In another step towards completing hull integration in the coming months, Royal Australian Navy’s third air warfare destroyer, the future Sydney, received her mast on May 15.
AWD Alliance, with shipbuilder ASC at the helm, loaded out the mast onto the hull of Sydney, following a mast stepping ceremony that was held last week.
The mast stepping ceremony celebrates a long standing naval tradition, dating back to the ancient Romans, which involves placing a coin under the mast of a ship for good luck.
At the ceremony, Alliance general manager Paul Evans spoke about the traditions of the mast stepping and thanked the team for their hard work and dedication.
“Your commitment to excellence and finding improvements, combined with your demonstration of the true spirit of collaboration and teamwork has been noticed.”
Sydney ship manager Jason Loveday spoke about the lessons learned and how the team implemented them successfully.
“Our Ship 3 team critically analysed the build state of Ship 2’s mast outfitting, and evaluated the build strategy to introduce further efficiencies. I am very proud of our shipbuilding team for proactively working together to achieve a further improvement of 15% on top of the already optimised Ship 2 mast outfitting strategy.”
The three Hobart-class destroyers are more than 140 meters long, have a top speed of more than 28 knots, a range of about 5000 nautical miles and room for more than 200 crew members.
They carry a range of weapons, detection and electronic warfare systems onboard, which include an Aegis threat tracking system, SPQ Horizon Search Radar, 48 vertical launch missile cells, a 5″ gun for coastal operations and two quad launchers of anti-ship HARPOON weapon systems.