The Collins Class Submarine Story

The authors Peter Yule and Derek Woolner do a great job overall of conveying the wonderful engineering achievement that is the Collins class submarine project. Their exposition provides an exquisite history and overview of various aspects of the history of the Australian submarine force and at the same time a sometimes frustrating overview of various aspects the development of the Collins class submarine project.

In the Introduction, the University of Melbourne historian Peter Yule sets out his own terms of reference, stating that the aim of the book is simply to tell the story, using the methods of a historian, leaving the lessons to be discovered by the readers for themselves, avoiding military jargon and using material from interviews and documents, that is, primary sources. Peter's co-author, Derek Woolner is a military analyst at Australian National University who carried out the documentary research and wrote several chapters of the book himself.

I very much enjoyed reading the history of Australian submarines from 1925 when orders were placed for the British-built O-class submarines, Oxley and Otway through the lengthy period of time when the Oberon-class submarines proved to be excellent after their delivery in the 1970s through to sublimely successful upgrades of their weapons systems. The Submarine Warfare Systems Centre upgraded and modernised the combat systems to integrate firing of torpedoes and missiles and unlike American submarines, the Oberons could fire multiple Harpoon missiles towards a target via different tracks. An amazing technical achievement due to the centre's success stemming from "the combination of engineers, programmers and submariners in an environment that challenged and drew the best from each."

The chapters about the project definition, tenders and contract negotiations whet the appetite for the sorts of project issues that will arise later on. Recognise the years of preparatory studies required for any project of such enormous complexity that is difficult for most people to comprehend. Personally, I found quite interesting some of the comments about grudging acceptance of the contract monitoring and control system over the American cost and schedule system and would have liked to know more. Anyone involved in defence projects would appreciate the importance of requirements engineering, preliminary design reviews and prototyping and would also realise these techniques fail to mitigate all risks that later emerged, especially in the failed combat system development and the unexpected noise signature that later took the project by surprise.

The greater intrigue and interest in the book was around the formation of bid teams and the unexpected win by the Australian Submarine Corporation comprising the Kockums design over the German rival and the over-ambitious requirements and timetable for the combat system as contracted to Rockwell. We discover that Rockwell never had any hope of delivering on the requirements for a distributed system with stringent data and information processing constraints using the technology of the day. Without access to the systems architecture, the detailed design and rationale for the decisions that were made by the development team and the conclusions of the review team I can only wonder if this were actually so or whether tantalising success for Rockwell and the Australian integrator Computer Sciences Corporation could have been achieved.

The great unsung successes were in the development of world-leading steel alloy with better performance (eg. explosion bulge testing) and welding techniques that led to a rework rate one-tenth that of comparable submarine projects. Complementing the exemplary construction of the hull and superstructure of the submarine is the unique and world-leading integrated ship control and monitoring system that was developed by Wormald in Australia, in concert with Saab, before its demise as a leading systems engineering and software development firm at the hands of corporate predators. The fly-by-wire system allows a small crew to control the entire submarine and its operation from several automated workstations.

During trials the dive performance was exactly as predicted and the autopilot known as Sven could control the vessel more precisely than a human operator. After some vacillating, the political decision was made to replace the functional but limited combat system on Collins and Farncomb, and later the basis of the augmentation program that was installed on Dechaineux and Sheean, with an off-the-shelf product from Raytheon. The noise problems were improved by altering the shape of the bow sonar dome to the extent that at low running speeds these are the quietest submarines in the world.

I was employed at Nautronix and was working as a signal processing analyst for the Synthetic Aperture Processing System that was deployed by Thistle Island in the Spencer Gulf offshore Port Lincoln in South Australia. Nautronix, now owned by L3, is a world leader in underwater acoustics for positioning, communications and ranging applications. It was my privilege to take the initial theoretical work and to develop the signal processing algorithms and much of the software that was used for acquiring and processing the noise signature of the Collins during its initial ranging; then to undertake the laborious task of processing the data acquired during ranging and personally writing much of the report that was presented in sextuplicate to the Navy.

The politics are naturally relevant for a huge defence project but I do not hold in high regard the remarks made by the authors around the politics of decisions made by the newly-installed Minister for Industry in the first Howard government, John Moore, and Minister for Defence Ian McLachlan. On the one hand, after an independent review a new leadership team was appointed expressly to finish the project but the authors note that without strong support the project could easily have been abandoned. Most of the issues raised in the report were already known but the most important first step was "to get people out of the trenches and back working together" after the breakdown in relationships between ASC, Kockums, the project office and the Navy.

On the other hand, the authors state that the change of government in 1996 led to the abandonment of any industry policy, returning to focus on the bilateral relationship on America, the "enthusiastic adoption of the role as America's 'deputy Sheriff'" and shift towards "enthusiastic participation in American foreign policy adventures." This material, absent footnotes, fails to cite any sources and presumably reflects the political and strategic defence biases of the authors. Clearly deviating from the stated aim to tell the history of the Collins class, these few sentences detract little from an otherwise excellently-written exposition of an amazing story.

For anybody with an interest in the Australian defence forces and in particular for those involved in the defence industry, especially in complex systems and software development, The Collins Class Submarine Story is a must-read and a valuable addition to your book shelf. For others, the lessons for project governance and ownership by its sponsors, the social and historical divisions between the surface fleet and submarine fleet arms of the navy, make a fascinating rendition of issues faced by members of development teams undertaking software and systems integration projects across a wide variety of industries.