The misadventures of AUKUS robot AlboGov never cease. I publish on subs, other naval,
nuclear weapons & broad political issues. Aussie sub changes are glacial: talk rather than actual new subs. The 1st Collins LOTE may secretly concern the US Combat System & be ready 2029. Trump may decide to cancel the AUKUS Virginia offer due to USN advice it needs all operational SSNs right through to the 2040s. My colleagues Shawn C and Gessler are excellent writers. Pete.
April 1, 2022
AUKUS Nuke Sub: HMAS Vegemite Mooted
Australia
chooses SAAB as main foreign contractor for Australia's AUKUS sub program
The most concerning part is how believable this is. If it's not already actually the "Future Submarine Go-Forward Baseline" it very well might be the chosen option soon! Why buy an off-the-shelf design that could be delivered (relatively) quickly when we could try and Australianise and build something bespoke. Strong track record of the various governments and defence going for the latter.
Remember when we were considering the Soryu Class, Japan actually commissioned the first follow-on Taigei class in the last fortnight... amazing what can happen when you care about delivering capability rather than announcements and 'world leading' paper designs that may (or may not) be delivered in a few decades time.
Delivery 2050 that would be indeed a record, but then again they probably have to pay the public purse $5.5 billion for the cancellation. They would probably go with that deal though. Imagine having world class facilities , in virgin condition “Forever”, no submarine though. That would s@ve money on never having humans to pay or support, yep a conservative government effort, all that’s missing is the Belgian Waffle to give it the seal of approval.
"HMAS Vaporous, HMAS Vanquished and HMAS Vegemite"..."HMAS Very, HMSAS Visible" :) and especially "HMAS Abbot" or more accuately "HMAS Tony Mad Monk AbboTT".
Yep. I have similar fears. My prediction is Australia, by 2025 will choose an Astute follow-on aka SSN(R) aka SSNR. Due by the early 2040s fore the UK RN and later for the RAN.
The Australian RAN version consisting of:
- a UK future PWR4 reactor
- a UK Astute looking hull
- US Combat System and
- just to stuff things up, RAN only content, like 4 x Virginia style VLS for 28 Tomahawks. This is assuming the UK RN version of the SSN(R) will have no VLS.
Choice of the RAN's VLS will cause a major cascading rearrangement of many contents/spaces of the RAN sub.
This will be as problematic as building in all the diesel-electric rearrangengments promised in the RAN-only version of the French Barracuda.
'pork barrel' loving contractors never met a 'cluster eff' that they did not like. it is entirely possible they bungle this royally.
Actual capability acquired in a timely fashion through imports is better than 'domestic technology' that is delivered a decade late and billions of dollars over budget. Plus in many cases it is outdated in terms of usability by the time it is delivered...
I agree there has been bungling of the Sea 1000 contract for defence for years. However my understanding is that the fault does not lie with ASC, who had almost no influence on the Attack contract. They maintain the Collins Class, which is working well.
The sorts of time wasting changes that Pete and Anonymous refer to are from within the Australian Defense department. They have a notorious track record of selecting complex options and then insist on making many bespoke changes for “Australia; conditions”.
Some very interesting details of a possible delivery method for AUKUS by Chris Skinner at a presentation to RUSI in January this year. The SSN discuion starts at the 20 minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_s9Av3a1Tg
I'm still looking at Chris Skinner's RUSI January 2022 presentation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_s9Av3a1Tg . Its very interesting on LDUUVs and the runup to the Sept 2021 AUKUS announcement.
I'll finish watching the post Sept 2021 part and report back with an article on it tomorrow.
Hi Ghalib [at Apr 4, 2022, 4:43:00 PM] and Anonymous [at Apr 4, 2022, 8:15:00 PM]
I agree with Anonymous that ASC and contractors were not the main problem for no new submarine being built since PM Abbott's 2014 "Captain's pick" of Japan's modified Soryu and the Turnbull-DoD 2016 selection of the Attack class.
It is more a politician's imperative to "pork barrel". Submarine wise this is centred on the swing state of South Australia and to an extent WA, rather than the contractors' fault.
If Labor wins the 14 or 21 May 2022 Federal Election I predict the regular Labor voting state of Victoria can expect much more naval shipbuilding work - probably for the Hunter-class Future Frigates and maybe a piece of the SSN action.
Whatever the eye-watering cost of AUKUS SSNs, only SSNs make sense to meet the strategic need for a "regionally superior submarine" for Australia. The UK-US decision to offer Australia SSNs was simply not politically realistic until 2021 - after 2 years of the China threat rapidly escalating.
Whatever the destroy conventional submarine arguments for Australian SSNs, these SSNs will mainly be there to counter and/or destroy enemy SSNs and nuclear weapon carrying SSBNs. This means even if Australia has no nuclear weapons itself Australian SSNs will constitute a portion of the Western nuclear weapons calculus.
12 comments:
April 1st...:)
Sub names give it away...
The most concerning part is how believable this is. If it's not already actually the "Future Submarine Go-Forward Baseline" it very well might be the chosen option soon! Why buy an off-the-shelf design that could be delivered (relatively) quickly when we could try and Australianise and build something bespoke. Strong track record of the various governments and defence going for the latter.
Remember when we were considering the Soryu Class, Japan actually commissioned the first follow-on Taigei class in the last fortnight... amazing what can happen when you care about delivering capability rather than announcements and 'world leading' paper designs that may (or may not) be delivered in a few decades time.
Delivery 2050 that would be indeed a record, but then again they probably have to pay the public purse $5.5 billion for the cancellation. They would probably go with that deal though. Imagine having world class facilities , in virgin condition “Forever”, no submarine though. That would s@ve money on never having humans to pay or support, yep a conservative government effort, all that’s missing is the Belgian Waffle to give it the seal of approval.
Hi BOB
Indeed the "Collinsson" class names astonishingly reflect Australia's poor choice certainty.
Hence https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/04/leak-reveals-first-details-of-australias-new-aukus-submarine/ reveals:
"HMAS Vaporous, HMAS Vanquished and HMAS Vegemite"..."HMAS Very, HMSAS Visible" :) and especially "HMAS Abbot" or more accuately "HMAS Tony Mad Monk AbboTT".
Cheers Pete
Hi Anonymous [at Apr 2, 2022, 3:43:00 PM]
Yep. I have similar fears. My prediction is Australia, by 2025 will choose an Astute follow-on aka SSN(R) aka SSNR. Due by the early 2040s fore the UK RN and later for the RAN.
The Australian RAN version consisting of:
- a UK future PWR4 reactor
- a UK Astute looking hull
- US Combat System and
- just to stuff things up, RAN only content, like 4 x Virginia style VLS for 28 Tomahawks. This is assuming the UK RN version of the SSN(R) will have no VLS.
Choice of the RAN's VLS will cause a major cascading rearrangement of many contents/spaces of the RAN sub.
This will be as problematic as building in all the diesel-electric rearrangengments promised in the RAN-only version of the French Barracuda.
Cheers Pete
Your pessimism fully justified.
Why choose get it right the first time off-the-shelf
when make-work clusterfuck [1] mistakes nurture careers
for the Aus naval and civilian program managers who can
then retire into lucrative private industry jobs that are
STILL developing the AUKUS sub well into the 2040s.
Pete
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clusterfuck
'pork barrel' loving contractors never met a 'cluster eff' that they did not like. it is entirely possible they bungle this royally.
Actual capability acquired in a timely fashion through imports is better than 'domestic technology' that is delivered a decade late and billions of dollars over budget. Plus in many cases it is outdated in terms of usability by the time it is delivered...
ASC should be renamed Bunglers Pty Ltd.
Ghalil
I agree there has been bungling of the Sea 1000 contract for defence for years. However my understanding is that the fault does not lie with ASC, who had almost no influence on the Attack contract. They maintain the Collins Class, which is working well.
The sorts of time wasting changes that Pete and Anonymous refer to are from within the Australian Defense department. They have a notorious track record of selecting complex options and then insist on making many bespoke changes for “Australia; conditions”.
Pete
Some very interesting details of a possible delivery method for AUKUS by Chris Skinner at a presentation to RUSI in January this year. The SSN discuion starts at the 20 minute mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_s9Av3a1Tg
Thanks Anonymous [at Apr 4, 2022, 10:14:00 PM]
I'm still looking at Chris Skinner's RUSI January 2022 presentation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_s9Av3a1Tg . Its very interesting on LDUUVs and the runup to the Sept 2021 AUKUS announcement.
I'll finish watching the post Sept 2021 part and report back with an article on it tomorrow.
Regards Pete
Hi Ghalib [at Apr 4, 2022, 4:43:00 PM] and Anonymous [at Apr 4, 2022, 8:15:00 PM]
I agree with Anonymous that ASC and contractors were not the main problem for no new submarine being built since PM Abbott's 2014 "Captain's pick" of Japan's modified Soryu and the Turnbull-DoD 2016 selection of the Attack class.
It is more a politician's imperative to "pork barrel". Submarine wise this is centred on the swing state of South Australia and to an extent WA, rather than the contractors' fault.
If Labor wins the 14 or 21 May 2022 Federal Election I predict the regular Labor voting state of Victoria can expect much more naval shipbuilding work - probably for the Hunter-class Future Frigates and maybe a piece of the SSN action.
Whatever the eye-watering cost of AUKUS SSNs, only SSNs make sense to meet the strategic need for a "regionally superior submarine" for Australia. The UK-US decision to offer Australia SSNs was simply not politically realistic until 2021 - after 2 years of the China threat rapidly escalating.
Whatever the destroy conventional submarine arguments for Australian SSNs, these SSNs will mainly be there to counter and/or destroy enemy SSNs and nuclear weapon carrying SSBNs. This means even if Australia has no nuclear weapons itself Australian SSNs will constitute a portion of the Western nuclear weapons calculus.
Regards Pete
Hi Anonymous [at Apr 4, 2022, 10:14:00 PM]
Chris Skinner's RUSI January 2022 presentation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_s9Av3a1Tg has a wealth of info and a lot worth transcribing.
So I'm contnuing learning from it and shall report back tomorrow Thursday.
Regards Pete
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