At last we have the Turnbull government’s naval shipbuilding plan. It claims to be the first such plan, yet the Howard government released one in 2003 and we had a de facto one from the Gillard government in 2013. So much for corporate memory.

But while it’s not unprecedented, it’s a useful document. It draws together recent announcements into a credible narrative, and provides some useful additional information about infrastructure, workforce and schedules. Yet it leaves some questions unanswered and raises others.

At the heart of the plan is a four-part strategy, focusing on infrastructure, workforce, industry and national coordination. Of course, it’s not that concise, and no positive adjective was left behind. In the veil of management-garble used throughout the report, ‘workforce’ becomes ‘a highly capable, productive and skilled naval shipbuilding and sustainment workforce’.

On infrastructure, some of the recent machinations surrounding ASC and infrastructure are finally explained. The government has decided to retain ownership of the shipyard infrastructure at Osborne in South Australia and Henderson in Western Australia that was formerly owned by ASC. One of the component parts of last year’s ASC split, now named Australian Naval Infrastructure Pty Ltd, will take ownership of those properties. And the Commonwealth will also buy out the infrastructure built at Osborne by the SA government.

We think those are smart moves, especially for the SA yards. If the shipyards and associated infrastructure had been sold off to the builder of the future frigates, it would’ve created an effective monopoly that would have been hard to break in the future. We warned about such a possibility in an earlier analysis. The UK government made that mistake, and BAE now has it in an invidious position. With the local infrastructure still in Australian government hands, the build contract for future classes can be subject of a competitive process, providing at least a modicum of competition. The Williamstown dockyard in Melbourne only rates a mention as an historical note—it looks set to play no role in future naval construction or sustainment. And there’s no mention of the Forgacs yard in NSW at all. Consistent with the theme of consolidation, there’s no mention of subcontracting ship module builds in the plan—vertically integrated monopolies seem to be the order of the day for construction.

There’s a lot in the plan about the workforce required to realise the vision. The bottom line is that the government isn’t prepared to leave the development of the workforce to the market players who will design and build the ships and submarines. The government is going to intervene by providing the educational equivalent of shipyard infrastructure, in the form of a new Naval Shipbuilding College based in Adelaide. Skilled workers will become government furnished equipment.

The plan is at pains to stress that it’s not all about the two yards in SA and WA. There’s ‘something for everyone’ or, as the plan terms it, ‘a national approach to the Naval Shipbuilding Plan’. And there’s no hyperbole spared:

‘This national endeavour is the most significant nation building project Australia has ever undertaken. Larger and more complex than the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme and the National Broadband Network…’

We might wish that the author of those words had spoken to the IT industry about the NBN (or to a reputable economist about either) but there’s no denying that the enterprise being built will cross state and territory boundaries, and will involve educational institutions and businesses across the country. To help grease the wheels, Defence will be establishing a national consultative body.

Much of the document is about the management framework, and a lot of the discussion is general. But there are also some numbers and indicative timetables in several graphics showing the timing and sequencing of planned projects. As useful as they are, they raise several questions.

The first is the confusing and inconsistent use of the terms ‘continuous’ and ‘rolling’ production to describe the submarine program. We know for certain that the frigates and minor vessels will be built in continuous production runs, with the build of a new class of vessel commencing as the previous one concludes. Until now, most observers have assumed that the White Paper use of the term ‘rolling production’ signified that there would be substantial breaks in the submarine program. But in various places the Plan refers to submarine production as being either continuous or rolling. To make matters worse, a diagram in the Plan (Figure 1.2) shows submarine work continuing long after the 12^th boat is due to be delivered. Why not just say what’s planned? (And it’s not like the first time that this confusion has surfaced—Defence took pains to explain the difference to us when we assumed they were synonyms.)

As expected, the Plan maintains a 2018 start for the Offshore Patrol Combatants and a 2020 start for the Future Frigates—though the term ‘cutting steel’ has been dropped. More importantly, the in-service date of the first Future Frigate is given as 2027-30. That’s one- to four-years later than the RAND shipbuilding report (upon which the government’s plan is based), which assumed a 2020 start date. It looks as though the rumored late start to the frigate program has been quietly slipped into the plan.

Elsewhere the plan exhibits a disappointing lack of attention to detail. For example, it has the ninth Future Frigate arriving in 2038 and a two-year drum-beat of production. While they are described as ‘indicative’ dates, on face value they defy arithmetic. Similarly, by counting 1,700 submarine supply chain jobs as direct jobs, it appears to overstate the number of direct jobs produced. And the estimate of total costs uses a ratio of 30% acquisition to 70% sustainment costs—whereas the conventional 70/30 split is based on acquisition versus all other ownership costs, including not just sustainment, but also personnel and training costs (which are appreciable). Once again, the quality of advice on industry going to the government is questionable.

Finally, on arguably the most critical issue of all—how to drive productivity in the resulting monopoly shipyards—the Plan says that ‘robust and complementary performance frameworks must be developed and reported against regularly through the National Security Committee of Cabinet’. That’s good, but then it goes on to say that the reporting will be ‘informed by advice from the independent Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board’. Sorry, a part-time board, half of whom live in the United States, is not going to cut it. Here’s what a proper solution would look like.

As a member of the Defence Minister’s White Paper panel, I’ve had many discussions about issues that paper will wrestle with (and a few that it certainly won’t, but that’s a post for another time). With the obvious disclaimer that I’m not about to divulge any white paper content, I thought it was worth addressing some of the questions that have come up repeatedly.

Naturally, questions about the future submarine are near the top of the list. Many topics are predictable enough. Where will they be built? How many do we need?

I’m surprised at how often I’ve been asked whether we’re wasting our money because submarines are about to become passé. That question is based on one of two premises: that the oceans are about to become ‘transparent’ due to new detection technologies, or that submarines will be replaced by unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).

Both propositions have a reasonable pedigree, and neither can be dismissed out of hand. And both technologies will have a significant impact on the future conduct of submarine operations. But when examined closely, they actually point towards an increased relevance for submarines.

Let’s start with the detection issue. The attribute that most contributes to the effectiveness of submarines is their stealth. An adversary faces significant uncertainty even with just the possibility of a submarine being present. A great deal of effort has to be put into anti-submarine warfare to have even a reasonable chance of nullifying their effect. Having a capable submarine somewhere in a theatre of maritime operations complicates planning everywhere—or at least within a large circle of possible locations that grows steadily with time.

The ability to quickly and reliably find submarines would certainly change their cost benefit calculus, and the notion of making the ocean ‘transparent’ isn’t a new one. The Cold War USN put a great deal of effort into being able to track Soviet nuclear missile-carrying boats, building an array of networked underwater sensors under the Long Range Acoustic Propagation Project. Their effort met with considerable success and the USN often had a pretty good hold on Soviet submarine movements.

But there are two important caveats. First, those were earlier generation nuclear submarines which were noisier than their current counterparts. Second, even when Soviet submarines were detected, precise localisation wasn’t always possible. The arrays were heavily supplemented by other techniques, not least of which was the ‘tailing’ of Soviet boats by American submarines. (See the ‘ripping yarn’ bestseller Blind Man’s Bluff for a popular account). In fact, when the arrays picked up the sounds of the destruction of its own USS Scorpion, the USN still took four months to locate the wreckage. The simple fact is that reliable localisation of sound sources in large ocean basins is a formidably difficult task that gets progressively harder as the difference between the source and background noise gets smaller—as is the case with modern submarines.

Of course, detection technologies and the ability to analyse collected data have also improved. I wrote about the effect of Moore’s Law on submarine detectability here, and it’s true that future submarines will face challenges in remaining hidden. They’ll also have to worry about techniques other than acoustics, such as wake detection, thermal signatures or even the light given off by sea creatures disturbed by their passage. Given enough data and enough signal processing power, even very subtle signs could be giveaways—potentially even from orbit.

Nonetheless, the real world is a noisy and untidy place. Covering very wide areas with sufficiently sensitive sensors with high bandwidth to link them together and having the ability to respond quickly and effectively to a detection—especially given a likely high ‘false positive’ rate—will be beyond even the best resourced forces. Much more likely is that high performance ASW capabilities will be concentrated on key focal areas, such as around task groups, near naval bases, and chokepoints such as critical sea lanes through straits and narrows. The old model of submarines getting ‘up close and personal’ in their adversary’s strongholds probably doesn’t have much future.

But in terms of avoiding detection, being under the water will always be preferable to being on top of it. And if the submarine can carry out its mission from a reasonable distance, there’ll still be ocean enough to hide in. To remain viable, future submarines will have to be even more stealthy. They will need be able to stand off and deploy medium to long range sensors and weapons—in a sense perhaps becoming ‘underwater motherships’ for sensor and weapon packages. In fact, as life gets harder on the surface, that ability will become more relevant, not less.

And that’s a neat segue to UUVs. In the next post I’ll discuss their strengths and weaknesses and explain how the complementary package of manned submarine and unmanned subsystems could come together to help defeat improved sensors.