SEA 1180 OPV (Royal Australian Navy)

[Grey Havoc]

The RAN is planning on acquiring 20 offshore patrol combatants (OPC) under project SEA 1180. The Austal MRV is their potential offering for this requirement and its evolution from MRC to MRV to MRV 80 shows the changing nature of the draft requirement over time and their attempts to align to it.

Attached here are some of the initial to-industry briefs about the SEA 1180 requirement.

SEA 1180 was cancelled in this year’s white paper. Primarily because of cost and the need to rapidly replace the current patrol boat fleet which has already been worked through its hull life. It may however resurface in the future due to the state of flux in the Australian government at the moment.

(Last post extract was from July 2013)

It seems that SEA 1180 was later reactivated in 2015, with a contract awarded to Luerssen Australia and Civmec Limited in 2018, but things are apparently not going well at all:

Regarding facilities, the bidders say – anonymously – that the large assembly hall owned by Civmec is impressive and could be used to build the frigates.

However, Civmec had a bruising experience with naval shipbuilding as a subcontractor to Germany’s Luerssen for four Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) currently under construction. The two companies have had a serious falling out for reasons that are opaque.

Overall, the contract known as SEA 1180 has not gone well, mainly because the RAN has continued to tinker with the OPV design and at last count had made an extraordinary 800 changes after the contract was signed. Rather than take the blame and fix the problem, Defence is doubling down, claiming that everything is the fault of Luerssen for not better understanding the Australian regulatory environment – without themselves having done anything about the issue during the comprehensive ship design process.

The upshot is uncertainty about what WA will receive, when it will happen, and who will do it. Another complicating factor is that with the Arafura contract reduced from 12 to six ships, once work on those wraps up there will be a gap of several years until frigate construction starts, with a consequent crippling reduction in the skilled workforce.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/australian-general-purpose-frigate-program.43726/post-714709

EDIT: ASC Shipbuilding was brought on board the program sometime later, and has been assigned the job of constructing the first two hulls.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Some more background on the program:

Deep dive into Sea 1180's OPV - Australian Defence Magazine

capability discussion of offshore patrol vessel program

www.australiandefence.com.au

Arafura-class offshore patrol vessel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Grey Havoc]

The ASC Shipbuilding involvement is a bit complicated; technically it is ASC Pty Ltd / ASC OPV Shipbuilder Pty Ltd that has responsibility for the OPV work.

A bit on Luerssen Australia (also known, somewhat incorrectly, as Lüerssen Australia):

Luerssen Australia

luerssen.com.au