The principal naval force of Australia, the Royal Australian Navy anticipates that its new Evolved Cape Class patrol boats might now be delayed for around nine months, which is expected to incur an additional expenditure of $44 million to keep its ageing fleet in the water, following the importation of flawed aluminium from China.
It was unveiled in March 2021 that Austal, the Australian shipbuilder had discovered inadequacy in the quality of the material, which has been sourced from Wuhan.
At that time the office of Defence said: “We expected the scheduled launch dates of all six boats to be delayed by between four and 16 weeks.”
Currently, the report from Auditor-General has disclosed “the delays have been significantly upgraded to between six and nine months, partly because Austal is also struggling to recruit skilled labour.”
It also added: "The ANAO's [Australian National Audit Office] comparison of the date ranges provided by Austal against contracted dates indicates that delays of between six and nine months are anticipated for all six boats' acceptance milestones.”
“Austal advised Defence in June of further schedule delays due to production workforce issues in the $350 million project”, according to the ANAO.
Now, for this is for the first time, the Australian Defence has also publicly reckoned how much the delays to the Evolved Cape Class patrol boats will count in terms of keeping older Armidale Class boats in the water.
“In July this year Defence estimated delays would cost an extra $43.9 million”, ANAO said.
"This has resulted in the planned extension of service of the Armidale class and a reduced in-service period for the evolved Cape class, demonstrating the consequential effect of project schedule delays to ADF capability and the Australian Government's naval shipbuilding strategy."
However, Shadow Assistant Defence Minister Pat Conroy reprehend the government's handling of the project.
He said: "This, at a time when our nation's security is of critical importance. This is an incompetent, wasteful government that cannot deliver Defence projects on time and budget.”
"As always, taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for their stuff-ups, and our Defence personnel are left without the capabilities they need when they need it."
Western Australia based shipbuilder Austal bagged the contract to build six 58-metre Cape Class vessels to outperform the Navy's ageing Armidale Class fleet in May 2020.
While after a month it was reported that problems associated with the imported aluminium, Austal terminated its Chinese counterpart shipbuilder called Aulong Shipbuilding.
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