Australia’s largest defence project is fast taking shape behind closed doors at the headquarters of the Nuclear-Powered Submarine Taskforce near Canberra airport.
More than 360 people under Vice-Admiral Jonathan Mead are toiling against the clock to produce in just three months a report that will recommend the so-called optimal pathway to acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines.
The report of the task force will be the most consequential military report produced in peacetime, giving the Albanese government choices that will underpin Australia’s defence for generations.
But such is the secrecy surrounding the program that even now, with just months to go, there have been no definitive leaks about what submarines Australia will acquire and how.
There has been no shortage of speculation, but this has been derived more from whispers and guesswork among the commentariat in Canberra than from well-informed sources.
Of course, that is exactly the way Mead wants it. In an end-of-year interview with Inquirer, he says the ultra-secret project is on track to deliver its recommendations to the government in March.
“This is a historic moment in time,” he says of the pending decision. “This is a generational capability and the magnitude of what we’re doing is massive.
“Nuclear-powered submarines represent a capability that is commensurate with the strategic circumstances of the Indo-Pacific,” he says – code for dealing with a rising China.
“It will deliver for Australia a potent war-fighting capability (and) helps to deter anyone who may seek to do harm to Australia.”
But Mead’s challenge is multifaceted. He says his “real priority” is to ensure there is “no capability gap” in Australia’s submarine force across the coming decades, between the retirement of the current Collins-class boats and the arrival of nuclear-powered subs.
How this will be achieved remains the central mystery of the future submarine program. In theory the six Collins-class boats progressively will be retired between 2038 and 2046, after each receiving a 10-year life-of-type extension. But this timeline is rubbery at best because the ageing Collins may not last that long and may be too old to be sent into harm’s way.
The navy is opposed to building more Collins-class subs as an interim solution and Mead says his proposed solutions will focus only on nuclear-powered subs.
But there is no obvious scenario under which Australia can build its own nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide before the 2040s, given the size and complexity of the project. Defence Minister Richard Marles insists that he wants the submarines – or at least most of them – to be constructed in Australia.
A potential solution of obtaining several stopgap US Virginia-class submarines earlier than this from US shipyards is also problematic. As things stand, those shipyards can’t keep up with US submarine production schedules, much less accommodate orders from a foreign power.
But for Mead the challenge of this project goes far beyond the media’s fixation on which submarine Australia will choose and how.
He says his task force is trying to tick off nine key components that will be critical for Australia to be able to run a nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
Arguably the most difficult of these is to create a workforce to crew, manage, regulate and build nuclear-powered submarines – which are more than twice as large as the Collins boats – in a country that has little nuclear expertise and no civil nuclear industry.
Mead is trying to fast-track this process as much as possible, but the number of qualified people is precariously small.
“Right now we have 20 people studying in the US, UK or Australia doing nuclear science or nuclear engineering degrees, and I’ve got civilians doing courses overseas with the US Navy or nuclear reactor engineering,” he says.
Mead plans to have another 30 naval personnel do similar courses next year. “We’ve got forward projections on how many navy people we need by a certain date, how many (non-navy) people by a certain date, and also how many people in industry that we need to maintain and build the submarines.” He says about 5000 industry people will be directly required to build the subs, with more required for sustainment.
Mead says a good way to kickstart training for Australians on nuclear submarines is for them to help maintain US and British nuclear subs when they dock at HMAS Stirling in Perth.
“Providing greater support to visiting US and UK nuclear submarines is a central pillar of developing our stewardship capability,” he says. “It involves growing a workforce that can safely maintain US and UK nuclear-powered submarines, a domestic vendor base that can supply services and parts, a regulatory system that can oversee these visits, and of course it offers opportunities to embed Australian sailors in these submarines to deepen their knowledge.”
The reality of this workforce challenge is that Australia’s nuclear-powered fleet is likely to begin with mixed Australian-US crews or Australian-British crews for years until Australia can produce the pipeline of submariners required to crew the much larger nuclear-powered boats.
Another challenge for Mead is to try to make AUKUS a “truly trilateral program”. There is a practical component to this and an unspoken political component.
At a practical level, Mead and his team have visited shipyards in Britain and the US while foreign delegations have visited the Osborne facility near Adelaide to examine what resources the countries can share.
“We are looking at where they build submarines and how they maintain submarines, we are looking at their laboratories, we are looking at their supplies and their supply chains. They are also looking at us and sending delegations to Australia,” he says. “The aim is to look at the industrial base of the three countries and think: ‘How do we maximise this industrial base to deliver this program?’ ’’
Mead won’t discuss it, but there is a political component to AUKUS that has to ensure that one country does not get snubbed in the final solution. For example, if Australia were to choose to buy or build US submarines, what benefits could Britain get from the final deal? For diplomatic reasons, no country can be seen to get the cold shoulder from a trilateral pact.
Other significant include ensuring that Australia – as a nuclear novice – doesn’t stuff up its new obligations. This includes ensuring that the task force works with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure the program meets “the highest standards of non-proliferation”. Indonesia, for example, has expressed concern about how the transferring of nuclear-powered submarine technology could affect the global non-proliferation regime.
Mead also says Australia needs to prove to the world it can safely handle nuclear material and nuclear technology.
“It’s a critically important aspect – it’s having confidence that you can be suitable stewards of nuclear materials. It’s allowing our partners to have confidence. This is about safety, security and nuclear safeguards. It is a new area so we are bringing in assistance from overseas to help us as we go along this journey.”
Mead says Australia will need to work its way slowly towards the point when it is “sovereign-ready”, when it can have “our nuclear-powered submarine with an Australian flag on it, Australian-controlled”.
Another challenge for Mead is to ensure the security of the work of his task force from foreign spies who would love to infiltrate the program and potentially compromise the US and Britain also.
“Managing nuclear material requires absolutely the gold standard for security,” he says. “It’s not just physical security. We are not just talking about barbed-wire fences here. It’s far more comprehensive; we are talking about personal security vetting, ICT, cyber security. We need to appropriately protect the crown jewels of US and UK technology, so we have to work with our security agencies (and) within our government.
“I would always be concerned about state and non-state actors that would attempt to interfere with the nuclear program and we need to put every measure in place to make that an impossible task.
“I think it would be a fair assumption to think that a program of this magnitude and complexity that delivers such high war-fighting capability would be of interest to foreign actors.”
In the annual report of domestic spy agency ASIO, director-general Mike Burgess pointed out the submarine program was a tempting target for foreign intelligence services.
“We anticipate hostile foreign powers and their proxies will be particularly interested in obtaining information on AUKUS, the Quad and their associated initiatives,” Burgess said.
Mead says work also needs to be done to ensure Australian industry partners are upskilled so they meet the stringent security requirements of the submarine program.
Mead says all of these factors and safeguards need to be met if Australia’s nuclear-submarine ambitions are to be realised, but he admits that the “pointy end of the spear” is ultimately which submarine Australia chooses.
Mead will not directly discuss the options for Australia’s future submarine but they include the US Virginia-class or its yet-to-be-designed successor the SSN(X); Britain’s Astute-class or its successor the SSN(R); or a new jointly designed submarine to be used by all three countries’ navies.
Mead says the questions he needs to answer include: “How do we develop a program that eliminates any capability gap? How do we have a program that is enduring and sustainable? How do you become interoperable and how do we transition from a Collins-class submarine into a nuclear-powered submarine?”
He says the aim is to try to make the transition from conventional submarines to nuclear submarines with “the lowest risk possible”.
The most popular theory in Canberra is that the US, Britain and Australia are planning to create a so-called AUKUS submarine that has a single common design between the three countries.
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace hinted in September, during a visit by Marles, that the AUKUS nations might consider a future submarine that was common to all navies.
“It might have a bit of all three of us on it, so it may look like a submarine that none of us have on our stock,” Wallace said. Such a joint boat would not be built until the 2040s and would require significant political co-operation between the three countries to agree on a common design.
It also would require some form of interim nuclear-powered submarine for Australia to avoid a capability gap between the retirement of the Collins-class submarines and the arrival of a jointly designed boat.
When asked about the joint-design concept, Mead says flatly: “I wouldn’t rule it in or out, I just wouldn’t go down that path.
“The US has a submarine program. The UK has a submarine program. They work together on their submarine programs even though they are separate, and we are entering the program so we are trying to work with them on what is an optimal capability requirement for Australia.
“It is certainly the pointy end of the spear. It’s what we have to deliver ultimately, it is what the government will deploy to defend Australia.”
Within a few months, Australians will finally learn what Mead’s proposed solution is and what the navy’s future submarine fleet will be.
