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My name's Lieutenant Commander Ian Dawson,
Royal Australian Navy.
I joined the Navy in 1997 when I went to the
Defence Force Academy.
Spent four years there studying to become an
electrical engineer, where I graduated with a degree from
the University of New South Wales.
After I'd finished my study, I went down to service for six
months, where I learned how to apply engineering in the Navy.
And then I went to HMAS Canberra, where I was there
for about 14 months, during which time I went to the Gulf
for a short period.
I came back and transferred to submarines.
I'm trained to look after the combat systems, communications
equipment, navigational aids, radars, and anything else that
pretty much is this side of the power point that's used to
help the ship fight.
The prime job that an engineer does particularly at sea is
operations engineering and magnets engineering.
And we make sure that the equipment are ready and
available when command needs them.
I'm the sonar and periscope product lead, which means the
short- and long-term sustainment of those areas of
capability of the submarine are my responsibility.
And as computers get old, you'd struggle to replace
parts on your desktop that's three years old now.
So some of those parts we need to replace, either by the
replacing the individual chips, replacing individual
circuit cards, replacing whole systems or subsystems.
In certain circumstances, I, as electrical engineer, as a
WEEO, will operate the equipment.
Largely, during combat, I'll supervise the actual
engagement.
It's unusual for a WEEO to directly operate equipment
once they are head of department.
Once they're progressing through their training, they
will operate a lot more of it.
I joined the Navy because it was a good way to fund my
university degree.
Looked like it'd be a good career and looked like
I would enjoy it.
I joined submarines because it looked like even more of a
challenge and looked like the work would suit me even more
than being in the wider Navy.
To become a weapons electrical engineering officer, you have
to have electrical engineering degree of some sort.
There are a wide variety of them available.
The one that Defence will actually train you to do,
Defence will actually pay for the four years for you to go
through and do that degree at the Defence Force Academy.
They'll give you a wage.
They'll house you, give you clothes to wear, feed you, and
some money to be able to get out and enjoy yourself.
Well, I've been working shore for two years.
So I'm managing a lieutenant and a chief who help me look
after the sonars and periscopes of the
Collins-class submarine.
Previously, when I was at sea, I was seated at this console,
operating the weapons, ordering them to fire, and
operating the weapons once they're actually in the water
and moving towards the targets.
There's a lot of safety interlocks to make sure the
weapon doesn't start before it's supposed to.
And so there's a number of different computer systems
that all need to talk at just the right time so when the
weapon leaves, it starts and not just does its thing, but
does the right thing, and goes towards the enemy as such.
Unlike missiles on the surface fleet, the torpedoes that we
fire here are why I got it.
So we have the ability to steer them after we fire them,
which means that as we continue to resolve where we
think the other guy is, we can feed that information back to
the weapon.
The weapon then can home in on the enemy a whole lot better.
The interaction with the weapon that's still guided is
a large portion of the skills that a WEEO
is required to have.
There's a lot of safeties involved in operating the
weapon so that the weapon doesn't come back to us.
And for that matter, whilst we're operating with our
surface ships and other submarines that are friendly,
we do actually fire practise weapons that don't have the
explosives in them.
I also help out, whilst I'm doing that, the watch leader.
And the watch navigators are fighting the submarine.
They're watching their sensors, developing the
tactical picture, and manoeuvring the submarine to
the best advantage.
The weapons that we use these days are very intelligent.
And they do have a mind of their own.
So we give them the parameters for where we think they should
look and what sort of stuff we think they should look for.
And they'll go off, and they'll look for it.
One of the best experiences we have to
actually firing our weapons.
We do it out on instrumented range with the surface ships,
torpedoes, and ships all tagged so you
can track them all.
Because you're working six hours on, six hours off, six
hours on, six hour off continuously while you're at
sea in the same rotation as your sailors, you end up
spending a remarkably large amount of time, in excess
often of 12 hours a day for sometimes weeks at a stretch,
with the same group of 15 people in a room not much
larger than a large bedroom really or your
average lounge room.
Once I've been posted to submarines, I've been lucky
enough to go up to Guam, Singapore.
We go to Japan, Hawaii.
We do, however, spend a lot of time sailing around Australia.
I've been to every capital city in Australian on a
submarine, with the exception of Brisbane.
I thoroughly enjoy submarines.
It's challenging.
Every day's a new day.
And no challenge is the same.
I like working with the sailors that are engaged and
trained to that high level, to be able to contribute to what
I'm doing and are eager to learn and eager to participate
and be part of the team.