5 December 2024
Students and staff from the Australian Command and Staff College (ACSC) – Capability Management (CM) program recently had a glimpse into the future of shipbuilding technology.
Organised by Commander Shanker Singh, they visited the Hunter-class frigate (HCF) program’s facilities, which immersed participants in the design, production and application of maritime domains.
Commander Singh, a previous staff member of the HCF program, is now part of the directing staff at the ACSC-CM program at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
The ACSC-CM provides a master's program to O4/O5 level uniform members in capability acquisition (One Defence Capability Lifecycle).
On graduating, newly minted staff officers are posted to a capability development or delivery role. One of the goals of ACSC-CM is to expose course members to the latest maritime technology.
Commander Singh contacted the HCF program to see if his group could be briefed and visit the Visualisation Suite (VisSuite) – the 3D interactive model of a Hunter-class frigate.
As Commander Singh had a large group, HCF reached out to the Hunter Explorer (HuX) Team, part of the BAE Systems Maritime Australia Innovation Centre.
The HuX is a 3D visualisation platform designed to support the workforce that constructs vessels for Navy.
HuX’s chief goal is to make complex shipbuilding information accessible, discoverable and understandable across the business.
It acts as a front end to the digital shipyard and digital ship visions, bringing complex project data from disparate sources into an easy to navigate interface to enable analysis and sharing.
HuX has the entire Osborne South naval shipyard modelled, with integration to facilities databases, site performance analytic dashboards, simulations of planned production output, live operating states of equipment and more.
Its ongoing development and flexible framework allow continuous updates to meet the yard's evolving needs, including new data sources and the ability for users to import and create their own visualisations.
HCF Program Director Captain Leigh Benning said it was a valuable opportunity for Defence personnel to engage with innovative maritime technologies before they join HCF projects at the end of the year.
“The visit was a huge success for the HuX team, HCF VisSuite hosts and the ACSC-CM staff and students,” Captain Benning said.
“All teams vowed to continue to assist this course by running future sessions on technologies in the maritime domain, for the capability acquisition course to show off the advanced tool sets we are using in the project.”
Captain Benning said the group was particularly impressed by the digital evolution of tool sets the project had access to.
