Operations and Deployments
The entire class is based at HMAS Stirling, also known as Fleet Base West, which is located on Garden Island, off the coast of Western Australia. The decision to locate all six submarines at Stirling was prompted by the lack of suitable long-term facilities on the east coast of Australia (although individual submarines can use Fleet Base East in Sydney Harbour as a forward staging facility), and the proximity to Australian offshore interests, including most of the nation's external territories, the oil and natural gas resources of the North West Shelf, and the Indian Ocean sea lines of communication, through which the majority of Australia's seaborne trade passes. The submarines' primary missions are patrolling the waters of Australia and nearby nations, and gathering intelligence through the interception of electronic communications by foreign nations and the deployment/retrieval of special forces operatives.
Read more about this topic: Collins Class Submarine
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)