A View from Canberra: Addressing the sub gap | ADM April 2012
A Special Correspondent | Canberra
This could mean Australia has absolutely no subs available at all for a period. More likely, there will be some boats available but with limited surge capability.
The revelations of a potential submarine capability gap aren’t the ponderings of some obscure defence commentator. Rather, this came first from Rear Admiral Rowan Moffitt, head of the Future Submarine Program within the Defence Materiel Organisation, and then from Defence Minister Stephen Smith.
Speaking at a Senate estimates hearing RADM Moffitt said depending on how long it took to get the new sub program up and running, there was the risk of a capability gap. Less than a week later, Smith told the ADM2012 Congress there was the risk of a capability gap.
The minister has often vowed that he won’t let an air combat capability gap emerge between retirement of the RAAF’s older F/A-18 Hornets and the arrival of Joint Strike Fighter but made no such assurances about submarines.
Maybe that’s just too far off as no retirement date has yet been set for Collins (although original planning was based around 2025) and replacements aren’t yet even on the drawing board. Or maybe it may not matter than much because we’ve been there before with an extended capability gap between retirement of the Oberon boats and the extended delays before the Collins boats entered service.
The requirement for a Australia’s next generation submarines was spelled out in the 2009 Defence White Paper with the government declaring future strategic circumstances necessitated a fleet of 12 vessels, providing a very substantial capability for a range of operations and a very substantial deterrent to any power intent on mischief to Australia.
Considering the well-publicised and continuing problems of the Collins fleet, this ambition for an even larger fleet raised some eyebrows, not least because of the challenge of finding sufficient crews.
On the plus side, defence has well and truly launched the preliminary planning process, while the public debate is under way with the release of a series of learned papers on new submarines.
On the face of it, the paragon of a submarine desired in the White Paper, combining long range and endurance and a wide range of sensors and weapons systems, could only be a nuclear boat. The government has said only that these boats will be constructed in Australia and that they won’t be nuclear powered.
The opposition isn’t so emphatic in ruling out the nuclear option and US Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich recently stepped into the debate, declaring the US was willing to lease or sell nuclear submarines to Australia. Would they just? The US administration made equally reassuring noises about selling us F-22 Raptors but the reality was that this was actually barred by law and unlikely to change and they were too expensive anyway.
Perhaps a future coalition government might decide nuclear was the only way to go and investigate the US offer. To make this worthwhile, we’d hardly accept anything less than the latest Virginia Class SSN fresh off the Electric Boat line. These are big, some 7,800 tonnes with a crew of 134 and would present a very significant challenge for a nation that has never operated nukes.
A recent study by Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Andrew Davies points to a unit cost around $2.2 billion at full rate production, so a dozen boats, along with all the support infrastructure would be a very expensive proposition, albeit far and away the most capable. Even at that high price, nukes would still fall below some of the top level estimates of the total program cost suggested by some commentators.
Davies says a straight off the shelf acquisition of an existing European design is almost certainly the least expensive option. To that end, defence is testing the market, issuing a request for information to three European manufacturers – Navantia of Spain (S-80), DCNS from France (Scorpene) and HDW of Germany (Type 214). Kockums of Sweden, the parent of the Collins, missed out as its current boat remains under design and therefore not qualifying as MOTS.
Should any of these designs be deemed suitable, then it’s all pretty straightforward from there on in. But all are smaller than Collins (3,000 tonnes) and another recent paper by analyst Brice Pacey for the Kokoda Foundation says there’s simply no commercial off the shelf conventional submarine now available that comes even close to meeting Australia’s particular needs.
At this stage DMO is keeping an open mind defence with Moffitt pointing to four options – straight MOTS, modified MOTS using an existing design with a range of Australia-specific systems, evolved MOTS with substantial modifications to an existing design as occurred with Collins and a brand-new design. Of those, a brand new design would take the longest, cost the most and present the highest risk.
Pacey suggests what’s needed is a boat around 3,800 tonnes to meet Australian requirements for range, endurance, payload and habitability and the best solution is an evolution of the Collins rather than fiddling around with one of the European designs. He says Collins remains the only conventional sub approaching the 2009 White Paper range and endurance requirements and already has the ability to perform most of the required tasks.
In a 2011 ASPI study, Davies came to much the same conclusion. Both see this also as a lower cost option than a wholly new design, with a pricetag around $16-18 billion.
Pacey makes the persuasive point that nations with a history of successful submarine production developed each new class as an evolution of its predecessor, thereby minimising the risk.
Considering Australia had never produced a submarine before Collins and made almost every possible mistake along the way, the end product is actually pretty impressive. Knowing what we know now, the next one should be even better.