By Marcus Hellyer*
In case you’ve just arrived from Mars, the Australian government has announced it will acquire, with the assistance of the United States and United Kingdom, a fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) that will be built in Australia. It has also said that the first submarine won’t be operational until the late 2030s. Since the government pre-emptively cancelled the Attack-class submarine program, the Collins class will need to serve as the core of the Royal Australian Navy’s submarine fleet into the 2040s.
The risk associated with operating a small fleet of very old boats, particularly as we are trying to increase to a much larger number of submariners, has already led to calls for a Plan B. One idea that has been raised many times involves the purchase or lease of used American or British SSNs to jump-start the transition to a nuclear fleet.
