The plan to upgrade the Collins-class submarines with a life-of-type extension is the single most important, and the highest risk, of Defence’s equipment projects.
If the project can’t proceed or is too slow, we lose our ability to deploy submarines. No subs at sea means we start to lose submariners, which means skills and currency decline. Industry loses out, too. A lack of regular challenging work means skilled engineers will leave for more interesting fields.
This is happening at precisely the time we are supposed to be moving from maintaining half a dozen old boats to becoming the builders of the most sophisticated nuclear-powered submarine technology in the world.
Defence Minister Richard Marles’s limp assessment of LOTE is: “I do think it’s doable. I think we’re going to be really smart and really clever in the way in which we do it.”
There is nothing really smart or really clever in Marles’s three-year defence tenure, starting with his astonishing surrender of responsibility for military capability development to his offsider, Pat Conroy.
So, who in cabinet is responsible for LOTE?
If the answer is both Marles and Conroy the reality is that neither has the confidence, knowledge, trust or engagement with industry and Defence to actually know what is going on, let alone set clear direction.
Marles says the previous Coalition government “ripped money out of the sustainment of the Collins-class submarines”. To some extent that’s true, but it shouldn’t have affected different preparations to modernise the boats. That failing is on the current government’s watch.
The Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments also were correct to blame Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard for failing to take decisions on replacing the Collins-class subs as far back as the 2009 white paper.
Remember how that policy planned to double the size of the submarine fleet? Sixteen years later and we still have no clarity about how to keep the old Collins-class boats in the water for a decade past their life of type.
This would be laughable if it were not so serious. The piling up of failure upon failure means that what has been a slow-motion defence crisis for a decade is now speeding up.
Too many capabilities in the current Australian Defence Force are collapsing and today’s military is the only one that matters, not the fantasy force planned for 2040. It’s happening because, despite Defence trying, you can’t build military strength worth 3 per cent or more of GDP by budgeting 2 per cent.
The comfortable continuity so loved by Defence managers is no longer viable. Dramatically new thinking will be needed after the federal election.
Government should start with the realisation that the Collins-class LOTE is not likely to work. The boats have done sterling service but they are old.
Even if the modifications are fully planned out, no one would be surprised if deeper structural problems became clear after work started.
Here’s what the government should do: First, cancel the LOTE. Second, buy three new smaller conventional boats, so-called military off-the-shelf boats built overseas, as a training force designed to keep a navy submarine capability functioning.
Third, put substantial funding into several promising uncrewed submersible vehicles now in design or production. This should have happened a decade ago, but even Defence can see today that underwater drones are the future.
Fourth, a major effort should go into building Virginia-class sub maintenance capabilities out of ASC and our wider defence industry base. We should do this to help the US Navy and industrial base deal with their own capacity limitations.
Put to one side the longer-term viability of AUKUS, worrying as those issues are. The short-term problem is to assure sceptics in the Trump administration that we are serious about submarine maintenance and construction.
On our current performance the Americans would be right to ask if Australia is determined and capable enough to proceed with AUKUS. One measure of determination is that the Prime Minister wants to meet Donald Trump to talk about it.
The next government has one shot to prove we are serious. We should make ourselves a useful part of Virginia-class submarine sustainment for the US Navy as a lead-in to AUKUS.
Point five, we need an alternative long-range strike weapon. The answer is to buy B-21 strike bombers. These aircraft are in production and soon will be in US service.
Australia has a history of operating long-range bombers – we flew the venerable F-111 for decades, the only country to do so along with the US. We need two squadrons of B-21s to provide a formidable strike deterrent by the end of the decade. The most effective military service now is the air force because no idiot has come forward saying we should build fifth-generation combat aircraft in Adelaide.
Finally, none of this is viable without immediately lifting defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP.
If our major parties of government don’t commit to this going into the next election, they are not being serious about Australia’s national security.
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Crunch time on submarines
Australia is struggling with major upgrades of our ageing Collins-class submarines. Given the paucity of our navy and the deterioration in the strategic outlook, national security must be the priority.