Questions asked of Australia’s rejection of nuclear submarines

It’s being asked if Australia is right to stick with conventionally powered submarines as it looks for a new generation.

Photography by Able Seaman Photographer Lincoln Commane. Caption: HMAS Collins sails out through the channel to meet HMAS Waller and HMAS Rankin at Gage Roads at sunrise. Deep Caption: Exercise Pacific Reach is a triennial Asia-Pacific submarine rescue exercise designed to promote regional cooperation on submarine rescue. The exercise this year is the fourth in the series and is being hosted by Australia between 26 November and 7 December 2007. Pacific Reach 07 is a significant exercise involving six ships, three submarines, two submarine rescue systems, a multi-national dive team and the UK SPAGÜ all up 1000 personnel from 15 nations will be directly involved in the exercise. Pacific Reach is an extraordinarily valuable opportunity to work with our regional neighbours and it is our pleasure to host this years activities, said Commander Australian Naval Submarine Group, Commodore Rick Shalders. Pacific Reach is a truly international exercise, with units and equipment from the following countries participating: Canada, China, Republic of Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition, military observers from Chile, India, Indonesia, NATO, Pakistan, Peru, Russia and South Africa will also attend.

When Australia’s mothers and ­fathers had their say on national secu­rity, the question they asked most caught the Department of ­Defence by surprise.

Before the coming defence white paper was drafted, military experts held a series of public ­forums around the country to hear what ordi­nary Australians thought about ­defence issues. It was a rare ­moment when mums and dads could ask experts about security matters.

Top of their list was the question: Why doesn’t Australia choose nuclear-powered sub­marines for its future submarine fleet?

“The capability suggestion most often made in the public meetings and included in many submissions was for the acquisition of nuclear-propelled sub­marines, particularly the Virginia class of the US Navy, whether by outright purchase or through a leasing arrangement,” said the ­official report on those 2014 meetings, released last year and called Guarding Against Uncertainty: Australian Attitudes to Defence.

“The potential operational advan­tages of nuclear propulsion were emphasised repeatedly, while some felt that a more comprehensive justification for any ­decision not to acquire nuclear-powered submarines needs to be provided to the public,” it said.

The suggestion by Mr and Mrs Public wasn’t heeded. Less than two years on, the option of Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines has well and truly vanished, with the government only staging a competition to acquire conventionally powered boats from either Germany, France or Japan.

But the people’s desire, as ­expressed at these meetings, for the government to fully explain why it ignored the option of ­nuclear-powered submarines for the navy has never been provided to the public and, as such, it ­remains shrouded in mystery, half-truths and rumour.

While Malcolm Turnbull’s visit to Washington this week underscored the strength of the US-Australia alliance, any decision to acquire US nuclear-powered submarines would have turbocharged ANZUS as never before.

“With no risk of exaggeration, the operation of Virginia-class submarines by Australia would represent a qualitatively different sort of military alliance between Australia and the United States than has existed over the past 60 years,” defence analyst Mark Thomson wrote in a report for the Australian Strategic Policy ­Institute.

But would this have been the right move for Australia?

Defence analyst Ross Babbage, Liberal MP Dennis Jensen and think-tanks such as the Centre for Independent Studies and University College London have all advocated the purchase or lease of US nuc­lear-powered submarines.

At face value the advantages of these subs for us are compelling.

When compared with conventionally powered diesel-electric submarines like the navy’s Collins-class fleet, nuclear-powered submarines — which are powered by an onboard nuclear power plant — have a much longer range. And they are more than twice as fast. They can escort ship convoys (conventional subs are too slow for this) and can operate in perfect tandem with the US nuclear submarine fleet in the Pacific at a time when an ascendant China worries many people.

Nuclear subs can remain underwater almost indefinitely, thus they are harder to track, ­because unlike conventional boats they don’t need to surface to get air to recharge batteries, a man­oeuvre that makes them vulnerable to ­detection.

These advantages are highly relevant for Australia, which has vast ocean distances between our submarine base at HMAS Stirling near Perth and the prime submarine operating zones of Southeast and Northeast Asia.

The combination of this unique tyranny of distance and the government’s insistence on conventional submarines means the sub­marines Australia is about to build will be orphans.

Our coming subs will be a so-called orphan-class, which no other navy has, because no other navy needs such long-range conventional boats.

Even though the government has solicited bids from three highly experienced submarine-making nations in Germany, France and Japan, the winning bidder — to be decided this year — will still design a submarine that has never been made before — and with all the risks that entails.

But when Defence examined the nuclear submarine issue ­behind closed doors last decade, it eventually realised the concept was doomed.

Unlike other nations that operate nuclear submarines in the Paci­fic — the US, China, India and Russia — Australia does not have a nuclear power industry. ­Defence concluded that as we didn’t have such an industry, Australia did not have the infrastructure, knowledge and skills to support and maintain a nuclear submarine fleet.

“Navy is not in a position to enter in any quick time frame to consider a shift to nuclear propulsion because of the demands of the technology,” says Peter Jennings, head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “If we were to go down the nuclear propulsion path, we would need at least 10 to 15 years to prepare because this is a complex area of engineering and nuclear physics, and frankly we just don’t have the expertise base in either defence or in the private sector to be able to maintain that level of capability.”

“An assessment was made (by Defence) — which I share — that adding these nuclear issues to all of the other complexities of the submarine program would have made it impossible.”

But some proponents of nuc­lear say such fears are overblown. Advances in nuclear technology would now make it possible for Australia to maintain the fleet here day to day and the navy would only need to return the boats to the US very occasionally for deep maintenance work.

Chris ­Jenkins, chairman of the Australian Industry Group ­Defence Council, is one of those who argues that today’s submarine nuclear power plants are so ­efficient and require so little maintenance that an onshore nuclear power industry is no longer necessary.

ASPI’s Thomson points out that the US Navy bases four nuc­lear submarines in its remote base of Guam in the Pacific and “so it follows that nuclear submarines could be based in Australia provided we adopted a similar operational-maintenance cycle”.

Another practical obstacle to a nuclear fleet is the fact that the navy would be unable to crew nuc­lear boats without a massive and costly incentive-based recruitment drive. The Virginia-class submarines have a crew of about 135, compared with an expected crew of about 60 for the new conventional boats. At present, navy struggles to crew three of its six Collins class boats, which each hold 58 crew.

But politics and strategic issues were just as potent as technological challenges in killing off the nuc­lear concept.

Even the proponents of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, which are far more complex than conventional boats, do not pretend that Australia would have the capacity to build these boats in Australia. This means that Australia would need to lease or buy ready-made boats from the US, robbing South Australia of the construction work that it would get under the present future submarine program.

Given the sensitivity of the submarine project in South Australia, where the new subs would almost certainly be built, any government that said it was going to buy all its boats from offshore would be risking its political life.

But the biggest political obsta­cle to Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is that neither side of politics has felt that voters are ready to accept the word “nuclear” even though the boats would be nuclear powered only and would not carry nuclear ­weapons. This is slowly changing, with antinuclear industry groups being less influential than they once were. Tony Abbott as prime minister said he was open to the concept of a nuclear energy industry in Australia, while South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill last year called a royal commission into the role his state should play in the nuclear industry.

But such changing attitudes have come too late to save the nuc­lear submarine idea. Soon after the Rudd government came to power in late 2007, Liberal MP Nick ­Minchin called on Labor to rule out the nuclear submarine option on the grounds that Australia had “no capability or expertise” to maintain them.

It was not until the 2009 ­defence white paper that the government formally ruled out the option of nuclear submarines, ­though little explanation was given for the decision.

“They ruled it out quickly without explaining what the circumstances were,” says ASPI’s Jennings. “I think that was based on a government view that this was going to be a very complicated political sell in Australia. There was a sense that public attitudes (on nuclear) might be shifting and but this was not the time.”

Then in late 2012, with the ­future submarine project stalling from government inaction, opposition Coalition frontbenchers ­revived the concept of the nuclear option, leaking their interest to the media.

But this proved to be a short fight and once the Abbott government came to power in 2013, the push for nuclear submarines all but vanished in Canberra despite occasional protests by analysts like Babbage.

All of these considerations about nuclear submarines came with the possibly heroic assumption that Washington would have agreed to hand over such highly sensitive technology, even to a close ally like Australia. The US has never exported or leased a nuc­lear submarine to ­another country and defence ­experts like Paul Dibb say the US would be very wary about sharing such technology even with allies.

ASPI’s Jennings agrees: “I wouldn’t take it for granted that the Americans would easily agree to such a request because we are talking about the single-most jea­lously guarded piece of military technology.”

But supporters of the nuclear concept believe the US would be willing to share its naval nuclear technology, pointing to the ­ambiguous comment made in 2012 by then US ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich, who said: “Whether (Australia) pursues diesel power or nuclear power … the US is willing to help.”

Many senior naval figures ­believe Washington prefers Australia to operate conventional rather than nuclear submarines because conventional boats can operate more easily and quietly in shallow waters, enabling them to hug the coastline of China or other intelligence targets without detection. In this way, the Australian fleet complements the US submarine fleet in its intelligence gathering, rather than simply offering it more of the same.

“What the US wants us to have are very quiet, smaller, less detectable submarines to help gather intelli­gence,” says Don Chalmers, head of the navy from 1993 to 1995. “I suspect the US and Britain would have no interest in us ­acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.”

Dibb and other critics of the nuc­lear option warn that buying or leasing US nuclear submarines would undermine Australian sovereignty because the navy would be reliant on the US for long-term maintenance of the boats.

Dibb says this could turn the navy into “a subordinate arm of the US Navy”, raising questions of how Australia could use the submarines in a regional conflict where Australian and US interests were not aligned.

But supporters of the nuclear submarine option counter that Australia would rely on the US to help sustain other key military capabilities such as the new F-35 joint strike fighter and that it is ­inconceivable Australia would fight a regional naval battle without US support.

Buying US nuclear submarines would also be seen as a major strategic statement that would have implications for Australia’s relationship with China.

As ASPI’s Thomson writes, it would be a definitive statement of unambiguous support for the US in the western Pacific.

“No more hand-wringing about balancing our economic interests with China and our alli­ance interests with the US, no more talk of hedging bets around a supposed ‘China choice’ … argu­ably we would be moving much closer to the sort of (US) alliance we had with Britain prior to 1941,” Thomson said.

And last but not least is the question of cost. Babbage esti­mated in 2012 that 10 Virginia-class boats could be bought and equipped for about $28 billion but, as The Australian revealed last month, foreign bidders have told Defence that 10 conventional boats could be built in Australia for about half this cost.

Many defence experts believe that the obstacles that sunk the nuclear submarine option this time around would not be present in the following cycle — about the middle of the century — when we will once again replace our submarine fleet.

“My view is not to close off the possibility of that batch because the reality is the capability we want from our submarines does point you in the direction of nuclear propulsion,” says Jennings. “We should be building some basic ­expertise in this area and keeping our future options open.”

Cameron Stewart is associate editor of The Australian.