the submarine and
the costs of its construction would be better
served through the proven explosion bulge test regime with its
straightforward subsidiary tests that were industrial standards.
Ritter says: ‘We opted for industrial reality and minimum risk
instead of scientific adventure.’
An important feature of DSTO has always been the degree of
interdisciplinary cooperation that can be focused on a problem,
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and this was particularly needed as the organisation was promis-
ing to undertake some fundamental research on an unknown
steel and welding technology with little more than a year
before the successful bidder for the new submarine was to be
decided.
Ritter had crucial support in Australian industry. Dr Jim
Williams, with his research team at BHP Wollongong, and his
counterpart, Dr John Kroll of Bisalloy Industrial Steels, had an
international reputation for research into and production of high-
strength low-alloy steels. Traditional submarine steels included
expensive alloys that provided exceptional strength but made the
plate difficult to weld. BHP micro-alloy steel gave similar perfor-
mance but needed no special pre-treatment for welding. Ritter’s
group formed an alliance with them, and with Kockums’ weld-
ing engineer Dr Kenneth H ˚akansson, to investigate the Swedish
steel. The outcome required was a qualification and testing regime
covering all materials supplied, all welding processes, and all con-
struction hall welding procedures to reassure the navy that the
submarines would be safe.
The assignment started with a bang. At the end of August
1986, the first bulge test was conducted in an abandoned quarry
at Cooma, New South Wales. The sample of BHP/Bisalloy plate,
made to Swedish specifications, shattered into hundreds of pieces
and blasted metal shards around the surrounding bushland.
An air-freighted sample of Swedish plate failed as dramatically.
Sweden was one of the few countries to subject its submarines
to explosive shock testing in the water, but it did not carry out
explosive testing of the construction steel before the submarine
was built. A quantum improvement in explosion crack resistance
was needed urgently.
Shards of the failed plate were taken to BHP’s Port Kembla lab-