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Old 09-11-2011, 07:02 PM
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Legbreaker Legbreaker is offline
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Location: Tasmania, Australia
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Looking through the information on them, it seems this was mainly due to arguements over who was actually responsible for fixing any issues discovered from the design and construction. As an example, one of the companies involved in the early days is no longer trading and the company the finger was then pointed at refused the responsibility for rectification (and rightly so since it was never in their contract to begin with). Politics has also been a BIG player with both sides using the relatively small teething issues as a political football.
The Australian Navy also didn't realise that as they were the "parent navy" for the design, it would essentially be up to them to find and fix issues and that they wouldn't have a tested and proven design from day one.
Twenty years after the first vessel was laid down, we're almost at the point where they work properly all the time. Now our big problem is crewing them - we currently have enough trained and experienced crew for only about 3 subs (we have 6). This isn't as big a problem as it may seem to begin with as 3 (I think) of the 6 subs are currently in drydock being overhauled (normal maintenance schedule).
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