Is Australia about to make another disastrous decision around its submarine fleet?
In 2016, the Turnbull government made a poor decision to contract France’s Naval Group to build a new generation of submarines here in Australia — reflecting the fusing of industry policy with defence policy. Last year, the Morrison government made a radically worse decision, throwing the Naval Group contract out at a cost of at least $4 billion and starting over with a study of nuclear submarines that probably wouldn’t be built here and not arrive until the 2040s and 2050s — if then.
Peter Dutton now claims the Americans would simply sell us two new Virginia-class nuclear submarines, complete with submariners to crew them, before 2030 to address the massive gap between the end of the lifespan of the existing Collins-class fleet and the arrival of the new boats.
Defence Minister Richard Marles has said he’s not ruling out the purchase of an interim vessel to cover the gap between the Collins era and the nuclear era.
Both options seem bizarre when you recall the Naval Group’s Barracuda vessel, the basis for the original contract in a modified form, is a highly rated nuclear-powered attack vessel that needs a far smaller crew.
In his op-ed piece for the Murdoch press Dutton suggests Australia couldn’t handle three submarine classes. Given that we were not able to handle one class due to maintenance and crewing problems — the crewing problem is so bad one solution is to build a new sub base on the east coast so submariners and engineers wouldn’t have to live in Perth — Dutton might have a point.
But there’s a threshold issue before any decision is made, whether it’s to pursue the unlikely scenario that the Americans cough up two boats they would have otherwise integrated into their own fleet, or an interim fleet, or just accept the gap and hope the Chinese play nice until the 2050s.
Australian defence procurement is broken, and Defence has repeatedly proven it struggles to properly handle major procurement decisions. The most recent Auditor-General review of Defence’s Major Projects at the end of last year showed them collectively over 400 months late. The Taipan helicopter program was subsequently abandoned altogether and Australia still has no armed drone capacity to speak of, many years after beginning the procurement process. Not merely do we handle procurement poorly, we seem to be incapable of making procurement choices that reflect the likely military environment we’ll face.
After years of blunders and poor procurement management, even The Australian took to routinely attacking the previous government’s defence spending record, with Greg Sheridan — a savage critic of the nuclear submarine decision — repeatedly excoriating the Morrison government for failures across all arms of the ADF.
As the Australian National Audit Office pointed out last year, what appears to cause difficulties is Australia’s predilection for ignoring off-the-shelf major acquisitions in favour of either designing from scratch or significantly modifying off-the-shelf designs. This predilection was curbed in the 2000s but has been returning since 2014, and it makes big projects far riskier and far more likely to be delayed and cost more.
Part of that, of course, is that politicians gleefully confuse industry policy and defence policy and want to add up to 30% to the cost of major projects by making them here. Our procurement problems lie both at Russell Hill and at Parliament House in Canberra.
The submarine decision — unless we decide that all the nuclear subs will be built in the US and be the unaltered Virginia-class boat — will be no different to the many poor decisions we’ve made in recent years.
Taxpayers can have no confidence in any decision Defence makes about the subs until a fundamental review of defence procurement is undertaken. No one thinks defence procurement is easy — all countries take a long time to build major defence projects and few have ever cracked the secret of building them on time and within budget. But it’s not clear at all that the procurement systems within Defence — from acquisition choice to contract management — are fit for purpose. Very likely we’ll be discussing the failure of whichever alternative we pursue in another decade, 10 years older and no wiser.
Speaking to an AI specialist the other day. By 2040 capital ships like nuclear submbarineswill be completyely out dated. Drones and their attachments will rule benath the sea and above. They will cost peanuts, be able to track anything anywhere and carry appropriate missiles. How can a submarine survive living in a swarm of thousands of these things that cost, by comparison, almost nothing. We should have a discussion on this.
Much of the cost of a submarine is the life support system. Drones make sense. One would need to deploy these somehow.
damn right we should
Turkey should be our defence industry example. Building lower cost drones they have developed a genuine local Defence Industry that doesn’t rely on foreign supply or repairs. If there is a conflict we will be stranded with high tech machinery that we cannot repair. This is senseless.
My guess is any defence hardware that takes 10-20 years to deliver is out of date and no longer fit for purpose by the time we receive it. Either the nature of the threat has changed or other weapons systems have been developed that are superior or neutralise our capabilities.
“Politicians gleefully confuse industry policy and defence policy and want to add up to 30% to the cost of major projects by making them here” because defence spending is sacrosanct.
We could get the better gear, cheaper and faster on the black market. Worth a try.
In general I despise giving losing pollies a sinecure of a quango but would specifically advocate that exSenator Rex Patrick be given a chair role in any scrutiny of this building boondoggle.
Just to keep it on the straight & narrow.
Oh look, Porcus Aviatrix.
There’s a good discussion with hm here:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3Nob3dzLzJjMmVhYjg2LTQ1YmQtNTNhZS1iNzJmLWY0NzRmMGUwOGJjOQ/episode/NjI5ZjQ1OWMxNDdhODgwMDEyMmZkZGQw?hl=en-AU&ved=2ahUKEwiJqo6_y5_4AhWR-TgGHbXZAjoQjrkEegQIAhAF&ep=6
Thanx for that.
The fundamental problem we face in Australia is that a population of 26 million people (or even 40 or 50 million people – whatever we’re supposed to grow to in the next few decades) will never be able to implement and maintain, through its own resources, the size and complexity of a military capability that can defend an entire continent against serious attack (which does NOT, of course, include a flotilla of unarmed refugee boat people. We can handle that – just.)
That means that if the proverbial ever hits the fan, the only recourse we will have in the event of a serious attack, is for one of our allies to do the heavy lifting. The only contender for that role has for decades been the US – and I suggest that they are the only likely one to be a contender for decades to come. The only other possibilities I can think of are NATO (highly unlikely), a neighbourhood solution similar to ASEAN (again, highly unlikely) or – in a mammoth leap of lateral thinking – China.
In any engagement, our forces will be the minority contribution. In order to integrate operations with our ally (ie, the US) it will be essential that our systems integrate as tightly and as effectively as possible. Most defence systems these days are driven by software applications, so in this case, it means working from a shared application code base: something that the ally will understandably be reluctant to share in any but the most secure circumstances. As in, the military technology we operate must be identical to that deployed by our ally.
This means that the whole concept of ‘competitive’ defence tendering is, in Australia’s case, complete hogwash. If the US is our chief ally that we turn to in times of crisis, we are locked in to the US Defence industry. There’s only a handful of large corporations working in this arena, and they are all US-based companies for whom the US DoD is their main customer. We will never be anything more than a fly on an elephant’s bum in terms of where these organisations focus their time and attention.
Sure, we may be able to choose alternative suppliers for smaller, relatively minor components of our capability, such as troop carriers or infantry equipment. The serious stuff, though, will be much more constrained.
We need to stop kidding ourselves. Dreams of a local manufacturing are just sabre rattling to attract the votes of those who still think of the world in terms of 20th Century global politics.
We will never have an effective defence procurement approach until we reconcile with this reality.
I agree with you G. In future the only defence Australia can reasonably muster is through many thousands of cheap smart drones. This is an industry which we can afford, develop and build on our own? We’ve already seen Russian tank and supply lines decimated through the use of drones and ‘smart’ missiles. In another ten years (maybe even now) submarines won’t be able to hide from satellites no matter how stealthy. In future almost none of the current state of the art tanks, aircraft or ships will be able to defend against smart drones.
Relying on the US alliance is a dangerous fantasy. Malcolm Fraser: ‘Australia needs the US for defence. But Australia only needs defence because of the US’.
https://ipan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/220314-CameronLeckie-NotFitForPurpose.pdf
(The author is an ex-Army officer, not a green-leftie.)
Great article and agree with his proposed strategy.