{"id":59369,"date":"2020-09-28T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T20:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=59369"},"modified":"2020-09-27T19:47:15","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T09:47:15","slug":"the-strange-submarine-saga-strategy-and-nightmares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-strange-submarine-saga-strategy-and-nightmares\/","title":{"rendered":"The strange submarine saga: strategy and nightmares"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Submarines are a top-of-the-budget answer to a top-of-the-pile nightmare.<\/p>\n

The argument for subs lies within the fundamental call on any nation: defend the realm and protect the currency (proving the oldest-profession status of strategists and economists in the state-building game).<\/p>\n

Subs touch both bits of the realm\u2013currency injunction: new boats to defend the borders cost a cornucopia ($89.7 billion<\/a> is the current Attack-class price tag).<\/p>\n

While economists reside in gloom, strategists dwell in horrors: dream up the worst possible scenario and then defend against it. Strategy wonks speak of low-probability, high-impact events.<\/p>\n

To argue from first principles, submarines are what you have for the ultimate military nightmare\u2014hostile forces coming to harm your territory. It has only happened once in the history of this Commonwealth, a high-impact moment that consumed all else. The 1942 experience is the existential fright that haunts Oz strategy.<\/p>\n

Submarines have other uses, yet Australian voters are happy to simplify by embracing the first-principles thought: subs stop a foe from stepping foot on the nation that has its own continent. Date that view from the first decade of federation.<\/p>\n

The subs saga began <\/a>life with Prime Minister Alfred Deakin\u2019s statement on defence in October 1907. Acting on advice from the Admiralty in London\u2014but contrary to Australia\u2019s naval experts\u2014Deakin announced that his government had decided \u2018the submarine is probably the best weapon\u2019 for defence of our harbours.<\/p>\n

In what became a familiar Oz problem, the future submarine fleet hadn\u2019t been ordered when Deakin ended his second term as PM, in November 1908. Submarines can torpedo the most decisive of cabinets, leaving them divided and far from port. The saga is well into its second century.<\/p>\n

Subs always ask Australia how much it wants to spend on insurance. You can make the argument that nearly $100 billion is a lot for one form of indemnity. Or that there are cheaper ways to get what we need.<\/p>\n

The cheaper\/other ways line comes up against lots of institutional resistance. Not least the military replacement syndrome. You always replace what you\u2019ve got with more of the same, just a better version. The navy loves what it knows and knows what it loves, and always wants to go to sea in ships and boats.<\/p>\n

Here at The Strategist<\/em>, submarines are the gift that keeps on giving. As Andrew Davies<\/a> noted a while back, we\u2019ve covered the arguments for\u00a0big submarines<\/a>,\u00a0little submarines<\/a>,\u00a0conventional submarines<\/a>,\u00a0nuclear submarines<\/a> and no submarines<\/a>, and the claim that we\u2019ve chosen a preposterous submarine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing about subs and Canberra since well before the Collins class<\/a> was a gleam in Kim Beazley\u2019s<\/a> eye. And while geography doesn\u2019t change, the way strategists think about what we might face in the sea\u2013air gap has certainly evolved.<\/p>\n

Once, the nightmare was Indonesia. In the same way we had F-111 fighter bombers<\/a> so we could bomb Jakarta, we got subs to stop Jakarta coming to us.\u00a0Australia signed up the F-111s in 1963<\/a>, the same year the navy ordered the Oberon-class<\/a> boats. The Cold War was the context, but Indonesia was the danger.<\/p>\n

Indonesia, as always, looms with the inevitability of geography. It\u2019s still the case, as Paul Dibb<\/a> put it, that \u2018the archipelago to our north is the area from or through which a military threat to Australia could most easily be posed\u2019. That\u2019s an argument for embracing and knowing and loving the archipelago, not just building submarines.<\/p>\n

President Joko Widodo was stating aspiration<\/a> as well as noting geography with his Canberra speech<\/a> in February: \u2018Australia is Indonesia\u2019s closest friend.\u2019<\/p>\n

When we got the Oberon<\/a> class and then built the Collins<\/a> last century, China was a wisp of smoke on our strategic horizon, and the insurance was against Indonesia. Slowly we have shifted to the possibility of Indonesia as friend and shield, not threat. Intentions can change, but this century Australia has warmed to the idea that the nightmare will come through, not from, the archipelago.<\/p>\n

By 2009, when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd embraced a dozen new subs, it was all about China. And China keeps looming larger. In the 2020 strategic update<\/a> (as in the 2009, 2013 and 2016 white papers<\/a>), China supplants Indonesia to take second spot in the hierarchy of countries most mentioned<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The strategic update is relatively blunt, as a policy statement, in talking about what Australia fears. Goodness knows what the secret version is like, given the darkness of the public document.<\/p>\n

In the canons of Defence, it\u2019s huge that we are scrapping\u00a0the 50-year-old doctrine that we\u2019d have 10 years\u2019 warning of a state preparing to invade\/harm\/attack Oz. No longer do we have the comfort that it\u2019d take a potential adversary 10 years to prepare and mobilise for a war that\u2019d reach us. A fundamental change of Defence theology speaks of a mighty disturbance\u00a0in heaven.<\/p>\n

Scott Morrison shares elements of the submarine saga with Alfred Deakin: time available tangles with threat possibilities, seeking answers about the technology and the terrain. Complexity battles with cost.<\/p>\n

Canberra is seized by the worry that it hasn\u2019t got enough insurance. Our policy\u00a0payments mount, but the coverage we want from the Attack class will arrive closer to 2040 than 2030. The new submarine is vital yet vexed<\/a>, a wicked problem for Australia in what loom as wicked days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Submarines are a top-of-the-budget answer to a top-of-the-pile nightmare. The argument for subs lies within the fundamental call on any nation: defend the realm and protect the currency (proving the oldest-profession status of strategists and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":59372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2436,253,114,223],"class_list":["post-59369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-attack-class","tag-collins-class","tag-ran","tag-submarines"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe strange submarine saga: strategy and nightmares | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-strange-submarine-saga-strategy-and-nightmares\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The strange submarine saga: strategy and nightmares | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Submarines are a top-of-the-budget answer to a top-of-the-pile nightmare. 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