08/27/2015: HMAS Perth docked at the Australian Marine Complex Common User Facility at Henderson in Western Australia on 11 August 2015 to commence Intermediate Maintenance Availability (IMAV) 06.
The docking is required to conduct maintenance on the ship’s underwater fittings and fixtures.
Whilst in the dock, over 500 individual maintenance tasks will be completed.
A team of Anzac Systems Program Office personnel have been working closely with contractors from Naval Ship Management Australia and other key industry players for several months preparing the work package for the docking and the docking evolution itself.
Credit: Australian Ministry of Defence:8/21/15
HMAS Perth is the core frigate for the Australian Navy which is enabled by one of the best frigate radars in the world.
According to a story published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2014:
Most modern radars really do work like the ones in the movies: they spin around, creating the familiar green line moving around a circle like a clock hand in fast-forward.
The problem with such radar for self-defence systems – shooting down incoming missiles – is the system can only check a particular direction every few seconds as the radar swings around.
With the fearsome weaponry carried on modern warships, every second counts in a fight – future sea battles might not last very long.
In the backstreets of Fyshwick, the light-industrial suburb of Canberra reputed for its brothels and adult entertainment shops, an Australian-owned firm has created a technology that is already giving the Royal Australian Navy that few-second edge.
One of the Navy’s Anzac-class frigates, the HMAS Perth, has already been fitted out with the CEA Technologies-built ”phased array radar”, the eyes and ears of the ship’s self-defences.
The HMAS Perth is arguably now the most advanced warship of its kind in the world, able to shoot down incoming missiles skimming the sea surface at supersonic speeds with unrivalled consistency.
With interest now coming from the US, Canada and Spain, among other countries, the radar system could bring Australia more than $1 billion in exports in coming years, the firm says.
Defence Minister David Johnston, an irrepressible enthusiast for the technology, hosted a briefing Thursday night at the Australian Defence Force Academy to plug the system to potential buyers.
It is one of those ideas that sounds obvious in retrospect: phased array panels, arranged hexagonally, watching all directions at once. There is no five-second delay while the radar swings around for a second or third look.
”This is a game-changer. It’s not just world-leading, it’s world-beating,” said RAN Commodore Stuart Mayer, the chief of staff at Navy Headquarters.