{"id":69311,"date":"2021-12-14T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T19:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=69311"},"modified":"2021-12-20T14:56:35","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T03:56:35","slug":"implementing-australias-nuclear-submarine-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/implementing-australias-nuclear-submarine-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Implementing Australia\u2019s nuclear submarine program"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"467\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-69314\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/iStock-1093455050.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/iStock-1093455050.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/iStock-1093455050-205x137.jpg 205w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/iStock-1093455050-332x221.jpg 332w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>On 16 September 2021, the Australian government announced that it would acquire a nuclear-powered submarine capability with support from the UK and the US as the first measure of business under the AUKUS technology-sharing partnership. At the same time, it announced that it had established a taskforce that would devote 18 months to determining the \u2018optimal pathway\u2019 to establishing this new capability.<\/p>\n<p>The taskforce has its work cut out for it, and the signing of an initial nuclear information sharing agreement only two months after AUKUS was announced suggests things are moving fast. Nevertheless, this new enterprise will be a massive undertaking and probably the largest and most complex endeavour Australia has embarked upon. The challenges, costs and risks will be enormous. It\u2019s likely to be at least two decades and tens of billions of dollars in sunk costs before Australia has a useful nuclear-powered military capability.<\/p>\n<p>Many commentators have suggested that the work of the taskforce is primarily about making a recommendation on the choice of submarine\u2014either the US Virginia class or the UK Astute class. That\u2019s misleading on two counts. First, the most important decision isn\u2019t so much about the submarine, but about the strategic partner most able to work with us on our new SSN capability. Second, Australia will need to make <em>many <\/em>choices\u2014about the strategic partner, about the submarine design, about the build strategy, about the schedule, and more. Those choices will involve hard prioritisation decisions about what\u2019s most important. Is it capability, schedule, Australian industry content or something else?<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/report\/implementing-australias-nuclear-submarine-program\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new ASPI report<\/a>, released today, examines the decision space available to the government.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/llGTCeSoOYw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The most important decision is the choice of our primary strategic partner. While both the US and the UK will need to provide us with assistance regardless of which submarine design we choose, there\u2019s no point picking a boat if its parent nation doesn\u2019t have the capacity to assist us with all of the fundamental inputs to capability needed to deliver military effects, or its industrial base doesn\u2019t have the capacity to deliver. While we shouldn\u2019t pre-empt the work of the taskforce, initial analysis suggests that the US has more capacity to assist us.<\/p>\n<p>Even once we choose a partner, we still have some difficult choices about the submarine design. Do we prioritise schedule and build our partner\u2019s current design, with the result that we\u2019re left with an orphaned and outdated fleet? Do we wait to get into step with our partner\u2019s next class, exacerbating the risk of a capability gap? Or do we start with the current design and transition later to the partner\u2019s future design, with the result that we have multiple classes of boat in our small fleet?<\/p>\n<p>Another area of choice is the amount of modification we do to the design. While some modifications will be necessary due to Australia\u2019s regulatory and safety regimes\u2014unless we recognise our partner\u2019s regulatory approaches as fit for purpose and accommodate ours to theirs\u2014others will be discretionary. Every effort must be made to limit the changes, whether they\u2019re motivated by capability or Australian industry content, as every change drives cost and schedule risk regardless of how well intentioned it is.<\/p>\n<p>A fundamental choice is the build strategy. The government has stated that the SSNs will be built in Adelaide; however, it hasn\u2019t committed to a continuous build. A continuous-build approach (one driven by a schedule designed to replace the first boat after around 30 years with no break in production) is appealing to Australian industry and current and future workers but would face many challenges\u2014boats would be delivered on an inefficient three- or even four-year drumbeat, driving up cost and increasing the capability gap. Alternatively, an \u2018economic\u2019 approach that focused on the most efficient possible approach would deliver capability faster but require massive annual spending and produce the prospect of a \u2018valley of death\u2019 at the end of production. Either approach replicates a nuclear-submarine production capability in Australia as our own sovereign cottage-industry version of what the UK and the US already have.<\/p>\n<p>Underpinning all of those choices is the issue of schedule. We\u2019re facing the looming spectre of a submarine capability gap as the Collins-class fleet ages out. The government\u2019s stated schedule, delivering at least the first boat by the late 2030s, is feasible, if optimistic, if we build all the boats in Australia. But that may be too late to avoid a capability gap.<\/p>\n<p>An alternative that could accelerate delivery would be to open up the aperture of what \u2018built in Adelaide\u2019 should look like. One approach we consider in our report is to build the initial boats overseas to accelerate delivery but also to train Australian workers on a mature production line to avoid a \u2018cold start\u2019 to local production.<\/p>\n<p>But there are also options that approach this enterprise as the embodiment of our AUKUS and alliance partnerships rather than as a large, but traditional, construction project. This could involve a \u2018JSF\u2019 (Joint Strike Fighter) approach of feeding components into a joint submarine enterprise that Australia enters with our primary enterprise partner. Such a joint enterprise would span more than just construction and enable Australia to be a \u2018first line\u2019 sustainment hub for our AUKUS partners\u2019 submarines as well as for our own. When we consider that just the maintenance of Australia\u2019s SSNs will be likely to require more workforce than the Attack-class build and Collins-class full-cycle dockings combined, there are ways to deliver submarines faster, sustain sovereign capability, contribute to our partnerships and still create jobs that don\u2019t involve assembling submarines here.<\/p>\n<p>And this can\u2019t be stated clearly or often enough: successful transition isn\u2019t about delivering just boats but all of the elements of the capability. So, the choice of boat and build approaches aren\u2019t just matters of capability or industry but must be informed by broader inputs to capability. Perhaps the most important of those is the challenge of how the navy ramps up its uniformed workforce; solving that problem is just as crucial as delivering boats on time. Again, AUKUS has much to offer here.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we\u2019ve provided an estimate of the cost of the enterprise. Such an exercise is inherently hazardous at this stage of the process, with so many assumptions still open and untested. The government has been open in stating that the SSN program will cost more than the Attack-class program, which would have cost around $56\u201357 billion in current-day constant dollars.<\/p>\n<p>We agree: at an absolute minimum, an eight-boat SSN program will cost around $70 billion in constant dollars (or $116 billion in out-turned dollars, which account for inflation).<\/p>\n<p>However, it\u2019s highly likely that it will cost substantially more once the cost drivers are more clearly understood. Those include both the US and UK moving to bigger submarine designs, our choice of build strategy, and the broader support system and infrastructure needed to operate nuclear submarines. To channel Donald Rumsfeld, there are things we know we don\u2019t know, and things we don\u2019t know we don\u2019t know; both will drive up the estimate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 16 September 2021, the Australian government announced that it would acquire a nuclear-powered submarine capability with support from the UK and the US as the first measure of business under the AUKUS technology-sharing partnership. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1475,"featured_media":69314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3111,26,457,223],"class_list":["post-69311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-aukus","tag-defence-spending","tag-nuclear-submarines","tag-submarines"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - 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