Australia has been left with just one fully operational submarine as the rest of its aging Collins class fleet undergoes urgent repairs or waits to complete scheduled upgrades. The ABC can reveal five of its six submarines are currently docked in Adelaide and Western Australia, but defence insists it could put at least two boats to sea "if required".
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00:00At least five boats are now currently either in scheduled maintenance or getting urgent
00:10repairs.
00:11Australia operates a fleet of six Collins-class submarines.
00:15They began being commissioned back in the mid-90s, 1996 in fact, so these are ageing
00:22platforms.
00:23Earlier this year we heard that there were unprecedented corrosion problems on some of
00:29those very old submarine hulls, but tonight we can reveal that at the moment the Australian
00:36Navy has just one fully operational Collins-class submarine.
00:43We do also know that Defence has worked on contingencies and if required it could put
00:49another boat to sea if it was urgently needed, but at this point it looks like the submarine
00:55availability has been extremely limited and that there is only one submarine currently
01:02fully operational.
01:04And what's Defence had to say?
01:06Well in a statement tonight Defence tells us that it continues to quote meet government
01:12directed levels of operational capability for the Collins-class submarines.
01:17It also says that it has more than one boat available for operations if required and I
01:24think that that is the key point of that statement, that it ideally wouldn't want
01:28to put a second of its Collins-class submarines to sea at the moment.
01:34I understand that that boat that could be put to sea is still awaiting final certification
01:41after receiving some upgrades or some repair work in Western Australia.
01:47So at the moment we know that two of our Collins-class submarines are at the Osborne shipyard in
01:54Adelaide where they undergo extensive maintenance known as full cycle docking.
02:00It's also known that there's been some industrial action at that shipyard recently which has
02:04caused delays to that maintenance known as full cycle dockings, but at present we do
02:11have one submarine that is fully operational.