The AUKUS agreement demonstrates how the deteriorating strategic environment is changing the nature of alliances among like-minded countries. Options that only a few years ago seemed like distant fantasy—such as the sharing of nuclear submarine technology—are today’s reality.

Yet despite the shattering of some of these age-old barriers, one obstacle stubbornly refuses to yield. The information- and intelligence-sharing processes and practices between partners—especially between Australia and the United States—reflect a strategic and technological age that has long since passed us by. It’s a self-inflicted Achilles’ heel.

The last really significant effort to reform allied information sharing was more than two decades ago, and it took a tragedy to bring the issue to the fore. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and the resulting allied commitment to ensure such an atrocity would never happen again, generated the immense level of political will and urgency required to shift long-held assumptions and spawn new approaches to information and intelligence sharing.

But these processes too have now aged. The intervening years have seen backsliding, and reforms designed to counter terrorism are in any case not readily adaptable to today’s challenges. It’s time to address this fundamental vulnerability now, before tragedy again forces us into action. Just as the 9/11 attacks provided the catalyst that drove collaborative change two decades ago, the current strategic environment, with a focus on countering China, provides a new generation of leaders with a similar vital catalyst to drive revolutionary change in information and intelligence sharing.

Proponents of the current sharing processes—which often require slow and cumbersome multilevel release approvals, frequently result in different ‘sharable’ and ‘non-sharable’ versions of the same information, and still see swathes of data locked up in unilateral channels—will argue that sovereign states must guard their sovereign secrets from the risk of compromise. But risk is a two-sided coin, and the risk equation has fundamentally shifted.

Not only do we face the most unstable strategic environment in more than 70 years, but the underlying technological character of that environment has also evolved profoundly. At the digital speed of information, disinformation and modern armed conflict, as witnessed right now in Ukraine, allies can’t afford not to have all the information at our shared fingertips at that same speed. Those who are quickest at identifying, aggregating and analysing valuable data to gain insights and knowledge will win in this team event.

At this digital speed of conflict, partners must have access to the same complete information picture, at the same time, and be able to coordinate responses based on that full and shared understanding. We simply can no longer afford the lack of clarity and misalignment our current processes generate. Our information sharing needs to operate at the speed of relevance, not at the speed of early 2000s bureaucracy.

The formal strategic guidance issued by both the Australian and US governments recognises this imperative, repeatedly highlighting the need to work effectively with allies and improve information sharing. Over the past few years, both governments have emphasised the need to improve processes.

For example, the 2016 defence white paper notes the Australian intent to ‘deepen our partnership with the United States, including enhancing our … cooperation in intelligence sharing’. The 2019 US national intelligence strategy emphasised the need for the US intelligence community to ‘optimize partnerships to enhance intelligence and better inform decisionmaking’. Australia’s 2020 defence strategic update recognises that ‘intelligence sharing … between Australia and the United States [is] critical to Australia’s national security’. Most recently, the White House’s 2022 Indo-Pacific strategy commits the US to ‘removing barriers and improving transparency and information-sharing’. Tellingly, the readout of the AUKUS joint steering group’s meetings in late July says that the partners ‘recommitted to deepening cooperation on information-sharing’.

Improving sharing is frequently discussed at the highest bilateral levels and is recognised as an area that requires progress—as evidenced by the strategic guidance. But it’s a complex bureaucratic undertaking to orchestrate change. Too often politicians and other senior leaders rotate out, focus shifts to other sovereign priorities, and the issue remains at status quo.

As a result, the strategic guidance hasn’t translated into working-level action. Instead, those responsible for developing guidelines for sharing and approving the release of information and intelligence are left to worry more about the potential negative consequences of ‘oversharing’.

That’s a reasonable concern when sharing too much can have severe legal and professional consequences, and when the impact of sharing too little is seldom overtly manifested. We rarely hear of the repercussions of delayed or undersharing, or of overclassifying. But these problems have strategic implications and affect myriad defence activities, including planning, intelligence analysis, tactical activities, technical cooperation and capability development. The risks compound as the effects of each individual decision not to share spread.

Moreover, decision-makers often suffer from a ‘situated appreciation’—they make decisions with the benefit of what they perceive as a complete picture and are unable to conceive what alternative analysis may be generated in the minds of counterparts working with only fragments of the information. They can’t escape their frame of reference and are challenged to understand the bigger strategic implications.

Leveraging AUKUS, we recommend that the allies lean forward now, challenge the status quo and set a cutting-edge agenda to challenge broader policies and revamp sharing practices to address the challenges of global competition and the spectrum of threats we now face.

The post-9/11 reforms demonstrated that political-level leadership is key, and so we urge our political and senior defence and intelligence leaders to take this challenge up directly. They may, for example, consider empowering a team of experts with the authority to identify and drive change on their behalf, leveraging quick wins to build momentum towards institutional-level reform.

They could, as part of this approach, consider overhauling the national caveats that are used to limit sharing with partners. One option could include limiting the use of the strictest caveats to diplomatic reporting and the very highest sovereign military and intelligence secrets, with approval for such exclusions set at an appropriate senior level.

Whatever the solutions, they must be more comprehensive and forward-leaning than the reforms adopted over the past 20 years. And they must be implemented urgently. Our strategic environment is degrading at an alarming rate, and the speed and diversity of modern threats we face—including misinformation, hypersonic missiles, cyberattacks, space threats and artificial-intelligence-enabled operations—make our current information- and intelligence-sharing practices look positively ancient.

It’s almost clichéd to begin any discussion of geostrategic issues with a quote from the Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu. But in assessing the implications for Australia of US President Joe Biden’s national security strategy, it is warranted: ‘In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.’

The chaos arises from the relatively recent upending of the strategic assumptions that have underpinned Australia’s national security planning for at least the past 50 years. Gone is the assumption of US economic and military supremacy, gone is the prospect of general conformity with the rules-based world order put in place after the Second World War, and gone is the hope that the catastrophe of that war would guarantee that there could never be a third world war.

And for Australia, gone is the strategic comfort zone that enabled us to make national security plans with the cushion of 10 years’ advance warning of any significant military threat.

Instead, we are living through a period when a high-intensity state-on-state conflict is being fought in Europe even as we’re planning for a potential transition from cold war to hot war in Asia—and a much quicker transition than our national defence and industrial capability would be able to manage successfully.

Similarly, we are in the midst of a grey-zone conflict with China while preparing for multi-domain warfare in a future conflict that will be fought in space as well as in the land, air and sea domains, and is just as likely to be fought with ones and zeros as bombs and bullets.

It is into this strategically challenging environment for Australia that the US released its latest national security strategy—in effect, the Biden administration’s national security blueprint. And at a time when Australia has a bipartisan commitment to the criticality of the US alliance, Australian policymakers will be looking to the strategy and asking the obvious question: what’s in it for us?

The good news is that there’s much to like in this new US strategy. It repeatedly confirms the Biden administration’s commitment to leveraging US partnerships and alliances to maximise its strategic reach. It states quite simply: ‘America’s alliances and partnerships have played a critical role in our national security policy for eight decades, and must be deepened and modernized to do so in the future.’

That statement acknowledges the fundamental precondition for the success of the AUKUS agreement, which is that US politicians and policymakers must believe that strengthening Australia’s defence and industrial capability is a way of strengthening the US’s own security. To paraphrase Jack Lang, in the race for US strategic commitments and capability transfers, back self-interest—at least you know it’s trying!

The strategy calls out both Russia and China as ‘powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy’ and that pose a threat to the US and its allies by ‘waging or preparing for wars of aggression, actively undermining the democratic political processes of other countries, leveraging technology and supply chains for coercion and repression, and exporting an illiberal model of international order’. This is strong stuff, and a clear sharpening of language in setting out the nature of the strategic competition that lies at the heart of the document.

But it is China in particular that ‘presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge’, and this document is a clear rallying call for the US and its allies to effectively compete with the People’s Republic, ‘the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective’.

Particularly welcome in Canberra will be the acknowledgement that the US will ‘place a premium on growing the connective tissue—on technology, trade and security—between our democratic allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Europe’. That is good news for Australia’s AUKUS planners, and a welcome confidence booster at a time when a viable pathway to delivering nuclear submarines to Australia under the AUKUS agreement remains hidden behind a classified wall of ‘no comment’s. The document also confirms the Biden administration’s commitment to the Quad with Australia, Japan and India (referred to as the ‘Indo-Pacific Quad’).

So, too, the commitment to invest in ‘a range of advanced technologies including applications in the cyber and space domains, missile defeat capabilities, trusted artificial intelligence, and quantum systems’ will be great news for state and territory governments and Australian businesses hoping to profit from the grab bag of non-submarine advanced capabilities to be developed under AUKUS: AI, quantum, cyber and advanced underwater capabilities.

And there is something strikingly different in this strategy compared with the one Donald Trump’s administration issued: an emphasis on the importance of US engagement with multilateral trade arrangements, recognising the need to chart ‘new economic arrangements to deepen economic engagement with our partners, like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity’. The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the US-designed Trans-Pacific Partnership left many questioning America’s commitment to any real ‘pivot to the Pacific’.

By contrast, the Biden administration has promoted the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework as a clear statement that the US is back in the multilateral trade game, noting that ‘America’s prosperity also relies on a fair and open trade and international economic system’.

Perhaps the one landmine for Australia buried in the document’s upbeat topography is the boosting of investment in America’s domestic industrial capacity. At times, the document reads like a stump speech for Democrats ahead of the mid-term elections due next month. It will be a real problem for Australia’s ability to generate industrial and investment momentum under AUKUS if strengthening America’s domestic capacity is code for a new protectionism—a policy generally associated with Democratic Party administration before the Trump-era aberration.

Australian diplomats will also welcome recognition by the US that the current strategic challenge is not a bipolar struggle for influence like the 20th-century ideological struggle with the Soviet Union. The strategy notes that there will be an international triangle of liberal democracies, illiberal autocracies and a third group of countries that fall somewhere between the two.

Countries in our region bridle at being asked to choose between the US (and Australia) and China, and bristle at attempts to enlist their support while criticising their suboptimal democratic credentials. The new US model recognises the need to ‘avoid the temptation to see the world solely through the prism of strategic competition’ and to ‘engage countries on their own terms’. This seems to be shorthand for: ‘We’ll tone down our criticism of your imperfect political systems in return for your support of our broad agenda for a “free and open Indo-Pacific”.’

This in turn affords Australia the opportunity to engage regional countries on AUKUS and related issues without carrying the baggage of a set of binary choices. Instead, the strategy allows for Australia and the US to build new regional alliances to tackle ‘shared challenges that cross borders—whether it is climate change, food insecurity, communicable diseases, terrorism, energy shortages, or inflation’.

China and Russia have few alliances, and the new US national security strategy is designed to keep it that way, while ensuring that America’s traditional alliances are strengthened and that new partnerships can emerge to deliver a decisive competitive advantage. In the words of the venerable Sun Tzu: ‘If an enemy has alliances, the problem is grave and the enemy’s position is strong; if he has no alliances, the problem is minor and the enemy’s position is weak.’ Let’s hope so.

‘Too big to fail.’ How’s that for a bit of pressure on the AUKUS partnership on its first birthday?

In this episode, ASPI executive director Justin Bassi speaks with Becca Wasser, defence fellow and head of the Gaming Lab at the Center for a New American Security. Wasser says AUKUS is such an essential show of commitment between friends and allies that its failure would mean the failure of the US national defence strategy and potentially of the very idea of integrated deterrence.

They also talk about the Center for a New American Security’s war games, where failure is not just an option but is encouraged, and get into some deep questions about a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, including Australia’s role in deterrence and the million-dollar question—when might Beijing decide it’s the right time?

The government has announced a defence strategic review to ensure Australia ‘has the right capabilities that are postured to meet the growing strategic challenges that Australia and its partner countries will face in the world in coming years’. Earlier in this series, we looked at Australia’s transition in undersea warfare capability and highlighted the risks involved in that long process. One of the review’s highest priorities will be to address those risks.

While there are several broad paths to mitigating them, the acquisition of a new conventional submarine has garnered the most public attention. It seems likely that the review will consider the merits of the concept. Its analysis will be informed by the nuclear-powered submarine taskforce’s assessment of the optimal pathway to acquire these nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs).

We look here at whether a new conventional submarine could address the transition risk. It would need to address three broad challenges to win the review’s support:

• capability deficiencies, namely that the Collins-class submarine ceases to meet Australia’s undersea warfare requirements
• platform availability, namely that the Royal Australian Navy no longer has sufficient submarines to meet its requirements
• workforce availability, namely that the navy doesn’t have sufficient submarines to generate the uniformed workforce needed to transition to SSNs.

Of course, these are intertwined; there’s no point having lots of submarines if they’re not survivable, for example. There are quality and quantity risks, and we should be mindful of the transition from the Oberon class to the Collins. By the time the first Collins was commissioned in 1996, Australia’s submarine fleet had fallen from six to two and the navy was struggling to maintain its workforce. It took years to recover.

It’s hard to discuss quality issues, particularly since Defence itself doesn’t seem to have a clear view on what comprises a viable capability. For years, senior officials told the Senate the Attack class would remain a ‘regionally superior capability’. Yet, shortly after its cancellation, former prime minister Scott Morrison said it was the unanimous view of Defence’s senior leadership that the Attack class would have been obsolete the moment it was launched.

If our capability requirements can only be met by an SSN, then no conventional submarine can ever meet them. Nor can the Collins, even after going through a robust life-of-type extension (LOTE). But since many advanced nations are still designing, building and operating conventional submarines, it would appear there’s some life left in the concept.

One might argue that the LOTE program will ensure the Collins will continue to deliver adequate capability throughout its very long life with new diesel generators, main motors, electrical distribution systems and optronic sensors in place of periscopes.

But it’s unlikely that the LOTE will substantially improve available power, the submarine’s capacity to sustain longer patrols, faster transits or noise generated from the current hull shape. In addition, many more modern submarines have adopted impellor arrangements to reduce the noise and cavitation issues associated with their propellers. Defence has also rejected incorporating air-independent propulsion (AIP) that would allow the submarine to remain submerged for longer. It is highly doubtful that the Collins upgrades will keep pace with China’s growing submarine and anti-submarine capabilities, and those of other potential adversaries.

However, more modern submarine designs than the Collins are now available. Ten years ago, on Defence’s recommendation, the government rejected an off-the-shelf design for the Collins’ replacement, but submarine design has progressed significantly since then, and dramatically since the Collins design was completed in the 1990s. Certainly, smaller European designs don’t have the range of the Collins, let alone of the Attack class, but they do have enhancements such as AIP. And large conventional designs, such as those of the Japanese and Koreans, are in a similar class to the Collins while possessing advantages such as AIP and lithium–ion batteries.

But it’s highly likely Defence will have to moderate its requirements and accept the art of the possible. Arguably, the Attack class collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions because we sought to design a conventional boat with many SSN capabilities. If Defence follows the same path now, it will meet the same result.

One approach could be a high–low capability mix, with Collins then the SSN providing the high end and an off-the-shelf design providing the low end. Considering Chinese warships are now frequent visitors to our near region, a small but stealthy submarine could provide useful capability close to home.

Turning to quantity, or platform availability, it’s important to remember that with a minimum of three boats needed to reliably deploy one, the best we can hope for from the six-boat Collins fleet is two deployable boats—and that’s world’s best practice. That’s despite the government stating in the 2009 defence white paper that we need more submarine capability and every subsequent government reinforcing that assessment.

The LOTE can’t improve on that, and there’s a distinct possibility of availability declining. Each LOTE installation is intended to fit inside the two-year full-cycle-docking window currently built into the Collins’ maintenance cycle. But if technical risks associated with a very ambitious program of modification push that schedule out, the boats will spend more time out of the water and less time in training or on operations. And there’s no way the LOTE can replace every ageing component on boats that will need to serve into their forties. Unplanned defects will increasingly see boats out of service for maintenance. Australia’s submarine force could experience a re-run of the Oberon–Collins transition, with capability falling to catastrophic lows.

Delivering new conventional submarines could increase quantity—but only if Australia exercises discipline. Much of the benefit will be undone if we must wait until the mid- to late 2030s for any new boats. That means sticking as close as possible to an existing design and making hard prioritisation decisions, such as choosing a rapid schedule over integrating the US combat system.

It also means some very hard thinking about where to build them. There will no doubt be political pressure to construct them in Australia. There will also be concerns raised about our ability to build both the conventional boat and the SSN here. But we can’t procrastinate and repeatedly change course for 13 years and expect to have the same freedom of choice as when we started down the submarine replacement path in 2009. Just as we need to consider all industrial strategies when it comes to SSNs, we need to consider all approaches to the new conventional boat. We could prioritise building the SSNs here and acquire the new conventional boat overseas—or the other way around. But the days when the mere thought of building any vessels overseas was anathema are long gone.

The quantity of boats is closely related to the third risk: the number of submariners. It’s no coincidence that Defence and its industry partners’ efforts in achieving world’s best practice in submarine availability have allowed the navy to finally generate the number of submariners it needs to operate the Collins fleet. That’s around 750 (a crew of 56 times 6 boats times a redundancy factor of 2–2.5). But by the time the SSNs are all in service, that force will need to be more than 2,000, perhaps even 2,500. It goes without saying that the navy can’t get from 750 to 2,500 overnight. But even finding the personnel for the first SSN—potentially 140 for a single US boat—from a pool of 750 will be challenging when the bulk of that pool is still needed for the Collins.

In short, the navy needs a way to grow a workforce at an achievable rate at a time when Collins availability will likely be declining. We have examined a range of options to increase submariner numbers. While this analysis is not exhaustive, it indicates that an additional four conventional submarines supplementing the six Collins would provide the most achievable growth path to a fleet of eight nuclear boats. That scenario would require an ambitious but manageable average annual workforce growth of around 4%, smoothing out a growth rate that could be twice as high if the navy went straight from the Collins to SSNs.

Of course, no number of conventional submarines will address the other part of the workforce requirement, namely the ability to safely operate a nuclear submarine. That will require nuclear specialists within and outside Defence. The navy will need to learn how to operate submarines very differently, both tactically and strategically.

While some nascent workforce capability could be developed through participation in US and/or UK nuclear submarine programs and joint crewing, it will be difficult to establish and sustain a critical mass of nuclear-qualified workers until SSNs are available to Australia. It may be that the SSN delivery schedule is driven more by Australia’s capacity to expand its nuclear workforce than by construction capacity.

In sum, another conventional boat could mitigate some of the key risks we face in our long submarine transition. But the review team needs to remind Defence that the perfect (whether it be military capability or local industry involvement) is the enemy of the good and its quest for submarine perfection has so far delivered nothing. Australia’s ambitions in both areas must be moderated if it is to get a new conventional submarine in time to help address those risks.

The other unavoidable issue that must be factored into the review’s considerations is, of course, funding. An additional conventional submarine will come at great cost. We have previously outlined the pressures on the defence budget that SSNs will only exacerbate. With substantial new funding looking unlikely with the broader pressures on the public purse, finding the money for a new conventional submarine would involve cancelling other capabilities in Defence’s investment program. That will likely require strong recommendations from the review, and resolute backing from the government.

In our most recent article, we argued that the Australian government should widen the aperture of the lens through which it is scrutinising industrial strategies for acquiring and sustaining Australia’s nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) capability. We suggested that there are good reasons to consider building the submarines overseas.

But the government, when taking all elements of the wicked submarine problem into account, may choose to build the SSNs in Australia. Building here may deliver significant sustainment benefits. It may be necessary to develop the expertise needed to exercise responsible nuclear stewardship. Our strategic partner in the US or the UK may not have the capacity to build submarines for us. These are all issues that the nuclear-powered submarine taskforce will need to assess in preparing its advice to the government.

Whichever industrial path the government chooses, we are looking at a very long transition from the Collins class to the future SSN fleet. There are many key milestones on that path, and while most attention is directed towards when the first boat will arrive, that’s not necessarily the most important one; a single boat does not a capability make.

All capability transitions are difficult and the submarine one will be the most challenging that the Department of Defence (and the nation) has ever undertaken. It’s impossible to prepare for that transition without knowing how long the journey will last—and it will extend well past delivery of the first boat.

Our starting point is that an SSN has a useful life of 30–35 years. The Royal Navy’s most recent Trafalgar-class retirees were over 30. The most recent US Navy Los Angeles–class SSNs to be retired have averaged around 35 years of service. Some, like USS Bremerton and USS Jacksonville, served for 40 years. It’s true that in the 1990s and 2000s, some were retired at a much younger age as the US, like all Western countries, sought to harvest the post–Cold War peace dividend. But that’s not the world we are facing now. Western navies desperately need submarines and, considering the huge investment required, they want to maximise the return.

What does that mean for the schedule of a potential Australian build program? Let’s start with a continuous build program, that is, one that rolls straight into the replacement project once the first one is finished so that there are no ‘valleys of death’ in which production stops, workers are laid off and key skills are lost. Eliminating the ‘stop-start’ nature of Australian naval shipbuilding was one of the main goals of the previous government’s continuous naval shipbuilding program.

But such a program has disadvantages. One of the reasons that support for the 12-boat Attack-class program evaporated was the growing realisation that its two-year delivery drumbeat to support a continuous build program meant the new capability would be delivered too slowly, either to meet Australia’s worsening strategic circumstances or to mitigate the risk of a capability gap as the Collins aged out.

But the SSN drumbeat will likely be even slower than the Attack class was set to be. The previous government announced it would acquire ‘at least’ eight SSNs. If we assume a service life of 30–35 years for our SSNs, a continuous build program for a fleet of eight boats would require a four-year delivery drumbeat to stretch the program out so that the there’s no gap between the last boat of the initial build program and the first boat of the successor program. For a fleet of 10 boats, it would be between three and three-and-a-half years.

That’s borne out by the experience of the UK. The RN has a combined fleet of 11 nuclear boats between its SSNs and ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), which means it implements a delivery drumbeat to support a continuous build enterprise that alternates between SSN and SSBN programs (the Astute-class SSN program is nearing completion as the Dreadnought-class SSBN program ramps up).

But that delivery drumbeat has implications for capability (and the lack of it). If we assume the first boat is delivered in the late 2030s and enters service in 2040, that means boat two is between three and four years later—around 2043–44—and the third boat somewhere around 2046–48. If we assume the rule of threes (three vessels, squadrons, brigades, etc. are needed to reliably deploy one), then Australia won’t have an SSN capability until the second half of the 2040s, which is a quarter of a century away. That’s also the point at which the last of the Collins will reach its retirement date after having completed its life-of-type extension in 2038. We’d need to be confident that three SSNs would be a sufficient capability to move to the post-Collins world.

Table 1: Submarine transition plan—first SSN in service by 2040 (three-year drumbeat)
[click on image to enlarge]

The worst case, building on a four-year drumbeat to replace the first SSN when it is around 30 years old, means we wouldn’t have the full capability until close to 2070. That’s a really long way away.

Table 2: Submarine transition plan—first SSN in service by 2040 (four-year drumbeat)
[click on image to enlarge]

To achieve the full capability sooner, we could aim to build the SSNs faster than a three- or four-year drumbeat. On a two-year drumbeat we’d get the eighth boat in the mid- to late 2050s. Then there’s the question of whether that can actually be achieved. A Block V Virginia-class SSN is over 10,000 tonnes. The next generation of US Navy SSNs will be even bigger. That’s a lot of boat to build.

But even if we can achieve it, building faster also breaks the continuous build program. If we are building an eight-boat fleet on a two-year drumbeat, the last one arrives 14 years after the first, well before it’s time to replace it. You could retire and replace the first boat when it’s 16 years old, but only halfway through its economic life. Or you could keep the early boats in service and add to them, creating a bigger fleet. But that comes at a massive financial cost. If the RN can only afford seven SSNs, can we afford the 15 or more needed to support a two-year production drumbeat?

Table 3: Submarine transition plan—economic-build approach with first SSN in service by 2040 (two-year drumbeat)
[click on image to enlarge]

The other option is to stop building at eight or 10. But then we’d be back into the stop-start approach to shipbuilding that the previous government’s continuous naval shipbuilding program sought to address. We would be building in a valley of death from the outset.

How do we break out of this conundrum? One possibility is to not go down the path of building boats here in the first place and instead adopt the enterprise approach discussed in our previous post, which of course assumes our major partner has the capacity to build our boats for us. But even that approach will likely get us well into the 2050s by the time we have a full SSN capability.

Whichever way we look at it, we are facing a long transition, one that could potentially last into the 2060s. That fact has to be a central tenet of our planning. Once we accept that, we can chart a course that addresses any capability risks presented by the extended timeframe. The most obvious of those risks is the Collins class ageing out before the SSN capability is serviceable.

Defence Minister Richard Marles has said his mind is open on how to bridge a capability gap. There are a range of options. In our next post, we’ll start our consideration of the one that has attracted the most attention to date—a new conventional submarine.