Ship splits navy and Defence
Patrick Walters, National security editor
June 15, 2007
A SERIOUS rift has developed between the navy and the Defence Department over who should win a multi-billion-dollar contract to build air-warfare destroyers.
Navy chief Vice-Admiral Russ Shalders favours the 8000-tonne warship designed by American company Gibbs and Cox, arguing it offers better firepower and all-round performance than the F100 frigate from Spain's Navantia.
The issue will come to a head next week when John Howard determines who wins the right to design the $7billion destroyers.
Admiral Shalders has taken the unusual step of briefing senior ministers and advisers on the merits of the US design.
Admiral Shalders's quiet campaign has been undertaken with the agreement of the Prime Minister and Defence Minister Brendan Nelson.
The Gibbs and Cox design carries 64 vertical-launch missile cells and two helicopters, compared with 48 cells and a single helicopter for the F100.
The navy argues it is more adaptable than the F100 because its larger size allows greater flexibility for new capabilities such as missile defence involving fitting the SM3 missile.
Admiral Shalders has publicly described the F100 as very capable, but stressed the benefits of the larger design.
"I am after capability, capability and capability," he told The Australian in March.
Balanced against the navy chief's view is an exhaustive Defence Department evaluation, which has backed the Navantia F100 on cost, project risk and schedule grounds. The Spanish ship is close to $1billion cheaper and would be delivered about three years earlier than the Gibbs and Cox ship.
Cabinet's national security committee will meet next week to sign off on almost $10billion worth of naval shipbuilding projects, including the three destroyers and two amphibious ships.
The air-warfare destroyers will be built by government-owned ASC in Adelaide and are due to enter service from 2013.
The project remains the most contentious of the two naval submissions under consideration, with the destroyers to be built under a novel alliance contract between ASC, the systems integrator Raytheon, and the Defence Materiel Organisation.
A new study from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has pointed to the capability and the Australian industry benefits of the Gibbs and Cox design. "If the Government endorses the rumoured Navantia choice, it will be opting for the ... lower project risk profile that comes with an established design," defence expert Andrew Davies concludes.
"The trade-off will be a capability that is lower now and that, perhaps more importantly, has less growth room in the future."

