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Thinking about submarines
Posted By Mark Thomson on April 8, 2014 @ 06:00
Three presumptions underlie current planning for Australia’s future submarine capability—three ‘musts’. First, the Collins class must be replaced when it reaches its life-of-type. Second, the replacement boats must be built in South Australia. Third, the new boats must have conventional (ie non-nuclear) propulsion.
On Wednesday and Thursday, ASPI’s ‘Submarine Choice’ [2] conference will explore Australia’s future submarine in line with these stipulations. To do otherwise would cause confusion and dismay among the assembled insiders, such is the abiding belief in the need for a conventionally-powered, locally-built replacement for the Collins.
Elsewhere, true believers are harder to find. Among many people I talk to, there’s cynicism about the future submarine—hardly surprising given the twin debacles of the Collins and Air Warfare Destroyer programs. We may be approaching the point where taxpayers think they’re being asked to throw good money after bad.
Yet future policies should be informed by more than past failures. A domestic diesel-electric submarine program should be judged on its merits, taking into account the costs, risks, benefits and alternatives. And while there has been a lot of discussion of large boats in comparison to small boats, and new designs as opposed to existing designs, somewhat less time has been spent examining—or at least explaining—the underlying ‘musts’ that have so far fixed the broad parameters of the program.
When I began preparing for the submarine conference more than a month ago, I found myself drawn to re-examine the underlying presumptions upon which the submarine program rests. My original plan was to produce three short blog posts for The Strategist on the three ‘musts’. I rapidly found myself working through difficult, and often subtle, questions raised by them. Paragraphs morphed into pages, days into weeks. The result is this extended essay [3] (PDF).
Taking the time to re-examine issues already decided might be viewed as an unwelcome diversion from the real job of getting on with replacing the Collins. It isn’t. With so much at stake, each and every aspect of this multi-billion dollar program needs to be continuously examined to ensure that we get it right.
By necessity, the essay is more an exploration of issues than an argument for one course of action over another—I honestly don’t have a firm prescription for how to proceed. All I have to offer is the series of observations summarised below.
An expanded discussion of each of these points can be found in the essay [3] (PDF) along with much more. I hope readers will have the time to at least take a look.
Mark Thomson is senior analyst for defence economics at ASPI. Image courtesy of Department of Defence [4].
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[1] Image: http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Collins-sub.jpg
[2] ‘Submarine Choice’: https://www.aspi.org.au/events/the-submarine-choice-aspis-international-conference,-canberra
[3] this extended essay: https://www.aspi.org.au/publications/miscellaneous-research/the-three-musts/The-three-musts-MarkThomson2.pdf
[4] Department of Defence: http://images.defence.gov.au/20100704ran0000000_136_DRN.jpg
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