The SMH is reporting they have insider information on the Kaman Seasprites being incapable of fulfilling their defence tasks . They are relegated to transportation at the moment. This project was a mess from day one, Keating should be censored for even beginning the project. Hill is trying to defend it . He has had ample oppurtunity to cancel that project and plenty of warning from the Navy. The real question is, why was the original contract signed?

The Expensive Dud

That the Kaman Seasprites are a dud system and a waste of money is nothing new to those that have been watching Australian Defence procurement. Australia has been flying Blackhawks since 1987 and Seahawks since 1988. Rather than purchasing another helicopter platform, with the logistical issues having another set of tyres to kick-store-purchase, it would have been simpler to integrate the Blackhawk/Seahawk platform. To make matters worse, the Seasprite was intended for small Patrol Boats which were never ordered.

So we have an expensive helicopter platform, that has no real role in the Australian Defence Force. It is a failure as strategic procurement, as project management, as fiscal responsibility and as a weapon system. There is nothing to recommend it. As I said, this is not news.

I covered the Kaman Seasprites in July of 2003 , the relevant section is reproduced below;

The ADF's Kaman Helicopters

An old article from June of last year on the subject of the Kaman helicopters being a bad deal for the Australian Defence Force. From the article;

    Singapore's aerospace conference showcased a plethora of civilian and military hardware at the Changi Exhibition Centre in February. Nine hundred exhibitors offered a high-tech selection of weapons, executive jets, supersonic stealth fighters - even spacecraft design.

    Senator Robert Hill, a newcomer to this secret world of defence business, was soaking it in as he strolled the exhibit's aisles, until he stumbled across Kaman Aerospace's stand. He froze.

    In pride of place was a poster of its Seasprite helicopter, with the declaration "The right choice for the Royal Australian Navy". According to bystanders, the unfortunate salesman had just begun his spiel when Senator Hill informed him he was no less than the Australian Defence Minister and was far from convinced the navy had made the right choice when it signed up with Kaman to supply 11 Seasprite helicopters. Costs had blown out to more than $1 billion, he told the startled salesman, and the project was running three years late - if Kaman could deliver at all.

The Kaman Seasprites were intended to be the helicopter for the smaller Patrol Vessels that Australia was to build with Malaysia. The deal never got off the ground, yet the Kaman's were purchased anyway. The Royal Australian Navy would have been better served with the larger Seahawk that currently operates off the Navies Frigates.

    "You can't dispute it's the wrong helicopter," Mr [Aldo] Borgu said. "There are obvious question marks over the Penguin anti-ship missile as opposed to the Harpoon, and the anti-sub capability isn't as good as the Seahawks. We should have got the Seahawks. On balance the ADF would have been better off."

The ADF Defence Budget in 2003/2004 describes the "Anzac Ship Helicopter" capital project as running three and a half years late and that the delay is caused substantially by the failure of a subcontractors development of the integrated software. Kaman has got new subcontractors to do this work. The software component of the contract is not expected to be completed until late 2004.

And again in August of 2003 , again the relevant section is reproduced below;

Risk and Defence Capital Funding

The software company that was unable to deliver the integrated software for the Australian Navy's Kaman Seasprite Helicopter was Litton Integrated Systems. The work was taken over by Northrop Grumman Information Technology of San Diego. Littons webpage, www.littondsd.com is directed to Northrop Grummans Electronic Systems website.

According to Defence, it was Kamans managerial responsibility to ensure that Litton kept to its contractual obligations, it wasn't for Defence to manage the sub contractors. The Defence Department also claimed that the prime contractor was not suitable for this kind of project that involves highly developmental, software-intensive project. The ASPI Paper on the 2003 Defence Budget questions this project with;

    A broader question is whether Defence should seek to buy "Australia Only" solutions on projects like this with only a small production run; a path that incurs significant development costs and increases exposure to high levels of technical risk.

The team for this project included Tenix, CSC Australia, Scientific Management Associates and Safe Air NZ. However the prime was an inexperienced contractor which evidently mismanaged the software component. Managing software risk is difficult, especially if the management and team don't keep up to date with rapidly appearing risk management technologies such as unit testing, continuous integration, automated functional testing, and software process technologies such as Agile, Crystal, Extreme etc.

In my opinion Australian Defence should be seeking indigenous solutions and Australian industry involvement of greater than 90%. There are many benefits to indigenous development. One is the hidden subsidy to indigenous high tech through government funded technology research and application. Australian medical science has been a world leader for a long period, this is due to the continued and constant investment through the public health system into research and development. With the same continued and prolonged investment into high tech through defence spending Australian high tech will take a more prominent and innovative exposure on the global stage and markets.

The other reasons is political. The Australian government and Australian leadership has been unable to tangle itself from the paranoid and erroneous view that Australia requires an all encompassing security policy that lays Australian interests at the feet of US interests in return for US security. This is a small, naive, failed and dependent doctrine indicative of weak Australian leadership. This view and policy needs to be broken once and for all. The manner in which to make the "great and powerful friends" doctrine irrelevant is to have an Australian defence force that is indigenously supplied and indigenously sustainable to ensure Australian sovereignty and defence.

This project stretches back to the Keating Government who did the negotiations for the contract with Kaman. The Howard Government signed the contract in 1997.

cam
Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.

Comments
  • siento . # .
    LH90 and defence contracts: In a way, it doesn\'t matter if Australia wastes money on defence projects. The articles in the SMH were annoying. There seems to be little or no recognition of the fact that building up this kind of specialised skill takes a lot of time and money. The benefit is not going to occur right now, but in 10-20 years when Australia has built up and learnt to exploit the ability to do these things. Journalists demanding that the first attempts be the best in the world is unfair.

    And seriously, weapons systems not working as well as the best in the world is not the end of the world. After all, who is realistically going to take us on in the near future?

    Defence R and D spending is one of the last allowed subsidies that governments have. We should use it.

    Also, Australia is going to purchase the LH-90, the fantastic European chopper. Won\'t this replace the Sea Sprite at some point? Perhaps the contracts were signed so that there would be some experience gained before fitting out the LH-90s. Also I don\'t know how much work is going into the Aussie Tiger, but equipping them with Hellfires may be quite a lot of work, as well as a good idea.
  • cam . # .
    The Kaman Seasprite is a bit odd: as it has no role in the ADF. The Patrol boats is was supposed to be for arent part of ADF planning anymore. They werent even before the Seasprite was ordered. Now the Navy wants those big LHDs.

    I agree totally with the patience in investment. I am sure the ADF and contractors will get the Seasprites working. They have with other systems in the past. The Amphibious ships the Navy uses now were refitted US rust-buckets and they are giving good service.

    The media does go off on a defence frenzy as well. The F111s spent three years in storage until their issues were fixed. They ended up being the best deterrent the ADF and Australia has ever had.

    I agree with you on the Defence R&D investment, it is the only way government can subsidise a high-tech economy without receiving punitive measures from the WTO and other nation-states. We should be spending more on defence R&D. Alot more.

    cam
  • cam . # .
    Media hysteria on defence cost too:
    Costing $100 million each - more than the latest stealth fighter

    The F/A-22 which is the latest stealth fighter, IIRC ATM costs around 200 million USD . It was up at the 400 million USD at one stage, more than the cost of an Australian Frigate. So that line from the SMH is bogus.

    cam
  • siento . # .
    OMG F22 Price: That is so totally insane.

    The American defense budget is unbelievable.
  • cam . # .
    Lockheed set us up the bomb!: From what I have been reading in the Washington Post, US Congress thinks it is insane too. The JSF project seems to be going without many bumps at this stage, if Congress holds out long enough they can justify not buying the FA22.

    cam
  • avocadia . # .
    Warplane Electronics:

    Wouldn\'t the electronics in a warplane like the F-22 be expected to stand up a tad better than off the shelf consumer electronics. Google is rumoured to 50,000 odd obscenely networked boards running the search engine; reportedly it burns out a not insignificant percentage of those boards on a daily basis. I imagine the electronics in an F-22 are expected to be a little more robust.
  • cam . # .
    Seasprite is without a mandate: It was for a ship that doesnt exist. It has no place in the ADF, fills no role, doesnt contribute to the ADF\'s strategic doctrine and fills no gap in our capability. It should never have been bought. Unfortunately, our government thinks there is political loss in admiting a mistake. So now the ADF is burdened with this system.

    The Collins class has been a success. Australian projection is based upon our ability to control the air-sea gap, and the Collins class is an essential component of that. But even though it was developed in Australia, most of it was really just integrating foreign technology. Not actually doing the R&D in Australia.

    The military is absolutely the best place to do R&D. They seek cutting edge technology, heavily predicated in communications and integration. Not only does the R&D have to be done, it has to be implemented and applied to a real world project. The military is the best place for Australian scientists and engineers to seek ongoing, sustained investment, that wont dry up after a couple of years.

    Disruptive technologies come from these types of investment. It will also enable Australia to make systems that meet Australia\'s strategic needs. Not Americas. Increasing military investment, and R&D investment in indiginous solutions is absolutely the right thing to do.

    cam
  • avocadia . # .
    Redundancy:

    There are guesstimates of one computer failing per day in Google\'s farm. Assuming that the reports of 50,000 machines are accurate, that is about 0.73% per annum. That\'s significant. That\'s about $182,500 in replacing failed hardware. And the thing is, you see, Google don\'t put their server farm through too many multi-g maneuvers. I bet your laptop doesn\'t either.
  • cam . # .
    The Seasprite was intended for a Patrol Boat: that Keating was fond of, and that was supposed to be built as a dual-project between Australia and Malaysia.

    cam
  • cam . # .
    Next- Gen Patrol Boats Not Pursued: From here ;

    The key criticism is that the smaller Seasprites were designed to be carried on new patrol boats that were never brought into service.

    The boats were proposed as a joint venture with Malaysia. But in October, 1997, Malaysia rejected the Australian proposal.

    Months earlier, in March, 1997, then defence minister Ian McLachlan told cabinet that defence force chief General John Baker wanted to suspend the patrol boat project.

    \"We were in a position of having to buy some vessels that were not appropriate for replacing either the Fremantle patrol boats or warships and we didn\'t want to do that,\" Mr McLachlan told The Age.

    and, from Aldo Borgu ( now with ASPI );

    A former defence official Aldo Borgu, an adviser to former ministers John Moore and Peter Reith, said the government did not think about the Seasprites when cabinet killed off the patrol boat plan.

    Mr Borgu, now a director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the two deals should have been linked. \"Once the (patrol boat project) didn\'t go ahead, the rationale for buying a smaller helicopter disappeared,\" he said. \"It\'s adding an additional helicopter platform to the ADF unnecessarily.\"

    cam