Australia will be left with no submarines if it abandons the Aukus deal with the US and UK, a senior defence official has warned, declining to publicly countenance an alternative plan if Australia’s promised nuclear-powered fleet does not arrive under Australian command, the Guardian reports.
“Defence has been directed to pursue Aukus and we are pursuing Aukus and that’s our plan. I would not venture into the space about ‘Plan B’ or ‘Plan C’,” defence department deputy secretary, Hugh Jeffrey, told a Sovereignty and Security Forum in Canberra on Friday.
Australia’s decades-long $368bn agreement to acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines has attracted intense scrutiny over the opacity of the deal, and laggard rates of shipbuilding in both of the countries on which Australia is relying.
Australia has already given more than $2bn – of $9bn promised – to the US and UK to boost their industrial capacities to build more submarines, without any guarantees that submarines would be delivered.
At a Security and Sovereignty Forum at the National Press Club, event host Malcolm Turnbull asked Jeffrey what Australia would do if the promised US Virginia-class submarines, and the subsequent UK-designed Aukus submarines, did not arrive under Australian command.
“What is the government’s Plan B if we do not get any Virginia [class submarines] at all because the Americans are not producing enough for their own needs?” Turnbull asked. “What is the Plan B if we end up with no new subs and we’re left with the creaking hulls of the Collins?”
The Collins class is Australia’s current class of ageing conventionally powered submarines, whose working lives have already been extended far beyond forecasts.
Turnbull, the prime minister whose conventionally powered submarine deal with French giant Naval was torn up by the Morrison government in favour of Aukus, has been a consistent and trenchant critic of the Aukus agreement. He pointed to consistently slow shipbuilding rates in the US, and the restrictive legislation which would prevent America selling any submarines to Australia if it would “degrade the United States undersea capabilities”.
Retired rear admiral Peter Briggs told the forum the US and UK could not provide Australia with the promised submarines on time, and said Australia should abandon Aukus, and “turn back”.
Jeffrey, deputy secretary for strategy, policy and industry, countered that Australia had tried, and failed, previously, to obtain a fleet of submarines to replace the ageing Collins class.
“This effort under Aukus is the fourth, by my count, attempt to replace a submarine program that we began in the 1980s. Each effort, since then, to replace it has fallen afoul of domestic politics. Are we really thinking that this should be the fourth?
“If you really want to be in a position where we have no submarines then ‘turn back’. I do think, speaking as an apolitical public servant, we need to get out of this relentless politicisation of defence capabilities.”
“Forgive me if I’m cynical about these questions. I do think we need to get on with business.”
Jeffrey declined to comment on any potential alternatives to the Aukus plan.
“It’s not my job as a public servant to talk about ‘Plan Bs’, that’s the prerogative of government. Defence has been directed to pursue Aukus and we are pursuing Aukus and that’s our plan. I would not venture into the space about ‘Plan B’ or ‘Plan C’.”
The weak link with AUKUS remains the Virginia class portion of AUKUS with the two US submarine shipyards at this late stage still being unable to increase production rates from the current 1.2 to the 2.3 units per year average deemed necessary to be able to provide the 3 to 5 Virginia class submarines for the RAN, without excessively reducing the SSN fleet for the US Navy. These two shipyards must also concurrently build the first of the new 12 Columbia class SSBN’s which will receive a higher priority.
The design and local construction of the SSN-AUKUS has a longer and probably adequate timeframe and therefore production capacity both in the UK and Australia has time to increase to the required production rate. The US designed and UK built nuclear propulsion system planned for SSN-AUKUS will first be used for the UK’s four new Dreadnought class SSBN’s which will provide an opportunity to prove the design and construction before being applied to the SSN-AUKUS submarines. The UK will also be the first to build the SSN-AUKUS which should also help smooth the construction process for the Australian built SSN-AUKUS submarines.
Given the above, in my view Plan B could comprise abandoning the current plan to acquire the Virginia class SSN’s and instead locally manufacturing a batch of stretched longer range Japanese Taigei class SSK’s as quickly as possible with the first one or two being built in Japan to prove the design. These could conceivably be manufactured at the Western Australian Henderson shipyard where Mitsubishi Heavy industries will be manufacturing 8 of 11 of the Upgraded Mogami class frigates, and the stretched Taigei class SSK’s could conceivably be mostly in service before the SSN-AUKUS submarines begin to enter service. A longer range version of the South Korean Dosan Ahn Changho class SSK may also be a suitable competitive bid alternative to the stretched Taigei class SSK.
These two SSK’s offer much improved lithium-ion batteries which provide much longer underwater endurance, faster recharge and higher underwater dash speeds. The option of forward deploying SSK’s may also be more politically achievable than forward deploying SSN’s which could greatly increase the time on station for this class of submarines. SSK’s are also likely to be far cheaper than SSN’s to acquire and operate which means many more could potentially be acquired. The transition from the Collins class LOTE to modern SSK’s would also be much simpler.
Given the speed that both Japan and South Korea can build SSK’s it may still be possible to avoid the very expensive life of type extension for most of the Collins class SSK’s.
A mixed fleet of modern state of the art SSK’s, the SSN-AUKUS and UUV’s should provide a good fit for the wide spectrum of possible roles for the RAN over the next few decades.