Rear Admiral Scott Pappano of the US Navy, we salute you for your service to truth! And for cutting through the spin of AUKUS.
Rear Admiral Pappano, the senior officer in charge of the US Navy’s nuclear submarine program, has cast doubt on the capacity of the USA or the UK to build the nuclear submarines spruiked just 12 months ago by Scott Morrison as part of the “forever” pact with Australia’s Western allies.
In comments reported on the specialist Naval Technology site, Pappano said that essentially there was no room at the inn when it came to building Australia’s new submarines, given the US demand for its own submarines, such as the Columbia class.
“If we were going to add additional [Australian] submarine construction to our base that would be detrimental right now,” Pappano said. “I think that exists for both US and the UK.”
Pappano made his comments in an interview with the Mitchell Institute, a Washington defence think tank, on August 24. The video interview only emerged yesterday, though his remarks were first reported in Naval Technology on August 26.
Pappano’s comments puncture the rosy picture of a historic new arrangement that will deliver eight nuclear-powered submarines via cooperation between the US and the UK. His remarks cast doubt on claims by former defence minister, now opposition leader, Peter Dutton that Australia could secure two American-built Virginia-class nuclear submarines by 2030.
Rear Admiral Pappano made it clear that the priority for the United States Navy was to complete the building of its Columbia class submarines. That build was already behind schedule, with the US shipbuilding industry facing a number of challenges, including supply chain problems due to COVID.
Naval Technology pointed out that, “like those in the US”, the UK’s nuclear submarine manufacturing site at Barrow-in-Furness had “little spare capacity” to plug in new orders. The BAE Systems site in the north of England is currently completing the Royal Navy’s Astute-class hunter killer fleet, while also beginning a separate program to build four more boats.
“Significant issues remain for Australia in its pursuit of a fleet of SSNs, as it would rely heavily on the technical, military, and industrial knowhow of the US and UK, while also relying on Washington and London for the nuclear fuel and the navalised reactors required to power such vessels,” the specialist site reported.
The timing of Rear Admiral Pappano’s comments is awkward.
Only yesterday Defence Minister Richard Marles was welcomed to BAE’s facility at Barrow-in-Furness where he was joined by outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Marles’ visit coincided with an announcement from the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) that Australian submariners would train with their UK counterparts on the nuclear-powered HMS Anson, the newest submarine to enter the UK fleet.
The MoD release said the training marked the beginning of a “multigenerational naval partnership” between the three AUKUS nations.
Rear Admiral Pappano’s comments, however, have raised the key question of where the nuclear-powered submarines can be built, if not in the UK nor the US, given that there are no nuclear facilities in Australia.
It is the very conundrum former PM Malcolm Turnbull pointed to in his critique of the new AUKUS agreement last year.
“The new AUKUS submarines, we are told, will still be built in Adelaide,” Turnbull told the National Press Club. “But if there are no nuclear facilities there, that must mean the submarine hulls will be transported to the US or the UK to have the reactor installed together with all of the safety and other systems connected to it.”
“You don’t need to be especially cynical to see it won’t be long before someone argues it looks much simpler to have the first submarine built in the US or the UK, and then the second, third and so on.”
The AUKUS partners are currently engaged in an 18-month study to resolve important questions on the defence alliance struck to counter China’s influence. The study is due to report in March next year. The question of where and how Australia’s eight nuclear-powered subs can be built is certain to be vital.
Rear Admiral Pappano has already suggested that the issue can only be resolved by “significant investment” to drive “additional capacity”.
The estimated cost of the AUKUS program so far is $100 billion, with the first submarine to be delivered in around 2040. The rear admiral’s off-the-cuff comments would appear to place all that in question. At the very least they put paid to the idea that Australia might buy its first few boats off the shelf to close the defence capability gap.
If you have information on this story please contact David Hardaker via dhardaker@protonmail.com
Let’s quit while we’re ahead and scrap this ridiculous nonsense. Within 10/20 years the worlds defence systems will be drone based. There will be no such thing as submarine ‘stealth’, there probably isn’t right now. Drone ships or aircraft with torpedos and missiles will destroy any threat above or below the water line.
With the rapid rate of technological advance, you are dead right. Just think of those technologies that were the bee’s knees just 10 to 20 years ago that are now redundant.
I’m genuinely struggling to think of an example to illustrate your comment Drandy, can you suggest one?
What email were you using 25 years ago?
Outlook before it became Hotmail,all safely stored on my floppy discs.
Not forgetting CDs which worked so well in my Discman when jogging… or moving from desk to kitchen.
I couldn’t have one fitted to my Mazda RX-8 Wankel car so I had to use the terrific miniCD player but kept losing the little things…
Oh right, I was thinking of defence technology. Carry on.
If the US and China are using drone naval ships, and we know they are, then most other advanced nations are also, except Australia probably. Look at the havoc caused by cheap drones in Ukraine on Russia’s most powerful and expensive tanks.
Asbestos insulation & building products, analogue telephones, morse code, PFAS fire-fighting foam, DDT pesticides, tetraethylead gasoline additives, thalidomide morning sickness pills, ozone depleting chloro-fluro carbon refrigerants, video recorders, Holden cars and LNP governments – the list goes on of obsolescent, downright dangerous or injurious tech that has been abandoned or superseded over the last 10 to 20+ years…
Bref is most def onto something with the drone subs
I sincerely doubt that this will be the case without an enormous leap of some sort in sensory technology. The oceans are simply too vast and too easy to hide in for submarines to become easy targets within such a short time period.
UUVs (Unmanned Underwater Vehicles) are likewise limited by communications technology, i.e. their ability to communicate with command and control structures, while submerged. It’s more likely that they’ll be an adjunct to more conventional naval forces for some time.
Basically, the relative cheapness of UUVs is unlikely to outweight the significant independently-operating benefits of submarines for quite some time.
UUVs can be autonomous, in which case they do not rely on remote command and control, which removes that limitation. They are released and off they go to do whatever they are programmed to do for as long as their energy storage lasts, which can be combined with AI capability so they learn on the job. These are getting cheaper and easier to build all the time. Great swarms of the things might be deployed in future, and any one of them could have the capability of destroying any submarine it encounters.
I’m not too sure but autonomous machines with lethal capability will be banned under international convention if opposition from the major powers is overcome. At the moment, use of autonomous lethal weapons could be considered a war crime depending upon circumstances. Certainly they exist, legality is still a moot point.
But if the major powers are true to form, if they want something or want to do something, illegality does not stop them.
True. Outlawing lethal autonomous weapons would make their deployment as unthinkable as chemical weapons, cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines and more that are still all being used with near impunity in various conflicts. (Land mines can be considerd a crude or basic form of lethal autonomous weapon.)
There’s plenty on the internet about the growing capabilities of lethal autonomous weapons and the legal and ethical problems they present.
Look how effective the ruling by 12thC Pope Innocent II banning crossbows was and in 1493 when Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull or decree, “Inter Caetera,” which authorizes only Spain and Portugal to subjugste the New World.
Tempus fugit – rulers & laws is still putting on its Dr Scholls while technology races round the world and the military feeding its horses and their villiens polishing the halberds & cuirasses.
We are still a very long way away from the kind of autonomy you’re suggesting, and right now the more complicated the technology, the more often it needs to be checked on. We’re still only in the early stages of unmanned loitering munitions, and all they do is hang around for a while before performing kamikaze operations. Humans are still far and away the more useful option for amedium-sized power.
Not discounting UUV’s, but synthetic aperture radar and sophisticated filtering (AI) seem likely culprits: https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-submarine
Yet, they said the F-22 would be the last manned fighter ever made. Autonomous drones are a fantasy any time soon, which by submarines would have to be.
Pilotless airliners have been capable of being built since SOUTH Australia developed the ILS (Instrument Landing System) several decades ago. Pilots are purely in the front seats as it was determined passengers would be very much averse to fly on learning there was no on-board pilot.
Most incidents have been from pilot error, until the recent incidents with the new Boeing 737s which now reduces the optimism of pilotless planes being extremely safe.
But also supports why autonomous lethal machines should be banned, IMHO.
Utterly untrue, a the ILS is not automatic, it is just a radio localiser beam that is presented to the pilot to show deviation from the ideal approach.
Getting a plane to fly it is indeed possible – the USN are big users of ACLS (Automated Carrier Landing System) which has been around since the F-14, refined in the F/A-18 and now becoming standard procedure on the F-35.
However, that is not an automated flight. It is a pilot assistance tool which makes no fundamental decision making in the cockpit. That is what you need to replace to such a degree of confidence that they can operate and be trusted, unsupervised.
Absolutely agree with you Bref! I cannot believe they are even still talking about giant, manned subs that won’t be commisioned for umpteen years and when current technology has made them obsolete before they are even designed, much less built.
Drones are already available and will continue to be technologically superior. Imagine what a drone sub will be capable of in 2 or 3 years, much less 20 or 30. It is crazy nonsense!
Conversely, there is much to be said for relying on old, less complex technology – eg the air chase sequence towards the end of “The Gods Must be Crazy”.
More prosaically was the dictum from that great finker, Iron Mike – “everyone gotta plan till I smack ’em in the mouth!”.
Tell that to Russian tank commanders…
Would that be the 15 million billion trillion you recently claimed, citing that impeccably unbiased journal of record, Bloomberg?
There are numerous YouTube videos showing drones dropping bombs on Russian tanks, troop carriers and mortar locations, etc
Hardly surprising! Another one of Morrison’s fairy stories.
Let us see if the French, will build us some submarines?
The French subs are a better fit for our strategic requirements, small, fast and quiet.
If they come into Sydney Harbour, their power units are not a potential dirty bomb.
We can send them back for their fuel rods to be replaced.
As for Smirko and BoJo, their public humiliation of the French President certainly did not go unnoticed by the American President.
Other way around actually. The sealed source of the reactor is the Virginias and the Astutes is much harder, almost impossible, to divert. Just one rod on it’s own from a French boat could depopulate Sydney for decades.
The subs the French were contracted to build for us were non-nuke. They were intended for operation in regional waters.
The government, the one that kept telling us we were too insignificant to make any difference in reducing global carbon emissions, wanted to be a player in a wider theatre of potential conflict. Consistent at least with the idea that we should commit blood and treasure to debacles in Afghanistan and naval tours of the Taiwan Straits but mock the South Pacific.
Human flaws abound (well before the shooting starts). General’s grandiosity and big-power flattery skew thinking.
Apparently the French are achieving something on behalf of allies including US, UK and Australia in the region, as they are in the box seat to supply Rafale fighters (interoperable with allies’) for India’s new aircraft carrier (based on a Soviet hull), and Indonesian Air Force, transitioning away from, hence, probably locking out Russian defence kit.
Hey, which ever way you look at it, China’s the manufacturing behemoth of the world, why not have our new nuke subs built by them? I’m quite sure there would be no supply or time problems either, commerce is in their genes.
Best laugh I’ve had all week, Paul. Sydney and Newcastle wouldn’t even look at China’s cost effective, expandable network, relatively non-disruptive trackless trams because they are Chinese. We can’t possibly buy stuff from baddies! 😀
Funnily enough we get giddy with excitement at the thought of selling them stuff and get upset when they don’t want it.
Morrison and Dutton obviously did not trouble with due diligence before launching us into their AUKUS fantasy. It was always obvious that such submarines are horribly expensive, but who would have thought we would pay $5.5 billion to ensure we don’t get any submarines, nuclear powered or not?
Assuming we actually need nuclear powered submarines, we’ll just have to go elsewhere. How about the French? I’m sure they’d be pleased to find us knocking on their door, asking them to let bygones be bygones. Or maybe the Russians? Putin and his murderous pals should be ready to offer a good deal.
Failing that all we need do is approach any potential enemies among the various nations able to affect Australia and ask them very nicely to hold off making any alarming moves until we get our act together, sometime after 2050 by the look of it. Appeal to their sense of honour. That should do it. It’s not like we have much of an alternative.
Just as a general comment for the site, my encrypted email is dhardaker@protonmail.com if there is anything you think Australia needs to know..
Well said. Australia has no possibility of owning much less running nuclear subs from Australia, as we have no capacity to do so. And the big question is WHY DO WE NEED THAT PARTICULAR ITEM? Like army tanks, these items are for wars on other countries’ soils, not in Australia, and the fictional subs are to meet the needs of others – like the USA, not Australia, so why would the US supply Australia with any subs at all. They would keep them for their own use.
Perhaps it is time the media stopped poking the Chinese with a stick just to see if they bite? Surely we can settle the nonsense perpetrated on Australia by the previous PM, and his cabal of crazies and tame journalists, and use a bit of actual diplomacy in our dealings with out biggest trading partner?
Going Chinese – Do what they did. Buy a Russian one and copy it making improvements.
Or better still do nothing and put the money into Health and Education.
Too simple, straightforward and beneficial to be worth consideration by the usual suspects.