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Aluminium shipbuilder to construct high speed ships for US military

17 November 2008 Print this article Comments Share this article

The company expects to be awarded nine more contracts for Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSV) from the US Department of Defence, making for a contract valued at $2.4b.AUSTAL has been awarded a $185.4m contract by the US military to provide aluminium vessel construction for a high speed transport vessel.

The company expects to be awarded nine more contracts for Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSV) from the US Department of Defence, making for a contract valued at $2.4b.

The Perth-based company says it is the only company in the US with the experience and purpose built facilities and processes to carry out aluminium vessel construction.

It will design and build the first 103m ship at its Alabama shipyard. The ship will transport troops and their equipment, and can operate in shallow waters.



Tags: aluminium | construction | contract | transport

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Add a comment 2 Comments

  1. at 04:18 PM on 1 July 2009, Shane wrote:
    Naaaaaa the explosions killed some of the crew, bits of the super structure / hull got hot, soft and or melted, and some of them actually sank. To be serious tho' I have worked in naval engineering and ships are not just ships, they are crewed weapons and surveillance systems - and they are not one thing, they are a combination of needs, uses and probabilities. It's the old "Well if we had 2 meter thick armour plate all over it, sure it would be hard to penetrate - but it would run like a toad and cost a zillion dollars to build and keep moving. But strategic hull designs, of light weight, minimal armor plating, and clever design means that they are light, fast and manouverable, they use minimal fuel, and they are capable of sustaining degrees of damage in different areas, and still be to a degree, operational, in whole or in part - also they are fitted with a range of probability based countermeasures. It's the case of there are good points about an army tank that in some circumstances make it superior to a man with some kit on bicycle; and there are other circumstances where a man with some kit on a bicycle is superior to an army tank. Same thing with ship design.
  2. at 01:35 AM on 18 November 2008, Barry Schaffer wrote:
    Weren't aluminum skinned vessels found to be exposed to catastrophic failure due to high temperature melting when attacked by missles during the Falkland Islands war beteen the U.K. and Argentina?

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