Sea Power: Fighting the far war - Australian submarines in the Asia Pacific | ADM Apr 2011

Andrew Davies | Canberra

In his recent paper for the Kokoda Foundation, Professor Ross Babbage caused a minor stir by suggesting that Australia should seriously look at getting some USN Virginia class submarines instead of building our own. There are many reasons that is easier said than done, but perhaps Babbage was onto something. Australia really is after the capability that comes with a nuclear submarine.

To see why, look at the description of the Future Submarine (FSM) in the 2009 Defence White Paper. Among other things, the RAN’s subs are required to be able to:

• sustain a force at sea large enough in a crisis or conflict to be able to defend our approaches (including at considerable distance from Australia, if necessary)
• have greater range, longer endurance on patrol, and expanded capabilities compared to the current Collins class submarine 
• [make] long transits… with high levels of mobility and endurance … over the full distance of our strategic approaches and in operational areas.

The trouble is that no such conventional submarine exists. Treating the White Paper’s requirements as gospel would almost certainly result in Australia building a submarine more sophisticated and likely a fair bit bigger than the Collins class. That ought to be pause for thought - the Collins experience has hardly been an unmitigated success.

The likely cost and risk of an even more ambitious developmental process means that we should look at all of the alternatives. In other words, do we need to design and build a submarine to match the White Paper’s description, or are there other ways to achieve the same strategic ends? To answer that question, we need to work out what the strategic ends actually are.

The far war

Unlike surface ships, which have diplomatic and constabulary roles in addition to warfighting, submarines are very much weapons of war. There’s little value in having them for any other reason. Some would argue that they are excellent ISR platforms - but $30-40 billion buys a lot of ISR from other sources. So the question becomes ‘what wars will Australian submarines be required to fight’?

Governments are naturally reluctant to name names (at least in public) when it comes to potential adversaries. Apart from the diplomatic cost of doing so there’s always the danger of creating self-fulfilling prophecies. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t adversaries in mind. During the 1980s and 90s, a lot of military planning was concerned with Indonesia, which as little as 10 years ago seemed to be capable of heading in a direction quite different from its current trajectory.

Despite public denials to the contrary, it’s a fair bet that the drafters of the current White Paper had some likely adversaries in mind as well. It’s not too hard to work out who they are. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we can conclude that the government in 2009 saw the 12 future submarines as being part of its naval build-up ‘in response to China’s growing ability to project force’.

We can also make some pretty good guesses about where the ADF might be called upon to fight. The government clearly wants the option of siding with the US in any conflict in the Western Pacific, providing one possible theatre of operations. Closer to home the verities of geography don’t change. Australia’s northern approaches constitute the most likely avenue by which a hostile power could threaten the country with conventional military force.

So the most likely scenarios in which Australian naval forces could be called upon to go to war are:

1) a threat to Australia in or around the Indonesian archipelago

2) Australian participation alongside the US in the Western Pacific.

We can argue about how likely this all sounds, but it’s what Defence has been told to prepare for and it’s the thinking that will determine the direction of the submarine project. The White Paper’s repeated emphasis on range and operating at long distances from Australia makes sense in this context.

Range – how big an issue

The usual reason given for ruling out off-the-shelf submarines is that the European manufacturers produce boats suited more for the modest geography of Europe and its surrounds. As a result, the argument runs, they are small and lack range and payload. It’s certainly true that distances are much bigger in the Pacific than around Europe - 3,300 kilometres from Perth to Sydney compared to 2,500 kilometres from London to Moscow. But the issue isn’t as clear-cut as some would have it. Figures for submarine ranges show little relation between tonnage and range, making that a poor discriminator.

A more sophisticated criticism of the European boats is that the payload of a submarine is about 8-10 per cent of the total displacement, meaning that larger boats can carry more in the way of fuel, weapons and supplies for the crew than small ones.

For long deployments there’s a trade-off between food, water and weapons. And European submarines have space for fewer torpedos and/or missiles than the Collins (typically 16 or less versus 22) meaning that they might need to return to base sooner in a high-intensity conflict.

So operating off-the-shelf European submarines from Australian bases in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean is a far from ideal solution. Smaller boats did that during WWII but they transited on the surface, a much more fuel-efficient way to travel that isn’t available to submarines in today’s ISR-rich environment.

But given the shorter distances involved in the immediate region - the arc of territory from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, NZ and the South Pacific island states - should be within the reach of such boats.

As well, their relatively low cost and smaller crews (27 in a German Type 214 versus 42 plus on a Collins) means that Australia could operate more of them, putting more to sea if circumstances require it.

So it’s the scenarios in which Australian submarines are require to patrol in the waters of the Western Pacific or North Asia that are the most challenging. There are three options:

• design and build large diesel-electric submarines capable of operating from Australia
• secure the services of a nuclear submarine
• operate smaller (probably European designed) boats from forward bases.

The first of these possibilities has received the lion’s share of the discussion to date but the other two shouldn’t be discarded lightly.

Lend-lease nuclear submarines?

Let’s start with the nuclear option. The White Paper explicitly rules that out - and for good reason. Building, or even supporting, a nuclear submarine in Australia would be a monumental task. Lacking a domestic nuclear power industry, there is no cadre of appropriately trained and certified personnel to draw on or the infrastructure required to produce, store and transport nuclear fuels and components.

Even if those problems could be managed, the overheads would be huge. If it is to happen in the future, an indigenous nuclear submarine will require the establishment of an Australian nuclear industry first.

 Still, there’s no denying that the capabilities of nuclear powered attack submarines are very well matched to the White Paper’s requirements. In fact, a good case can be made that a conventional boat will necessary compromise on some of the stated aims. SSNs have speed and endurance characteristics that are a quantum leap ahead of conventional boats. If Australia could field a nuclear submarine, the White Paper’s ambitious list of capabilities would be well on the way to being met.

Obviously we’re not going to build them. But it’s worth asking if we might be able to buy or lease them under an alliance framework. The cash strapped USN is having trouble keeping the size of its fleet at levels sufficient to meet their requirements. During the Cold War, the USN deployed between 80 and 90 submarines. Today the number hovers around 50, and a recent review suggested as few as 40.

If Australia could negotiate a leasing and basing arrangement for US-built SSNs (and admittedly that’s a big ‘if’) it would serve the purposes of both countries. The US would get extra production numbers and extra units operated by a close ally. And Australia would get the long-range submarine it actually wants with little technical risk.

But note the ‘and basing’ clause above. Australian basing would be significantly more expensive than running the boats from USN facilities, which would allow us to avoid the fixed costs of the industrial facilities, regulatory overheads and raising and sustaining the required nuclear engineering expertise.

There’d be sovereignty issues to be managed on both sides. For Australia, it would be necessary to establish what constraints might be applied on independent action and national command and control.

From the US point of view, there are questions of release of key technologies and capabilities. But there are precedents. The USN has been closely involved in British SSN development from day one. And Australia is a trusted customer for sensitive US technology, as the EA-18G Growler shows - the first time that the US has exported electronic warfare aircraft.

So it doesn’t seem fanciful to at least explore the possibilities - if we’re serious about the capabilities described in the White Paper, why would we settle for a high-risk second-best outcome without at least asking the question? Four of the current Virginia class submarines operating from and maintained at US facilities would provide more capability on station far from Australia than is likely to be obtained by operating 12 conventional boats from Australia.

Forward basing

However, nuclear propulsion has political hurdles to jump in addition to the practical issues. A less contentious way to mitigate the range and speed limitations of smaller submarines is to base them closer to the action. Shorter transit times and less provisions for long (but largely unproductive from a warfighting point of view) voyages, would allow them to carry a greater proportion of useful payload.

The benefits can be demonstrated by simple time and speed calculations. As an example, figure 1 (following page) shows the number of days on patrol in the South China Sea for a submarine with a transit speed of 10 knots operating from either Fremantle or from the US base at Guam. The results are very clear-cut. Forward deployment at Guam generates forty days on station from a 50-day voyage - a figure that can’t be matched by even a 70-day voyage originating in Fremantle. Fifty to 60 days is a long trip for a diesel-electric submarine and most Collins deployments have been significantly shorter.

Another way to look at these results is to look at the relative effectiveness of forward-based boats versus those operating from homeports. Figure 2 shows the results. For a 50-day voyage, the forward based boat can provide more than twice the number of patrol days.

But the advantage goes beyond the bare numbers; not only do we get ‘two for the price of one’ in terms of patrol days, but the submarine is arguably more effective during those days. When a submarine enters an area to conduct a patrol and/or combat operations, the commander and crew need to understand the environment they are operating in.

This includes not just the physical parameters of water temperature profiles, ambient noise levels and the like (although these are crucial) but also the maritime traffic patterns and adversary naval activity - possibly including the local approach to ASW. It takes time to compile a comprehensive picture and, generally speaking, the longer the boat can stay in area the better.

It’s sometimes argued that an adversary has prior warning of a forward-based submarine heading towards an operational area. But that’s true of any operating base. So, more accurately, the concern is that the submarine’s location is more constrained for a period immediately after it leaves the forward base, which in turn allows an adversary to focus its ASW efforts.

While that might be true for single submarines, it isn’t true if Australian submarines were operating in conjunction with the much larger fleet of American nuclear submarines. In a serious war, defensive ASW forces are likely to be stretched regardless of the sortie rate of RAN boats.

As well, sovereignty issues are sometimes invoked as a reason to avoid relying on forward bases. But it’s hard to see why Australian submarines would be operated in the wider Pacific theatre unless the US and possibly other aligned states were involved. The White Paper agrees. It says that ‘it is not a current defence planning assumption that Australia would be involved in such a conflict on its own.’

Conclusions

This article has raised a couple of possibilities that will be an anathema to advocates of a new-build Australian diesel-electric submarine. And it makes no pretence of having explored the options in anything like the depth required for a sensible decision.

The intent here is rather to move the debate away from a discussion of project risk - however relevant and worthy that is - and back to the very basic question of just what sort of war does Australia see its submarines being involved in. It isn’t obvious that there are credible scenarios that require Australia to design, build and field a unique platform.

It could be objected that neither of those approaches are perfect matches for the White Paper’s demanding requirements. Leased SSNs would have to operate from US bases, with associated sovereignty and other issues. Forward basing also brings sovereignty issues, runs the risk of flagging Australian intentions and complicates logistics planning.

But designing and building the world’s most complex conventional submarine is a far from guaranteed way of producing the desired capability. It’s doubtful whether the Collins boats have ever provided the capability that was specified when the project commenced.

As with all government decisions, ultimately the future submarine capability should be subject to rigorous cost benefit analysis. A solution which falls short of the capability aspiration but which can be delivered with greater certainty might actually be preferable - especially if it frees up funding that can be used elsewhere in the force structure.

If the government is to commit to a development project likely to cost as much as the NBN, they had better be able to convince themselves that the strategic outcome is worth the cost and risk and that a new-build submarine is the only way to get it.

Andrew Davies runs the Operations and Capability program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The views expressed here are his own.