Make do and mend as we await Attack submarines

On June 10, 2011, under the headline “Not a single submarine seaworthy’’, 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 despite the navy’s claim that two of them remain officially ‘operational’.’’ The situation was an embarrassment for the navy, whose attempts to improve the $10bn Collins fleet had been stymied by breakdowns, accidents and the growing unreliability of the ageing vessels.

Fast-forward nine years and the saga continues. But Australia’s region is more volatile, the Collins-class subs, designed in the 1980s, are older and taxpayers face a bill of at least $3.5bn to overhaul them. At least $583m per Collins sub will be spent, Ben Packham reports on Monday, to rebuild their main motors, generators and key systems. The impost is unavoidable. The first of the much-anticipated 12 new Attack-class submarines, to be built in Adelaide to the specifications of French company Naval Group, are not due to enter service until at least 2034. The last is scheduled to become operational in the 2050s.

Until the first of the new vessels goes into service, Australia cannot afford a dangerous, protracted capability gap. The new acquisition, Australia’s largest-ever defence investment, is vital to national security. By 2035, about half of the world’s submarines will be operating in the Indo-Pacific region, the 2016 Defence white paper forecast.

The Abbott government originally envisaged that the replacements for the Collins-class subs would be in service in the mid-2020s. But by April 2016, when the Turnbull government awarded the contract for the 12 new subs to the French, the delivery date was set for the early 2030s. The project was originally mooted to cost $50bn to build and about $50bn to maintain over the subs’ 50-year lifespan. But in May we reported the cost is likely to be $90bn to build the boats, on top of $145bn for maintenance. Those figures take into account the effects of inflation and currency fluctuations.

In January, an Australian Nationa­l Audit Office report disclosed that the new submarines’ design phase was running nine months late. Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said the delay was essential to get the design right to “reduce costly changes and uncertainties’’ when the submarines were built. She had a point; design is the foundation of good performance. But, given the potential for cost overruns and the ageing Collins fleet, keeping the project on time is vital.

Conscious of the long-running maintenance challenges associated with the Collins-class subs that were also built in Adelaide to a Swedish design, The Australian was always sceptical about the “populist protectionism” behind the Turnbull government’s decision to build the new vessels in Adelaide. Mr Turnbull announced the decisions ahead of the 2016 federal election, when the demise of the car industry in South Australia was a sore point with voters. We could only accept the government’s word that, based on the advice of the Defence Department and outside experts, after a long assessment process, the French boats will be best suited to our needs compared with the German and Japanese bids. These were also judged to be of high quality.

Buying a ready-made product off the shelf would have strengthened Australia’s defence preparedness much earlier. As a report to government by the Rand Corporation in 2015 noted, every piece of homemade defence equipment is more expensive and takes longer to build than alternatives. Purchasing subs off the shelf from overseas would have avoided refitting some, if not all, the Collins subs. On the other hand, building the new submarines should boost Australia’s capacity to produce defence equipment independently.

The subs project will have a significant impact on the budget in the years of recovery from COVID-19. After years of expense in fixing the Collins-class boats and years of delays in settling on their replacements, the $3.5bn cost of refitting the old subs, as the navy waits until 2034 for the up-to-date Attack-class subs, is yet another step in a long, inefficient chronicle. At a time when national security is paramount, the ADF needs to do better in procuring other vital equipment.