by Peter Yule
As Rear Admiral Al Konetzni Jnr, Commander of
Submarine Force, stated, ‘HMAS Waller’s performance has
been commendable. It is clear that her talented crew are
further demonstrating the boat’s capability.’9
On receiving this draft, Peter Briggs sent this e-mail to the senior
staff of the capability team, the project office and the submarine
squadron:
I am pleased to hear the rumours of Waller’s success.
However . . . I see significant strategic down sides to an over
enthusiastic public approach.
We are trying to persuade Cabinet and the Defence
hierarchy to spend an additional $700 m on these
submarines. The message of success must be carefully
couched to avoid it being taken out of context. I can hear the
cries of gold plating now!10
Peter Briggs recalls that when Waller went to Hawaii, the Collins
project was still at a critical stage and he spoke with Admiral
Konetzni, who told him: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make your boys look
good.’ Consequently Waller did well – the crew performed well
with the equipment they had – but it was not a balanced test;
the playing field was tilted in Waller’s favour to allow for what
it could do well without exposing its weaknesses, particularly its
noise at speed and dysfunctional combat system. The submarine
was quiet at low speeds and the exercise was set up so Waller
did not have to move fast. She impressed the Americans with her
potential and did better than expected, ‘but if you have a chance
to get more money for the submarines you don’t throw it away’.
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Nonetheless, it has been argued that Waller’s performance –
with the original propeller, the original combat system and with-
out any of the other ‘fast-track’ modifications – shows that the
problems with the submarines had been greatly exaggerated. For
example, Gunnar Öhlund of Kockums says: ‘At the exercises
Waller showed that the Collins submarines were good and did
well with their original equipment’; while Rick Neilson believes
that Waller’s performance showed that the original combat system
was not as bad as has been painted.
Soon after Waller’s participation in the Hawaiian exercises,
Collins, also without the fast-track improvements, sailed to Alaska
to be tested at the US Navy’s noise range at Ketchikan. There
had always been queries on the results of noise testing in Aus-
tralia because of the technology used and the high level of back-
ground noise, but the Alaskan tests ‘indicated the accuracy of
previous ranging in Australia’.11 The tests showed that ‘further
improvements in noise reduction could be achieved by reducing
propeller induced hull vibrations’. Nonetheless, the submarine’s
performance, particularly at low speeds, was extraordinary. Peter
Clarke was in the control room of Collins during the tests and
recalls that the surface controllers gave orders like ‘Switch on
pump 23’ and the submarine would respond ‘we have switched
on pump 23’. ‘Are you sure you’ve switched on pump 23? We can’t
hear anything.’ The tests showed that ‘at low speed the subma-
rine was inherently the quietest in the world’, and for a searching
enemy it was ‘just a black hole’.12
Hans Ohff believes that the performances of Waller and Collins
support the view that Peter Briggs had cleverly manipulated the
political aspects of the project to get a ‘pot of gold’ for the sub-
marines, even though it was ‘very marginal what he could achieve
especially on the platform side’. He believes that John Moore was
determined to ‘hurt ASC’ for political reasons and the capability
team was set up to squeeze ASC. However, ‘Briggs had no contrac-
tual grounds for doing anything against ASC – he had $300 mil-
lion for things that ASC had to fix, but we had already done most
of them, they were already finished’. Ohff says that ASC made a
healthy profit on the work it did for the fast-track program.13
While there is argument over the improvements to the sub-
marines made by the capability team, critics of ‘fast track’ who
argue that it was purely political and see it as an attack on the
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project appear to ignore the capability team’s other work. In mid-
1999 there was a real prospect that the project would be shut
down, but Peter Briggs succeeded not only in arguing the case for
the submarines, but also in getting the government to commit large
sums of money to the project. When he was appointed the project
was at risk of grinding to a halt under the impact of political and
media attacks and the incessant bickering between the various par-
ties involved. The capability team’s media strategy did not totally
reverse the negative public perception of the submarines, but it
helped bring about a more balanced coverage and limited the more
far-fetched and sensationalist exposés which had occurred regu-
larly during 1997 and 1998. Similarly, conflict within the project
was not stopped by Briggs banging heads together but, with the
exception of Kockums, relations between the parties stabilised to
the extent that they were able to work together. The capability
team gave the submarine project money and momentum.
Although there were some setbacks during the work on the
fast-track submarines these were overcome, and most of the mod-
ifications had been made by the time Dechaineux and Sheean
sailed for Western Australia, where they arrived on 14 December
2000. The project office report noted that: ‘With the departure
of Dechaineux and Sheean to HMAS Stirling, the contract was 99 per cent complete with five submarines delivered and provisionally accepted and under the control of Maritime Commander
Australia. Rankin was 96 per cent complete.’
With the delivery of the two fast-track submarines the main
work of Peter Briggs’ capability team was largely completed.
Briggs retired and the control of the project passed to Paul Green-
field – who had succeeded Eoin Asker as director general of under-
sea warfare systems (project director) in March 2000 – and Kevin
Scarce, the head of maritime systems, who came to the project
initially through his work on the support arrangements for the
submarines. The two biggest issues Greenfield and Scarce faced
were the choice of the new combat system and the relationship
with Kockums. Both had been subjected to extensive debate,
dissent and discussion, but both still awaited resolution.
C H A P T E R 25
‘Inside the American tent’: the saga of
the replacement combat system
In early August 2000 Peter Briggs and Paul Greenfield gave a brief-
ing on progress with the submarine ‘get-well’ program. Comment-
ing on the combat system, Briggs said:
Last week Collins successfully launched the first Harpoon
missile fired by a Collins class submarine.
It constituted one
of a series of tests to prove that the Harpoon missile has been
integrated and can be initialised and fired by the combat
system.
[Don’t] draw any judgements that the combat system is
suddenly passing its exams. It’s not. The combat system must
be replaced. The system is cumbersome and difficult to
operate. It doesn’t handle the data adequately and it’s too
slow. It’s been overtaken by the computer revolution.
My recommendation remains: the cheapest, the fastest
and the most effective way from where we are now is to
replace it.1
Peter Briggs asked how long it would take before a contract could
be signed for the new system, saying he wanted it within a year.
When he was told it would take at least four years to call for
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tenders, assess them, go through the committees and get the con-
tract set up, Briggs said (as Paul Greenfield recalls), ‘Read my
lips, we will have it within a year’. Greenfield was put in charge
of the project to buy a replacement combat system and, follow-
ing Briggs’ advice to cut corners and ‘work with a room full of
experts rather than a room full of paper’, the selection was made in
10 months.2
Greenfield’s brief was to follow the recommendation of the
McIntosh-Prescott report and recommend the best ‘new, modern
COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] based combat system against a
minimal dot point specification’.3 McIntosh and Prescott empha-
sised that the new combat system should be in service and proven.
Greenfield asked for guidance from the navy on strategic consid-
erations – such as the impact on the American alliance – to be
taken into account in the choice, but none was given.
Four main contenders were identified and early in 2000 all
except Lockheed Martin brought operational versions of their
systems to the DSTO laboratories at Salisbury in South Australia,
where they were plugged into the ‘virtual Collins’ to evaluate their
performance. These were the German STN Atlas’s ISUS 90–55
system, Raytheon’s CCS Mk2 system, and the French Thales-led
consortium’s Subtics system. The Thales and Lockheed Martin
systems were eliminated in May 2000 and then teams of scien-
tists and engineers went around the world to look at the STN and
Raytheon systems at work in operational submarines.
Todd Mansell of DSTO’s submarine combat systems team saw
the STN Atlas system on an Israeli Dolphin class submarine and
the Raytheon system on the 6000-ton Los Angeles class nuclear
attack submarine USS Montpelier. While the visit to the American
submarine was more comfortable, the Australians were far more
impressed with the combat system on the Israeli submarine.4
STN Atlas was always aware that Raytheon had an advantage,
as the US Navy would be wary of the possibility of a European
company gaining access to the secrets of its weapons systems and
tactics. Consequently, it teamed up with Lockheed Martin to han-
dle the weapons interface and provide the weapons software for
the Australian bid in order to mitigate the security concerns.
The evaluation team found that the STN Atlas system was
clearly superior. It generally met or exceeded all the navy’s
requirements without need for significant modification, while the
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301
Raytheon system did not. It was a proven, in-service system
designed for conventional submarines, while the Raytheon sys-
tem was designed for nuclear submarines and would need to be
extensively modified to suit a smaller, conventional submarine.
Submariners expressed great enthusiasm for the STN Atlas sys-
tem. Peter Sinclair, who had struggled with the Rockwell system
as captain of Collins, saw the STN Atlas system as ‘the first suc-
cessful multi-functional combat system for a submarine. It blew
me away – it was brilliant’. The DSTO evaluation indicated that
the performance of the STN Atlas system had a margin of about
30 per cent over the Raytheon system.5 In December 2000 the
capability team formally recommended that STN Atlas should
supply the new combat system.
Paul Greenfield conducted the replacement combat system con-
test with meticulous concern for probity and propriety but, while
he ensured the playing field was level, it turned out that the ‘goal-
posts were in another paddock’.6
STN Atlas was confident it would win a fair contest, but it
believed it was only there to provide competitive tension and that
Raytheon was the pre-ordained winner. Paul Greenfield recalls
that Gordon Hargreave of STN Atlas told him in May 2000 that
the company believed it was just being used as a stalking horse and
that it should pull out of the contest because the Australian navy
wanted the American system. Greenfield told Hargreave this was
not true and that it was a fair and open contest. He then went to
David Shackleton, the head of the navy, and asked, ‘If STN Atlas
wins, would you have problems with that?’ – to which Shackleton
replied, ‘No’.7
The competition went ahead and STN Atlas duly won but, as
John Young recalls, no contract was forthcoming. Instead there
began to be enormous pressure on Canberra from the United
States. On complaining to the Americans, Young was told: ‘You
don’t understand – there are bigger things at play than selecting a
combat system.’ In his view it was all about politics and trade.8
STN Atlas did not just lie down and accept that it would not get
the contract, but fought hard to have the result of the evaluation
upheld. The Australian submarine community was in favour of
the Atlas system, but it was up against the might of ‘USA Inc’,
the policy of the Australian government to build closer ties with
America, and the views of the chief of the navy.
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Not surprisingly, the view of the situation from the Raytheon
camp was somewhat different. Tony Smith was closely involved in
Raytheon’s bid for the replacement system and, while he concedes
that Raytheon’s original proposal was deficient in some aspects,
he believes that the evaluation did not take into account that the
system could be changed quickly and easily. For example, the
first evaluation was critical of the way Raytheon’s system anal-
ysed data from the periscopes, but within six weeks the system
was substantially modified to present the data in the way that
was wanted. However, the evaluation team refused to look at the
modified system even though Raytheon had shown the flexibility
of its architecture.9
In late 2000 and early 2001 there was continuous pressure
from America to reverse the decision on the replacement combat
system. Senior naval officers, most notably Admiral Frank ‘S
kip’
Bowman, the US Navy’s most senior submariner, argued strongly
in favour of an American combat system. Bowman told both John
Moore and David Shackleton that the collaboration between the
Australian and American submarine forces could become even
closer if they had the same combat system and weapons, while
the use of a third party [STN Atlas] system would put constraints
on the sharing of American technical and intelligence secrets.10
At the same time Raytheon queried the integrity of the selec-
tion process, and several letters were written to the Minister for
Defence accusing Peter Briggs and Paul Greenfield of ‘corrupt-
ing the tender process’ and of giving STN Atlas tender evaluation
documents. This led to an investigation of the selection process
which found it was ‘squeaky clean – there was no basis for the
accusations’.11
American pressure was also placed on DSTO, whose assess-
ments of the competing combat systems came down strongly in
favour of STN Atlas. However, in December 2000 the organisa-
tion abruptly reversed its position and queried the suitability of
the German system. It is widely believed that this reversal was
not unrelated to suggestions (real or perceived) that the access of
Australian defence scientists to American research facilities could
be threatened if the German system was chosen.12
Questioning of the decision in favour of STN Atlas continued
throughout the first half of 2001. The pressure came both from the
Americans and from David Shackleton, whose concerns about the
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Australian, 12 July 2001 (Courtesy of Peter Nicholson.)
strategic and security implications of the decision increased as time
went on. On 10 July the government announced the ‘termination
of the selection process for a replacement combat system’ and that
‘a new acquisition strategy would be developed around ensuring
interoperability with the United States’.13 In simple terms, the
contract was to go to America.
It is widely believed that the decision to buy an American com-
bat system was primarily due to the Liberal Party’s commitment
to the American alliance. While this was undoubtedly a factor,
probably the most critical element in the final decision was the