Australia — HMA Ships Manoora and Kanimbla alongside for maintenance

Infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to the Chief of Navy by the Land­ing Plat­form Amphibi­ous (LPA) Sea Wor­thi­ness Board, an inde­pen­dent body that pro­vides robust gov­er­nance advice to the Chief of Navy, about plat­form sea-wor­thi­ness and poten­tial risks asso­ci­at­ed with oper­at­ing the ship class has result­ed in an “oper­a­tional pause” being ini­ti­at­ed for the Navy’s two LPAs, HMA Ships Manoo­ra and Kan­im­bla.

The Chief of Navy, Vice Admi­ral Russ Crane AO, CSM, RAN, said while the deci­sion to keep both ships along­side is pre­cau­tion­ary, the safe­ty of those on board must come first. 

“Our LPAs are a key ele­ment of Navy capa­bil­i­ty, but if their oper­a­tion has poten­tial to impact on safe­ty then this must be addressed quick­ly and open­ly,” VADM Crane said. 

Spe­cial­ist engi­neers and the Navy’s Sea Train­ing Group will now car­ry out a clos­er inspec­tion of each ship’s engi­neer­ing sys­tems, main­te­nance arrange­ments and gen­er­al con­di­tion, to ensure that they can be oper­at­ed safe­ly and effec­tive­ly to meet nation­al requirements. 

“We will make every effort to get both ships back to sea as soon as pos­si­ble,” Vice Admi­ral Crane said. “But we won’t be cut­ting cor­ners. While I acknowl­edge the sig­nif­i­cant effort to improve the state of the LPAs dur­ing 2010, the ships will now remain along­side until I am con­vinced poten­tial prob­lems high­light­ed by the LPA Sea-Wor­thi­ness Board have been addressed.” 

The oper­a­tional pause is not relat­ed to the recent small fire on board HMAS Kan­im­bla. That inci­dent remains under sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tion. HMA Ships Manoo­ra and Kan­im­bla will remain along­side in Syd­ney until giv­en the all clear. 

Media con­tact: Defence Media Liai­son: (02) 6127 1999 or 0408 498 664 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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