Capabilities: Sea 1000: The turtle stirs | ADM June 2012

Three years after it was first announced, the government's decision to acquire a fleet of 12 advanced conventional submarines has finally been given real impetus.

Amid the debris of $5.5 billion in cuts to defence budgets in the four financial years from 2012-13, the government announced an allocation of $214 million for detailed studies and analysis of the options for acquiring the future submarine fleet (from P46 for Budget details).

In truth, the decision places the government where it should have been three years ago when the 2009 Defence white paper determined the new fleet would be built in Adelaide to replace the Navy’s current Collins class submarines as they retired from about 2025. However, there is now real money and an announced schedule to lead to first-pass approval in late 2013/early 2014 and to the second pass in 2017.

Despite this, the government’s belated movement cannot yet dispel the uncertainty that has dogged Sea 1000. Given the electoral cycle and the expectation of change of government by the end of 2013, the development of the submarine project could yet face further disruption from a Coalition government that in opposition is yet to formulate a cohesive policy on this subject.

The Government’s decision

The options that have been approved for investigation indicate how little this project has moved, being virtually the same as under consideration at the time of the formation of the Sea 1000 project office. In addition, the government has tasked the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) to undertake technology studies and some outside bodies to make assessments.

It also has approved the creation of an Expert Industry Panel drawing on the breadth of Australia’s maritime industry to assist the development of a Future Submarine Industry Skills Plan. Again, crucial as are these developments to the success of the project, they would have been the more effective if initiated some years ago.

The money now allows the commissioning of some serious design studies from France’s DCNS, the German consortium HDW and Navantia, the Spanish ship builder, around their Scorpene, Type 212/214 and S-80 boats. Not a single option has been excluded in the time since the project commenced and the studies will be across all options, except that of nuclear propulsion, barred in the initial pronunciations of the white paper.

These options begin with commercial off-the-shelf offerings modified only to suit Australian regulations. In fact, this study is already underway, the three designers already having received contracts for the work. The next level will involve work to assess the impact of fitting the commercial designs with Australia’s preferred American sourced combat systems and weapons. Designs evolved from existing submarines and entirely new developmental designs will also be investigated. Drawing on the Collins class experience remains in the mix, with Kockums to produce initial design studies for an updated Collins design.

In a departure from the entirely inhouse evaluation of the contenders for the Collins project, the government will draw on external advice to analyse proposals for Sea 1000. Drawing on agreements at the November 2010 AUSMI N meeting that submarine inter-operability would extend into the future submarine, American companies Systems Performance and Analysis and Electric Boat will take part in this process. DSTO will study options for propulsion and energy storage, stealth performance, combat systems and hydrodynamics and propulsors.

Strategic imperatives 

The government justifies spending some $40 billion over the service lives of the proposed submarine fleet because they will be a strategic asset. That is, they will offer a means to alter Australia’s security situation, in much the same way that the F-111 did in the 1970s and ‘80s when it was superior to anything regional powers could throw at it.

And Australia will need defence capabilities able to achieve such outcomes because its strategic circumstances are changing. From the beginning of European settlement, Australians have looked to a dominant Anglo Saxon power, first Britain then the US, with the capacity to bloc military threats against the country. The 21st century will see this comfort fade. China will soon become the world’s largest economy and is using its wealth to improve the quality of its armed forces. So far, China’s rearmament is not massive but is unrelenting and aimed at boosting its strategic competitiveness by investing in the components of modern military superiority.

It already pursues US interests in cyberspace and has a program to do the same in exo-atmospheric space. It will deploy a Chinese global positioning satellite system so that it cannot be disadvantaged by loosing access to America’s GPS system. It has for some time conducted a sustained cyber intrusion campaign against Western government and commercial computer networks

This will assist China challenge the US in Northeast Asia, particularly at sea. Already, Chinese maritime forces have exhibited a somewhat bumptious behaviour, harassing legitimate activities in the waters of regional neighbours from islands disputed with Japan to the south of the South China Sea. The growing quality of China’s submarine fleet already challenges the US Navy’s ability to position forces in the Taiwan Strait in periods of tension.

In a less predictable future, increasingly flexible Australia security planning seems required, with the ADF maximising an independent capacity to support policy. In a fluid and unpredictable strategic future submarines are likely to be an important asset. Where US satellite surveillance is not available to Australia, submarines are the best means of collecting electronic intelligence. They may be the only means of bringing military pressure to bear in a situation where there is no powerful supporter to provide dominance of the air and capable anti-shipping missiles proliferate.

Such developments would emphasise the reasons for the RAN’s concerted push for long range and increased numbers as central features of the future submarine project. Less obviously, it also focuses decision making on the characteristics of the selected design. Recognising that it cannot often compete for military effectiveness in terms of numbers, a central element of Australian strategic policy has for long been that the ADF must seek to maintain a technological advantage over regional forces.

How that might be done were the RAN to acquire a commercial European design, also operated by many of the region’s navies, would have to be a central consideration for government. Equally important is the issue of ensuring that the new fleet is a sea going capability, able to respond to the requirements of the government of the day.

Questions for contending options

The Chief of Navy is on record as dismissing the ability of any currently available European submarine to meet the RAN’s requirements. In 2001 Navy overthrew the recommendation of the selection panel that the Collins replacement combat system be acquired from STN Atlas, in favour of a developmental USN based solution to be developed by Raytheon. This decision extended plans to raise the operational effectiveness of the Collins fleet by up to a decade but, together with the selection of an upgraded US Mk 48 torpedo, sealed Australia’s close cooperation with the US on submarine matters. This relationship is now sealed by formal arrangement and anointed by US participation in the evaluation processes of Sea 1000.

These circumstance must weigh heavily against the selection of any off-the-shelf design. The German Type 212 is too small and limited to support the strategy of the government’s 2009 Defence white paper. Greece and South Korea found numerous defects after building locally the export version, the Type 214. The Greek navy earmarked its first boat, built in Germany, for sale. Some of the specifications for the Spanish S-80 seem disturbingly like aspects of the Collins project that later were to prove troublesome. With six boats to be built in India and two delivered to Malaysia, the Scorpene may with South Korea’s Type 214s be something of a regional benchmark but, like all the commercial designs, is down on range and something like 20 percent down on weapon load compared to the Collins.

The European boats can attempt to cover the enormous distances in the RAN’s area of operations only by proceeding at an excruciatingly slow speed – something akin to the progress of a 16th century Dutch East India Man. Consequently, the Europeans could spend little time on their operational station, having exhausted their endurance; basically, what the crew can achieve on patrol in their area of operations is limited.

In contrast, the design of the Collins allows considerable time on station during a 60 day deployment, incorporating a submerged speed sometimes more than that attained by surface vessels when the region’s bad weather affects sea states. Carrying a high number of warshots, the Collins has more operational flexibility in the area of operations, enhanced by a larger crew recently increased to improve watchkeeping performance. The RAN could not settle lightly for a significant reversal of performance in these areas.

Critics argue that the Navy should change its operational procedures, for instance, operating the short ranged European boats through forward bases such as the US facility in Guam. Yet this will be under constant Chinese satellite surveil lance and when its departure had been logged the mission of a commercial European submarine would be compromised by Chinese intelligence’s knowledge of its performance characteristics. In any case, the likely growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean reinforces the need for long-range submarines. Cockburn Sound may well be under Chinese satellite surveillance by the middle of the century but at least a submarine departing Fremantle may proceed undetected to the west as well as turn north.

Unless exceptional weight is to be given to very short term fiscal matters, off-theshelf designs should be eliminated early. Decisions on the future submarines’ combat systems, torpedoes, sensors and other weapon systems will be made during 2013. Given the investment that has been made in updating Collins systems, it is very unlikely that the procurement strategy for Sea 1000 will not continue to follow the USN approach of evolutionary development of combat systems and to support interoperability with the USN in choice of submarine weapons.

With the possible exception of the Type-80 that is designed around an American combat system, the European designs may not be able to accommodate changes to USN standards. In any case submarine design is demanding – seemingly simple changes can create endless problems. When Canada bought four ex-British Upholder class submarines it was thought sensible to modify them to use the existing stock of US built Mark 48 torpedoes. Fourteen years after acquiring the boats only one Canadian submarine is currently operational and it was not till March that it fired the first Mk 48 torpedo.

In making the decision on systems, the government will be deciding between abandoning its strategic justification for Sea 1000 or accepting that the project requires some competent developmental design work. Probably recognizing the same, most of the European designers are reportedly investigating much larger offerings, at around the 4,000 tonne mark thought necessary to achieve the RAN’s goals. HDW has promoted its Type 216 design, which is attractive but is equally an immature design. The Japanese 4,000 tonne Soryu class submarine touted earlier in the year is not mentioned.

Nonetheless, Australia’s increasingly closer security contact with the Japanese may yield access to their Kawasaki diesel generators, providing useful competition with MTU for the propulsion systems of the updated Collins study. These options could be evaluated comparatively early should the government back studies conducted for it by Babcock on the establishment of a land-based test site. The absence of competition with Hedemora, after MTU refused to develop a turbocharged version of its submarine diesel, has contributed much to the current poor sustainability of the Collins class.

Such a study may be pivotal for the future of Sea 1000. The cursory treatment of the developmental design option for the future submarine creates an impression that a developed Collins class may be the preferred fallback to a European design. Of course, focus on a developmental design would follow if it were approved as an option in first-pass approval. Nonetheless, the Chief of Navy’s preference for a life extension of Collins to meet the likely capability gap before the introduction of the future submarine would benefit from studies of a developed Collins.

Sustainment governs Sea 1000

The greatest attraction of the European commercial submarines is their ex-factory price of less than $500 million per unit. Unfortunately, an ex-factory submarine by itself will give no navy an operational vessel that can be sustained over 30 years. When Brazil acquired four French Scorpene submarines the reported unit price, including support to build, maintain and develop future capacity was US $2.5 billion. This corresponds with the estimate of ASC managing director Steve Ludlam that the difference in project cost between the off-theshelf design and more capable Australian submarine would be up to $8 billion.

The military independence and strategic flexibility Australia seeks from the future submarines requires operationally effective boats at sea for a period that will stretch beyond 2050. Much of the delay to Sea 1000 seems to have resulted from the Minister’s concern over the Navy’s inability to achieve this state with its existing submarines.

At a pre-ANZAC Day media conference, Stephen Smith declared “it would be irresponsible to rush into the Future Submarine Project without seeking to fully understand the difficulties that we had inherited … in particular the maintenance and sustainment of the Collins class submarine and the inability … to get better operational service out of [them].”

The Minister can be excused for focusing on the apparently mundane yet crucial issue of fleet maintenance. The development of the future submarine has occurred in parallel with adverse publicity about the sustainment of the Collins fleet.

Fleet sustainment seems so important to the Minister that it is the basis of the first explanation the government has given for dismissing nuclear power as an option for the future submarine, “the reason we have ruled out a nuclear option is that Australia does not have a nuclear industry, and if we acquired nuclear submarines that would effectively see the outsourcing to another country of our maintenance and sustainment of our submarine fleet.”

It’s well down the strategic policy pecking order but sustaining the operational capability of submarines is a challenging and central issue in a nation’s submarine warfare capacity that is often frustrating and expensive. The first maintenance docking of an RAN Oberon submarine, finished in 1973, took longer and cost more than the original construction. By the 1980s these five yearly refits were costing four times the acquisition price of the submarines.

The Collins’ problems prompted the Minister to commission the Coles Review of Collins sustainment. Coles’ interim repot, delivered before Christmas last year, identified many deficiencies in management, materiel, industrial and personnel matters. However, the exercise seems to have borne fruit with an exceptional focus in the 2012-13 budget on overcoming Navy sustainment problems. Within a reduced overall allocation, $2.9 billion has been diverted to fund priority areas. Of this, a third addresses Naval fleet sustainment with $700 million allocated to the Collins class and $270 million for other fleet maintenance.

These moves seem to indicate that the government has confidence that the recommendations of the Coles committee will be effective and this might enhance its focus on Sea 1000. The Department has already acted on interim observations that submarines sustainment lacked effective oversight by appointing, at the cost of abolishing the proposed Associate Secretary Capability, a General Manager Submarines. David Gould has been appointed to the position with responsibility for all materiel-related aspects of submarine sustainment.

Much remains to be done if Sea 1000 is to progress. In particular, studies and analysis will have to be completed on time and this seldom occurs. There is accordingly, little prospect that the first pass approval will be taken by the current government and, therefore, it is crucial that the current opposition enunciate a coherent policy that might prevent much wasted effort by all parties. Nonetheless, the turtle has stirred and real progress toward providing Australia with an effective future submarine fleet can now begin.