Crunch time on submarines

Less than a month after a flotilla of People’s Liberation Army-Navy warships circumnavigated our coastline and conducted live-fire drills, causing commercial aircraft to change flight paths over the Tasman, the Chinese Communist Party will be pleased to learn that Australia is struggling with major upgrades of our ageing Collins-class submarines.

The extensions are vital to keep the vessels in the water until the first of Australia’s Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US are due to arrive around 2032 – if the AUKUS subs are on time, that is, as the US struggles to keep up production to meet its own needs.

Australia could be left without an effective submarine capability for years, Ben Packham wrote in Monday’s paper. The government’s submarine builder, ASC, has not done the design work for the first full overhaul of a Collins-class sub, due to start in 2026. As a result, Defence is looking at a “LOTE (life-of-type extension) lite” refit plan.

It would leave the boats with a nearly 30-year-old main motor, diesel engines and generators. If the vessels cannot go the distance until the early 2030s or beyond, the implication is a dangerous capability gap.

When Packham sought a response from Defence Minister Richard Marles, none was provided and a government spokeswoman blamed the ­Coalition for the problems. That is not the full story and beside the point.

The problems predate the Abbott-Turnbull- Morrison years. In June 2011, under the Gillard government, a now-famous front-page report by Cameron Stewart revealed: “For the first time in a generation, Australia does not have a single submarine available to defend the nation today. The Australian understands the entire fleet of six Collins-class submarines cannot be put to sea.”

That was the time for decisions about replacements, a responsibility postponed by both sides of politics until Scott Morrison announced the AUKUS agreement in September 2021. However belated, it was the right decision and deserves the bipartisan support it receives. Malcolm Turnbull’s disgruntled whine that it was a “terrible deal” is not in the national interest.

The current problems are no surprise. The $5bn “make do and mend” overhaul of the Collins-class subs was always high risk, we argued in May 2024 after former US deputy assistant secretary of the navy Gloria Valdez warned in an interim report to the government that the size and scope of the planned extensions had never before been attempted on the Collins-class boats, which were designed in the 1980s and built between 1990 and 2003. It was unrealistic to expect that each sub could be refitted in just two years.

Ms Valdez said ASC lacked the design and engineering experience for the job and advised that the submarine’s original Swedish designer, Saab Kockums, be given a larger role in the upgrades.

That is one option. As a plan B, the government could consider scrapping the $5bn upgrade and buying a half-dozen new subs off the shelf, such as Japanese-made diesel-electric Taigei-class vessels costing at least $US470m ($744m) each (in addition to training costs) as a stopgap.

Given the paucity of our navy and the deterioration in the strategic outlook, national security must be the priority. As former Defence official ­Michael Shoebridge told Packham there is “a lot of blame to go around, but the root cause is the submarines are too old … they’re trying to make a new submarine out of the old submarine, and it turns out that is too complex and risky. So, we’re looking at a submarine capability gap.”

The other problem is that the defence budget of about 2 per cent of GDP is inadequate. Increasing it to the 3 per cent needed will take a major reordering of political priorities.