Australia to Get Nuclear Submarines

[JasonJ]

Time scale estimates:

-If it's a tailored made sub specifically for Australia, then first one done by earliest of late 2030s.

-If UK made Astutes or US made Virginias, first delivery by late 2020s.

-If Australian made Astute or Virginia, then first by early 2030s.

http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2021/09/australian-made-ssn-may-take-till-late.html?m=1

[Adam_S]

3 hours ago, Argus said:

That's one view, arse backwards, but still a view.
Japan lost a competiton that was theirs to lose.
Our need for subs has increased.
France's ability to provide them has decreased - the program has been in trouble for a while now with lack of progress.
Australia earns the moral superiority to get sniffy about submarines by not killing whales.  

I think if we want to go and play with the big boys in the South China Sea then an SSK just isn't going to cut it.

[Adam_S]

The big one for me is how we are going to keep the reactor going with no domestic nuclear industry to speak of. What may make that easier though is that IIRC some of the newer reactor designs can last for the entire life of the sub. Maybe get the poms or the seppos to build the reactors then just plug and play.

[RETAC21]

3 minutes ago, Adam_S said:

I think if we want to go and play with the big boys in the South China Sea then an SSK just isn't going to cut it.

Actually, you want SSK to play in the shallow South China Sea and the coasts of the PRC, because the US lacks that capability

[RETAC21]

Just now, Adam_S said:

The big one for me is how we are going to keep the reactor going with no domestic nuclear industry to speak of. What may make that easier though is that IIRC some of the newer reactor designs can last for the entire life of the sub. Maybe get the poms or the seppos to build the reactors then just plug and play.

That's not an issue since cores are designed to run for the life of the boat nowadays

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2015/1/31/2015february-nuclear-power-plants-on-new-submarines-may-last-40plus-years

[Adam_S]

2 minutes ago, RETAC21 said:

Actually, you want SSK to play in the shallow South China Sea and the coasts of the PRC, because the US lacks that capability

But getting it there from Aussieland in a reasonable time and with reasonable endurance when it gets there is another thing altogether. There are also plenty of Japanese and South Korean diesel boats to fill that void.

[RETAC21]

5 minutes ago, Adam_S said:

But getting it there from Aussieland in a reasonable time and with reasonable endurance when it gets there is another thing altogether. There are also plenty of Japanese and South Korean diesel boats to fill that void.

Provided they share the goodies... remember, the main purpose of submarines is intelligence gathering and Japan/SK are not part of the 5 eyes treaty.

[JasonJ]

Japanese-Australian SSK probably would get Japanese lithium batteries. Those grant greater endurnace, high speed duration, and quicker recharge.

AFAIK, diesel engine can be shut on and off more easily so a sub can sit quietly. Nuclear can't be shut down quickly on a moment when absolute silence is wanted.

[Stuart Galbraith]

If we thought of this holistically, getting an Aussie yard up and running in building SSN's would help one hell of a lot in the yard capacity issue, primarily for the US, but also for Britain as well. That would require a lot of sacred cows being slaughtered though.

[BansheeOne]

My main worry would be whether the RAN has really overcome the manning problems which rendered half of the Collins fleet undeployable about twelve years back. Running eight Astutes with double the complement each vs. six Collins' will mean an additional ca. 550 bodies. If that becomes an issue, you might well end up going back to the French, since the (unaltered) Barracuda class seems to have the lowest manning requirements among modern Western SSNs, on par with the Collins'. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

10 minutes ago, JasonJ said:

Japanese-Australian SSK probably would get Japanese lithium batteries. Those grant greater endurnace, high speed duration, and quicker recharge.

AFAIK, diesel engine can be shut on and off more easily so a sub can sit quietly. Nuclear can't be shut down quickly on a moment when absolute silence is wanted.

Advantages and disadvantages. on a low power setting,you can run a nuclear plant on natural convection, and turn the pumps off. Thats pretty damn quiet. You also get air forever, which considering the Chinese are going to start lobbing lots of ASW aircraft andprobably drones, is going to be absolute death to an SSK.

Negative is you cant sit them on the bottom, because it blocks the water inlet ports you use for cooling. They had to get around this with one of the boats going in to collect Ivy Bells by mounting retractable legs on the bottom of the boat, to keep them off the bottom when they sat on it.

 

[JasonJ]

29 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Advantages and disadvantages. on a low power setting,you can run a nuclear plant on natural convection, and turn the pumps off. Thats pretty damn quiet. You also get air forever, which considering the Chinese are going to start lobbing lots of ASW aircraft andprobably drones, is going to be absolute death to an SSK.

Negative is you cant sit them on the bottom, because it blocks the water inlet ports you use for cooling. They had to get around this with one of the boats going in to collect Ivy Bells by mounting retractable legs on the bottom of the boat, to keep them off the bottom when they sat on it.

 

Well whatever, GL with it.

[Argus]

2 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

My main worry would be whether the RAN has really overcome the manning problems which rendered half of the Collins fleet undeployable about twelve years back. Running eight Astutes with double the complement each vs. six Collins' will mean an additional ca. 550 bodies. If that becomes an issue, you might well end up going back to the French, since the (unaltered) Barracuda class seems to have the lowest manning requirements among modern Western SSNs, on par with the Collins'. 

Good question.
I know someone on the inside there and while I have not spoken to them about this and knew nothing of it in advance, applying the general picture I have gained from him - the RAN did a manpower reset a few years back, and then took a very long hard look at their manpower situation across the board, including retention and culture.
Then they went and had a long hard talk to the civil servants and politicians to point out the RAN was a hollow service and peacetime op-tempo was essentially maximum overstretch. So either the Government could ask less of them, they got more people, or the problems would continue to be problems and the Navy would be essentially unfit for purpose. The result of all this was a long term plan to fill out the force over a decade, so committed were they to this the RAN turned down an extra T26 Frigate to keep the manpower growth to schedule - this has to have flipped all that into a cocked hat.

[Nobu]

7 hours ago, Argus said:

That's one view, arse backwards, but still a view.
Japan lost a competiton that was theirs to lose.
Our need for subs has increased.
France's ability to provide them has decreased - the program has been in trouble for a while now with lack of progress.
Australia earns the moral superiority to get sniffy about submarines by not killing whales.  

It still burns, I will freely admit. Japan lost a competition that was Japan's to lose? That's got to be true, because it hurts.

I'd like to know if the French will be compensated.

6 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Id would get Barrow in Furness to build the first 2 boats.

Payment up front, in cash, before the first rivet. Because Australia's credit rating should be about 300 at the moment. 

6 hours ago, Simon Tan said:

The can do pressure hulls but they dont do nuclear reactors. 

The reason why they haven't done nuclear, ever, is going to come into play at some point. If it was anything more than Australians showing off how Gaia-friendly they are, well, we shall see what they do about their spent nuclear reactor fuel.

I hope they choke on it.

[Nobu]

3 hours ago, RETAC21 said:

Provided they share the goodies... remember, the main purpose of submarines is intelligence gathering and Japan/SK are not part of the 5 eyes treaty.

This deal sounds like a 5 Eyes Only thing to me. It wouldn't surprise me.

[shep854]

I understand the French got some pretty stiff default conditions written into the deal.

----

For background, a video from March; it's about an hour and a half.  Aaron just released an update, but I haven't seen that one yet.

 

Edited September 16, 2021 by shep854

[Stuart Galbraith]

There wasnt much French tech transfer from what im given to understand. it was akin to 'we will build it, you dont need to know how we build it'.  Which if I was Australian laying down as much money as they were would piss me off to no end.

 

[Ssnake]

If there was neither capability nor capacity to build locally, then why the insistence on technology transfer?

What good is a stiff contract if you foist a non-nuclear power plant concept on a boad designed for a nuclear reactor?

The trouble of the French program was utterly predictable. TKMS knew even before Naval entered the tender that they could never deliver it, sort of some unexpected miracle happening. But apparently everybody closed their eyes to the reality (despite India as a warning example) and went to sign the contract anyway. It was completely bonkers right from the start.

[glenn239]

6 hours ago, Adam_S said:

The big one for me is how we are going to keep the reactor going with no domestic nuclear industry to speak of. What may make that easier though is that IIRC some of the newer reactor designs can last for the entire life of the sub. Maybe get the poms or the seppos to build the reactors then just plug and play.

Cool.  If Australia gets SSN's then about 40 years later Canada will buy the now worn out subs for our navy, and they'll spend most of their time in drydock like our British boats.

Out of curiosity, what is the rationale for Australia requiring nuclear submarines?  For coast defense SSK's are suitable, and if contemplating offensive patrols off Chinese or Russian shores, what would the Auzzies bring to the table that the RN or USN isn't already serving?

[sunday]

The Spanish Army got some Aerospatiale AS332 Cougar helicopters (now AS-532) because that was the condition imposed by the French government to accelerate the extradition of a member of ETA, Ignacio Etxeberría Martín, aka "Mortadelo". Mortadelo is a character in a popular Spanish comic strip.

So, the Cougars of the Spanish Army are also known as "Mortadelos".

France has some weird politics when defense sales are involved.

Edited September 16, 2021 by sunday

[Stuart Galbraith]

9 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

If there was neither capability nor capacity to build locally, then why the insistence on technology transfer?

What good is a stiff contract if you foist a non-nuclear power plant concept on a boad designed for a nuclear reactor?

The trouble of the French program was utterly predictable. TKMS knew even before Naval entered the tender that they could never deliver it, sort of some unexpected miracle happening. But apparently everybody closed their eyes to the reality (despite India as a warning example) and went to sign the contract anyway. It was completely bonkers right from the start.

I think that's why they wanted tech transfer, so you can build locally.

So France is currently comparing this action to something Trump would have done (don't think so personally) and that this shows why Europe needs its own military (when it was only France getting the shaft.) 

Meanwhile Australia announces after its pending 8 nuclear submarines that it wants talks with China. Which makes you wonder how serious this all is.

[Stuart Galbraith]

18 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Cool.  If Australia gets SSN's then about 40 years later Canada will buy the now worn out subs for our navy, and they'll spend most of their time in drydock like our British boats.

Out of curiosity, what is the rationale for Australia requiring nuclear submarines?  For coast defense SSK's are suitable, and if contemplating offensive patrols off Chinese or Russian shores, what would the Auzzies bring to the table that the RN or USN isn't already serving?

8 more boats. Which considering the RN still has to worry about Russia, and USN SSN strength declining in the near term, it's highly significant.

A thought occurs. I wonder if we will offer Tempest participation under a similar deal?

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[Nobu]

Australian stupidity has consequences.

[Ssnake]

LOL, Ms Molinelli needs to work on her expectation management regarding "this language". It's a perfectly understandable and adequate respone from a country whose major naval shipyard just got shafted big time. That their submarine concept would work out only with difficulty at best is at least 50% the responsibility of the Australian MOD who willfully ran their tender with blinders on. It may be the right decision for Australia, it may be strengthening the alliance with the UK and the US, but framing the French response as a demand for subservience is not just absurd, it's slanderous anti-French propaganda for an ignorant home front.