Nuclear-Powered Submarines for Australia? Maybe Not So Fast.
"Address to the National Press Club By the Honourable Malcolm Turnbull AC 29 September 2021"
Australia’s plan to build the submarines with U.S. and British help faces big hurdles. Supporters say they can be overcome. Critics say they may be too much.
A Royal Australian Navy submarine in September in Darwin, Australia. For Australia, nuclear-powered submarines offer a powerful means to counter China’s growing naval reach. Australian Defence Force, via Getty Images
By Chris Buckley Oct. 29, 2021Updated 8:06 a.m. ET
Now, a month into their timetable, the partners are quietly coming to grips with the proposal’s immense complexities. Even supporters say the hurdles are formidable. Skeptics say they could be insurmountable.
Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has laid out an ambitious vision, saying that at least eight nuclear-propelled submarines using American or British technology will be built in Australia and enter the water starting in the late 2030s, replacing its squadron of six aging diesel-powered submarines.
To pull off the plan, Australia must make major advances. It has a limited industrial base and built its last submarine over 20 years ago. It produces a few graduates in nuclear engineering each year. Its spending on science research as a share of the economy has lagged the average .. https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm .. for wealthy economies.Its past two plans to build submarines fell apart before any were made.
“It’s a dangerous pathway we’re treading down,” said Rex Patrick, an independent member of Australia’s Senate who served as a submariner in the Australian Navy for a decade. “What’s at stake is national security.”
Each country has a vested interest in the partnership. For Australia, nuclear-powered submarines offer a powerful means to counter China’s growing naval reach and an escape hatch from a faltering agreement with a French firm to build diesel submarines. For the Biden administration, the plan demonstrates support for a beleaguered ally and shows that it means business in countering Chinese power. And for Britain, the plan could shore up its international standing and military industry after the upheaval of Brexit.
But the Rubik’s Cube of interlocking complications that pervades the initiative could slow delivery of the submarines — or, critics say, sunder the whole endeavor — leaving a dangerous gap in Australia’s defenses and calling into question the partnership’s ability to live up to its security promises.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia has said that at least eight nuclear-propelled submarines will be built and enter the water starting in the late 2030s. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
American officials have already spent hundreds of hours in talks with their Australian counterparts and have no illusions about the complexities, said officials involved. Mr. Morrison “has said this is a high-risk program; he was upfront when he announced it,” Greg Moriarty, the secretary of the Australian Department of Defense, told a Senate committee .. https://parlview.aph.gov.au/mediaPlayer.php?videoID=559064&operation_mode=parlview#/4 . this week.
The United States and Britain, for their part, face hurdles to expanding production of submarines and their high-precision parts for Australia, and to diverting expert labor to South Australia, where, Mr. Morrison has said, the boats will be assembled. Washington and London have heavy schedules to build submarines for their own navies, including hulking vessels to carry nuclear missiles.
“Success would be tremendous for Australia and the U.S., assuming open access to each other’s facilities and what it means in deterring China,” said Brent Sadler .. https://www.heritage.org/staff/brent-sadler , a former U.S. Navy officer who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “Failure would be doubly damaging — an alliance that cannot deliver, loss of undersea capacity by a trusted ally and a turn to isolationism on Australia’s part.”
Australia is hoping for a reversal of fortune after more than a decade of misadventures in its submarine-modernization efforts. The plan for French-designed diesel submarines that Mr. Morrison abandoned had succeeded a deal for Japanese-designed submarines that a predecessor championed.
“No living Australian prime minister has commissioned a sub that actually got built,” Greg Sheridan, a columnist for The Australian newspaper, wrote in a recent article critical of Mr. Morrison’s plan.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, second from left, and Malcolm Turnbull, center, then Australia’s prime minister, in Sydney in 2018. Mr. Morrison ended a deal with a French firm to build diesel submarines. Pool photo by Brendan Esposito
Australia’s latest proposal contains many potential pitfalls.
It could turn to the United States to help build something like its Virginia class attack submarine. (Such submarines are nuclear-powered, allowing them to travel faster and stay underwater much longer than diesel ones, but they do not carry nuclear missiles.)
But the two American shipyards that make nuclear submarines, as well as their suppliers, are straining to keep up with orders for the U.S. Navy. The shipyards complete about two Virginia class boats a year .. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/RL32418.pdf .. for the Navy and are ramping up to build Columbia class submarines, 21,000-ton vessels .. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R41129/174 .. that carry nuclear missiles as a roving deterrent — a priority for any administration.
A report to the Senate Armed Services Committee last month warned .. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CRPT-117srpt39/CRPT-117srpt39 .. that the “nuclear shipbuilding industrial base continues to struggle to support the increased demand” from U.S. orders. That report was prepared too late to take into account the Australian proposal.
“They are working at 95-98 percent on Virginia and Columbia,” Richard V. Spencer, a Navy secretary in the Trump administration, said of the two American submarine shipyards. He supports Australia’s plan and said his preferred path on the first submarines was to galvanize specialized suppliers to ship parts, or whole segments of the submarines, to assemble in Australia.
“Let us all be perfectly aware and wide-eyed that the nuclear program is a massive resource consumer and time consumer, and that’s the given,” he said in a telephone interview.
Other experts have said Australia should choose Britain’s Astute class submarine, which is less expensive and uses a smaller crew than the big American boats. The head of Australia’s nuclear submarine task force, Vice Adm. Jonathan Mead, said this week that his team was considering mature, “in-production designs” from Britain, as well as the United States.
Submarine-launched ballistic missiles in China in 2019. The Biden administration has staked U.S. credibility on building up Australia’s military as part of an “integrated deterrence” to offset China. Thomas Peter/Reuters
“Spare capacity is very limited,” Trevor Taylor .. https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/aukus-deal-self-reflection-required , a professorial research fellow in defense management at the Royal United Services Institute, a research institute, wrote in an email. “The U.K. cannot afford to impose delay on its Dreadnought program in order to divert effort to Australia.”
Adding to the complications, Britain has been phasing out the PWR2 reactor that powers the Astute, after officials agreed that the model would “not be acceptable going forward,” an audit report said .. https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/The-Defence-Nuclear-Enterprise-a-landscape-review.pdf .. in 2018. The Astute is not designed to fit the next-generation reactor, and that issue could make it difficult to restart building the submarine for Australia, Mr. Taylor and other experts said.
Britain’s successor to the Astute is still on the drawing board; the government said last month that it would spend three years on design work .. https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2021/september/17/20210917-astute-successor .. for it. A naval official in the British Ministry of Defense said that the planned new submarine could fit Australia’s timetable well. Several experts were less sure.
“Waiting for the next-generation U.K. or U.S. attack submarine would mean an extended capability gap” for Australia, Mr. Taylor wrote in an assessment.
The challenge does not stop with building the submarines. Safeguards to protect sailors and populations, and meet nonproliferation obligations, will require a big buildup of Australia’s nuclear safety expertise.
Australia operates one small nuclear reactor .. https://www.ansto.gov.au/research/facilities/opal-multi-purpose-reactor . Its sole university program dedicated to nuclear engineering produces about five graduates every year, said Edward Obbard .. https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/dr-edward-obbard , the leader of the program at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Australia would need many thousands more people with nuclear training and experience if it wants the submarines, he said.
“The ramp-up has to start now,” he said.
Michael Crowley and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
Chris Buckley is chief China correspondent and has lived in China for most of the past 30 years after growing up in Sydney, Australia. Before joining The Times in 2012, he was a correspondent in Beijing for Reuters. @ChuBailiang
Slurs, lies and sledges: is Macron or Morrison telling the whole story?
"Address to the National Press Club By the Honourable Malcolm Turnbull AC"
By Bevan Shields November 2, 2021 — 11.20am
Glasgow: At the heart of the collapse of Emmanuel Macron and Scott Morrison’s relationship are two questions: did the Australian Prime Minister lie to the French President; and are both leaders now telling the whole story in their high-stakes slanging match?
Macron’s charge is that the federal government systematically duped France while plotting to torpedo a $90 billion submarine contract. The French President’s simmering anger burst into the open in Rome on Sunday night when he took the extraordinary step of branding Morrison a liar.
VIDEO - Morrison makes ‘no apology’ over submarine offence 5:10 Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he made the ‘right call’ in changing submarine contracts, and claims his conversations with French President Emmanuel Macron about concerns were candid and ‘made very clear’.
A visibly agitated Morrison denied the allegation and then sharpened his attack the next morning in Glasgow. Macron had more than enough information to know the contract was in jeopardy, Morrison insisted. And for the first time, he also cited problems with the mammoth contract as a factor behind the decision to ditch it in favour of a nuclear submarine pact with the United States and United Kingdom.
Having been labelled a liar on the world stage, Morrison was more than entitled to fire back and many colleagues believe the Prime Minister’s candid tone should have been deployed in September when the AUKUS pact first went public and the French went ballistic.
The problem is that the Prime Minister’s defence in Glasgow contained contradictions and inconsistencies.
The biggest is his claim that Macron used “slurs” against Australia when he was bailed up by reporters at the G20. “I’m not going to cop sledging at Australia. I’m not going to cop that on behalf of Australians,” Morrison said.
VIDEO - 'I don't think, I know': Macron on whether Morrison lied to him 0:38 'I don't think, I know': Macron on whether Morrison lied to him
French President says Scott Morrison lied to him over the cancellation of a mammoth submarine contract as tensions between the two leaders escalated further.
This is a potent message which will resonate with many back home. But the truth is Macron went out of his way to stress his beef was with Morrison, not the nation as a whole. “I have a lot of respect for your country, a lot of respect and friendship for your people,” Macron told reporters in Rome.
“Your country was shoulder-to-shoulder with us during the wars, you had fighters with us when our freedom was at stake. We do have the same values. We have to honour this common path and these common values.”
Morrison’s disclosure that dissatisfaction with the way French shipbuilder Naval Group was carrying out the submarine contract was also at odds with the government’s public position in September and October, which was that the rise of China was behind the need to acquire nuclear-powered submarines and that costs and delays were not behind the decision to strip the French of the work.
On the same day that the French submarine deal collapsed, the Defence Department sent Naval Group a letter saying it was satisfied with the company’s performance. To cap it off, Gillian Bird, Australia’s ambassador to France, stressed the decision to axe Naval Group “in no way reflects on the powers of the Naval Group and the French defence industry, which are recognised worldwide as market leaders”.
These public statements at the time rang hollow because anyone even remotely plugged into Canberra knew Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton were increasingly worried about the company’s performance. But the government went ahead and told the public the opposite.
We don’t know what the apparent problems with Naval Group were because Morrison and Dutton haven’t really said. What we do know is that at Senate estimates last week, Rear Admiral Gregory Sammut said the program had not suffered any cost blowouts. He also said Naval Group had presented an affordable and acceptable offer to proceed to the next phase of the design contract.
So did Morrison lie, as Macron alleges? It is not in doubt that the government seriously misled an ally and military partner. Australia, the US and UK conducted months of secret negotiations to strike a new nuclear submarine deal and never told France what they were up to. Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Dutton met their French counterparts two weeks before the AUKUS deal was unveiled and not only said nothing, but released a public statement singing the praises of the French partnership.
This doesn’t mean France was blind to the reality that something was up. The Prime Minister told Macron at a dinner at the Elysee Palace in June that Australia was looking at alternatives to the French-designed diesel submarines, although never said he was negotiating the AUKUS nuclear deal. Morrison says this should have been enough for Macron to join the dots about what was to come.
IMAGE - President of France Emmanuel Macron responds to questions from Australian journalists.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
In an attempt to demonstrate that Macron knew the submarine contract was in peril, someone with access to Morrison’s mobile phone handed over a text message to News Corp publications this week in which the French President enquired whether “good or bad news” was coming about the $90 billion deal. But as my colleague David Crowe pointed out to Morrison, rather than proving Macron had long known the deal was dead, the text actually suggests he did not know that the AUKUS deal was imminent.
Australian officials insist there is much more to this story which would reflect poorly on France if made public. The French say much the same and note they also have texts from Morrison.
At this low point, full disclosure from all sides probably couldn’t make this already extraordinarily serious situation much worse.
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