I publish on subs, other naval, nuclear weapons & broad political issues. Aussie sub changes are slow: talk rather than actual new subs. The 1st Collins LOTE (ending 2029) may mainly concern the US Combat System. Trump may decide to cancel the AUKUS Virginia offer due to USN advice it needs all operational SSNs through to the 2040s. My colleagues Shawn C, Gessler & Ghalib Kabir are welcome to publish while I grieve a death in the family. Pete.
International news largely becomes
reality via resident press corps who write it in far off capitals.
On the current public interest scale of conflicts the
Russia-Ukraine War has declined. Ukraine is becoming a forgotten war in part because there's no win in sight, like Afghanistan
before the latter's fall. Ukraine boasts a white population. But they speak a
heavily accented impenetrable language, that may as well be Russian to English
speakers, who live far from Ukraine.
Ukraine has been replaced as the top international media war by Israel versus the Arab and Iranian
worlds. Gaza is being "raised" or razed to the ground in terms of being flattened, by Israeli bombs. Many Israelis speak clear English. Israel's nuclear weapons make Israel a constant
American responsibly in the Middle East. Israel maintenance is a thankless task for America, but neglecting
Israel might “justify” an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran…The Jewish diaspora,
particularly in the US, frequently highlight Israel’s problems, while on the whole, pressuring Washington
to forever support Israel. Meanwhile, US Governments attempt to maintain at least a public veneer of even handedness throughout the Middle East. Long term Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was the most influential advocate for Israel during his lobbyist and diplomatic days in America in the 1970s and 80s.
In contrast to the above, goings on in obscure, Melanesian,
Papua New Guinea (PNG) are a journalists backwater. PNG is far from world centres of action, although just to the north of Australia. PNG’s capital, Port Moresby, is dangerous for journalists. The small expatriate community, including a tiny press presence, are forced to live in compounds, behind razor wire, “protected” by
reluctant guards and under-resourced local police. This is mostly against “Roskal” gangs.
PNG is a misogynist society where “Big Men” rule and domestic violence is not
only common, but many law enforcement officials accept drunkenness as a legal
defence in domestic violence cases. Even Witch Burnings are reported. There is luxury for the few who can access government funds and poverty for most.
In all this PNG rarely attracts international media attention. It takes dedication and expertise to cover PNG happenings, influenced heavily by personalities and literally by tribal politics.
For Western journalists, inexpensive or free audio-visual feeds are rare in PNG.
This is unlike constant video coverage of tragically injured children in Gaza.
Australian
staff journalists might only fly into PNG for a few hours with reliance placed
on part-time expatriate citizen journalists. Australia’s Government owned ABC News no
longer employs journalists resident full time in Australia's closest neighbour, PNG. Former ABC journalist Sean Dorney used to be a PNG expert correspondent. But expert journalists can be personally threatened then expelled by the Pacific island
governments they are reporting on.
Where this is all going is that PNG is shaping up to be the next target of China’s expanding Pacific sphere of influence. This will be briefly
examined later this week.
Hereis an excellent and disturbing article of
January 30, 2024, by retired submarine specialist and a past president of the Submarine Institute of Australia Peter Briggs, published at ASPI’s The Strategist and titled “The sad state of Royal Navy submarine capability - and the
implications for Australia”.
Australia and Indonesia have avoided a submarine arms race as a benefit of Australia's haphazard submarine acquisition habits.
Australia's 2009 Defence White Paper set a requirement for 12 new SSKs. In 2014 they were to be Japanese Soryu variants. Then in 2016 Australian policy
changed to 12 very large, tailor made, Naval Group designed Attack-class subs.
Then in 2021 Australianpolicy changed to acquiring US and then UK SSNs under AUKUS.
In response many in the Indonesian defence establishment advocated
12 new SSKs for Indonesia to match Australia's 12. As Australian plans fell apart Indonesia hasdecided not to allocate sufficient funding "reduce defense expenditure" for 8
or 9 new SSKs to make 12. 12 has effectively become a force of 4 x Type 209
variants, including one 43 year old Cackra-class and three new Nagapasa-class.
In 2019 Indonesia pencilled in a contract to buy 3 x additional
Nagapasas. But with Australia’s 2021 cancelation of the 12 x Attack-class SSKs this
removed any arms race pressure for additional Nagapasas. So Indonesia suspended that 2019 contract.
Indonesia is now, probably tentatively, considering renewing
the Nagapasa contract OR (as this report indicates) buying Scorpenes OR buying AIP equipped
Type 212s or 214s.
Indonesia might also be calculating (or hoping) that
Australia’s quest for SSNs, under AUKUS, won’t amount to anything until the 2040s(ie. no US Virginias for Australia in the 2030s).
January 20, 2024: The US
Navy, like most other navies, is suffering from a shortage of new personnel,
causing a problem with providing ships with enough sailors. It is increasingly
common for warships to be stuck in port because there is no crew available… In
addition, the [USN] was forced to pay close attention to smaller crew sizes in
one class of ships: submarines. While modern subs are four times the size of
their World War II counterparts [eg. the USN’s Balao-class],
and full of much more equipment, crew size has only doubled.
…These crew shortages
began with submarines, which required crews to live and work in a confined
space for weeks or months at a time. The crew shortage led to more navies with
submarines that could not go to sea because no crews were available [eg. the RANwhich in the 1990s-early 2000s only had enough submariners to man 2 or 3
submarines maximum]. Most of the navies suffering from this problem belonged to
nations with smaller populations [like Australia]…”
Exhibit A. Australia: Public Discussion Minimisation Through Secrecy
A whole range of costly nuclear facilities not yet revealed by the Albanese Government will be needed in Australia to service the AUKUS and visiting foreign nuclear submarine industry.
The Albanese Government was forced, under FOI, to reveal plans for a nuclear waste dump on Australian soil for AUKUS and visiting foreign nuclear submarines. To minimise public debate that news was only revealed to the media by the Albanese Government late on a Sunday, in December 2023, a few days before Christmas...
"Expertise
to manage low-level operational waste arising from nuclear-powered submarine
operations and sustainment will be an important part of Australia building the
necessary stewardship capability to operate and maintain its own
submarines."
"All low and intermediate level radioactive waste will
be safely stored at Defence sites in Australia," the [Australian Submarine
Agency https://www.asa.gov.au/about ]
ASA briefing documents confirm.
"An operational waste storage facility
for low-level radioactive waste management is being planned as part of the
infrastructure works proposed for HMAS Stirling to support SRF-West."
Rex Patrick raises the question whether Australia could become an international dump for high level nuclear waste?
Exhibit B. The UK: Further down the nuclear pathway in Public Discussion Minimized Through Secrecy
On the broader topic of how the UK military's nuclear needs breed high civilian nuclear costs and distortions the following article was originally published at The Conversation on January 19, 2023 at:
So again: why does this ailing technology enjoy such intense and persistent generosity?
The UK government has for a long time failed even to try to justify support for nuclear power in the kinds of detailed substantive energy terms that were once routine. The last properly rigorous energy white paper was in 2003.
Even before wind and solar costs plummeted, this recognised nuclear as“unattractive”. The delayed2020 white paperdidn’t detail any comparative nuclear and renewable costs, let alone justify why this more expensive option receives such disproportionate funding.
A document published with the latest announcement, Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050, is also more about affirming official support than substantively justifying it. More significant – in this supposedly “civil” strategy – are multiple statements about addressing “civil and military nuclear ambitions” together to “identify opportunities to align the two across government”.
These pressures are acknowledged by other states with nuclear weapons, but were until now treated like a secret in the UK: civil nuclear energy maintains the skills and supply chains needed for military nuclear programmes.
The military has consistently called for civil nuclear
Official UK energy policy documents fail substantively to justify nuclear power, but on the military side the picture is clear.
For instance, in 2006 then prime minister Tony Blair performed a U-turn to ignore his own white paper and pledge nuclear power would be “back with a vengeance”. Widely criticised for resting on a “secret” process, this followed a major three volume study by the military-linked RAND Corporation for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) effectively warning that the UK “industrial base” for design, manufacture and maintenance of nuclear submarines would become unaffordable if the country phased out civil nuclear power.
A 2007 report by an executive from submarine-makers BAE Systems called for these military costs to be “masked” behind civil programmes. A secret MoD report in 2014 (later released by freedom of information) showed starkly how declining nuclear power erodes military nuclear skills.
In 2017, submarine reactor manufacturer Rolls Royce even issued a dedicated report, marshalling the case for expensive “small modular reactors” to “relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of developing and retaining skills and capability”.
The government itself has remained coy about acknowledging this pressure to “mask” military costs behind civilian programmes. Yet the logic is clear in repeated emphasis on the supposedly self-evident imperative to “keep the nuclear option open” – as if this were an end in itself, no matter what the cost. Energy ministers are occasionally more candid, with one calling civil-military distinctions “artifical” and quietly saying: “I want to include the MoD more in everything we do”.
In 2017, we submitted evidence to a parliamentary public accounts committee investigation of the deal to build Hinkley Point C power plant. On the basis of our evidence, the committee asked the then MoD head (who – notably – previously oversaw civil nuclear contract negotiations) about the military nuclear links. His response:
We are completing the build of the nuclear submarines which carry conventional weaponry. We have at some point to renew the warheads, so there is very definitely an opportunity here for the nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear skills. I do not think that that is going to happen by accident; it is going to require concerted government action to make it happen.
This is even more evident in actions than words. For instance hundreds of millions of pounds have been prioritised for a nuclear innovation programme and a nuclear sector deal which is “committed to increasing the opportunities for transferability between civil and defense industries”.
An open secret
Despite all this, military pressures for nuclear power are not widely recognised in the UK. On the few occasions when it receives media attention, the link has been officially denied.
Other nuclear-armed states are also striving to maintain expensive military infrastructures (especially around submarine reactors) just when the civilian industry is obsolescing. This is true in the US, France, Russia and China.
Other countries tend to be more open about it, with the interdependence acknowledged at presidential level in the US for instance. French president Emmanuel Macron summarises: “without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear”.
This is largely why nuclear-armed France is pressing the European Union to support nuclear power. This is why non-nuclear-armed Germany has phased out the nuclear technologies it once lead the world in. This is why other nuclear-armed states are so disproportionately fixated by nuclear power.
Neglect of this picture makes it all the more disturbing. Outside defence budgets, off the public books and away from due scrutiny, expensive support is being lavished on a joint civil-military nuclear industrial base largely to help fund military needs. These concealed subsidies make nuclear submarines look affordable, but electricity and climate action more costly.
The conclusions are not self-evident. Some might argue military rationales justify excessive nuclear costs. But history teaches that policies are more likely to go awry if reasons are concealed. In the UK – where nuclear realities have been strongly officially denied – the issues are not just about energy, or climate, but democracy.
The Conversation asked the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to comment but did not receive a reply before the publication deadline."
We believe in the free flow of information
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.
