Option J Archives

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Why we need to talk about Option J

6 July 2015

Like the operations of submarines themselves, current Australian policy on submarine acquisition seems opaque, with the surface troubled by hints of turmoil down deep. There’s little clue as to why the Government is so wedded to Option J, the purchase of Japanese submarines, an attachment some in the Department of Defence don’t seem to share.

It has been assumed that Option J is preferred because that’s what the US wants. Just last month, ASPI’s Graeme Dobell wrote that ‘the PM really wants a Japanese boat’ without explaining why.

In February, Hugh White outlined some broad strategic difficulties with the rush to Option J, noting that no existing sub meets Australia’s requirements and that the Soryu sub is already superseded. Any existing design must be modified, making our contractual relationship with the designer one of the most critical and risky elements of this process. This is a relationship that will have to work well for decades.

I have written elsewhere about the hazards of not building on lessons learned from the years of working with Sweden on Collins class subs, including that restrictions on intellectual property mean that sensitive technical data can’t be used with other designers. And there are still big questions about how much and what kind of technical data Japan will be willing to share with us.

A completely new design will be needed from Japan and, according to their accounts, will take at least ten years. That’s a big ask for a nation that has never exported defence tech before. It appears the Japanese design architecture is a generation behind Collins and two generations behind current European work. This is because Soryu subs, with their attractive teardrop shape, are evolved from the US Navy Barbel class designs of the 1950s and 1960s (only three of these were ever built). Modern submarines are now cylinders with a carefully shaped forebody and afterbody to achieve nearly the same result hydrodynamically but with a much less expensive production method.

Important technical considerations arise from a conservative approach to sub design. Unless the Japanese move from fixed welded decks to the more modern ‘floating’ decks slid onto huge resilient mounts, their subs will be more expensive to build, noisier, and have greater vulnerability to explosions, as the mounts soak up machinery noise and isolate crew and equipment from shockwaves.

On 4 June it was reported that the former commander of the Japanese submarine fleet, Masao Kobayashi, cast doubt on the ability of the ASC shipyard to build Soryu class subs. It’s true that ASC is set up to build Swedish designs, not Japanese ones, although they could be adapted. However, Japan’s two shipyards, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki, are both fully engaged in building Japanese boats. Where will the spare capacity needed to build boats for Australia come from? Does Japan propose to build another shipyard and train up more workers? If so, why not do that in Australia?

So, what process should the Abbott government follow? We should select at least two competitors to continue to develop a fully-costed, tender-quality design, with a production schedule, and then make a choice. This will take time but shouldn’t slow things down (and by the way, eight appears to be the new twelve in sub numbers, given the amount currently budgeted).

Another issue for the government to consider is the role of submarines in a future where the seas are likely to swarm with ever cheaper, unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). We need to think of how submarines might act as a kind of underwater aircraft carrier.

In May former US submariner and aide to Chief of Naval Operations, Bryan Clark, was interviewed on ABC Lateline about the challenges of the near future ‘transparent ocean’, in which new detection technologies will force far-reaching changes in how submarines are used:

So we need to think about submarine design in terms of the ability of the submarine to be a mothership or to be the host or command-and-control platform for a large group of unmanned systems as opposed to the submarine being an independent platform that operates on its own without any other platforms along with it. So it changes the design of the submarine. They may have to be larger. They may have to incorporate a lot more communication equipment to be able to communicate undersea using a variety of communication methods that are available [emphasis added].

Clark was asked if Australian military planners had been in touch to discuss how the ‘transparent ocean’ issues above would affect design and purchasing decisions for our Future Submarine. Clark said he hadn’t heard from anyone in the Australian Government. Given we’re looking for our next-generation subs to be operating in the waters of the future as far out as 2070 we need to make sure that our design specifications allow us to meet plausible future challenges.

This is what makes the lack of transparency in the process so troubling; so far there have been no signs that the Government grasps the issues related to Japanese submarine design and innovation. It’s critical we factor in the ability to innovate at the design stage and into the future, to ensure we don’t waste billions or end up with the submarine equivalent of coal-fired power stations.

Tony Abbott and a Japanese sub

24 May 2015

Tony Abbott wants a Japanese submarine.

To repeat: Australia’s Prime Minister really wants a Japanese boat.

If Australia hadn’t embarked on a ‘competitive evaluation process’ pitting Japan against France and Germany, this hack would argue that the PM is committed to the Japanese sub.

Politicians ultimately make the big procurement decisions in this town. And Canberra’s top politician has profoundly shifted the terms of the submarine discussion.

The uncomfortable yet sturdy bipartisan consensus on building Oz submarines that has ruled since the 1980s has been torpedoed by Abbott. This is quite an achievement for a Prime Minister who is having trouble making his wishes stick in most areas.

See how far Abbott has pushed the submarine decision towards Japan by considering what Australia’s submarine choice would look like today if the Coalition hadn’t won the 2013 election. In this parallel universe, Kevin Rudd uses the Men in Black memory eraser ‘neuralyzer’ on the Oz voters so they forget the previous six years. Then, Kevin runs a blinder of a campaign utilising every advantage of being incumbent PM and just scrapes home.

The resurrected Rudd government would be steering the submarine course set out in Labor’s 2009 and 2013 Defence White Papers. Japan wouldn’t have surfaced. There’d be no Option J. No Japanese submarine in the running. Repeat, no Japanese submarine even in the field. Much less the PM’s favourite.

Tony Abbott has shifted the game by embracing Shinzo Abe and making a Japanese sub a centrepiece of that relationship.

Ironically, the deep political damage Abbott has suffered at the hands of his own party might just strengthen his hold on defence and this biggest of big acquisition projects.

Abbott is a much reduced leader after the near-disaster in the Liberal Party room in February. The PM scrambled to survive a Party revolt and a leadership spill when he faced no formal challenger. In the caucus contest against an empty chair, Abbott just defeated the empty chair. Abbott has to rebuild his authority as much as he has to rebuild his government.

Defence, however, is a rare area where the PM can still have his way. Abbott, like John Howard, is his own Uber Defence Minister. The Liberal Party is used to this as the default setting. And in December the Uber Minister installed a new Defence Minister. Kevin Andrews mightn’t be as avid for a Japanese sub as his predecessor David Johnston, but the Uber Minister still rules. After taking early hits struggling to explain the ‘competitive evaluation process’, Andrews now has a submarine narrative that he can at least speak to, and even argue for.

The key line for Adelaide from Andrews: ‘Maintenance can occur in Australia, even if there is an overseas build.’

Arriving at an overseas build via Adelaide brings us to the fracturing of the submarine consensus that has bound Labor and Liberal together since the Hawke government and Kim Beazley’s term as Defence Minister. That bipartisan policy is lost at sea. The Japanese boat is as much symptom as cause. The submarine consensus has been deeply wounded by the Collins headaches and tormented by technical demands at the edge of Australian capabilities. Then there’s the huge fright of that $50 billion price tag.

When Labor’s 2013 Defence White Paper embraced Adelaide again as the site to build the Oz sub, taking the off-the-shelf option off the table, the Liberal Party promptly agreed.

The submarine consensus still ruled and held through the election. The old defence pattern seemed to be holding: Coalition governments set up the aircraft purchases from America while Labor governments did the submarine announcements. Mark that era over.

While Andrew Davies and Benjamin Schreer are sanguine that Option J can be made to work, others think Abbott is taking a gamble.

On the Option J as just-too-risky side, note a rare moment of agreement between Hugh White and Greg Sheridan.

Greg’s views of Abbott are always worth reading, not least because the two have been mates since university. And in giving the thumbs down to the Japanese sub as too big a call, Greg seemed to be penning a warning to a PM who has already made up his mind:

‘I am now coming, reluctantly, to the view this option just presents too much risk, financially, politically and militarily. I don’t think Abbott can secure Japanese subs through good process. Impatience with process is one of Abbott’s weaknesses.’

Indeed. Did I mention that Tony Abbott really wants a Japanese submarine?

The strategic case for Option J: an alternative view

8 April 2015

Andrew Davies and Benjamin Schreer argue in their recent ASPI report on Australia’s submarine choice that there is a stronger strategic case for acquiring Japanese submarines than European ones (Option J).

But the opposite could well be the case—having Japanese submarines could markedly reduce our strategic flexibility in prospective future scenarios. In the uncertain strategic environment that exists in the region at present, Australia should hedge its bets and avoid a regional solution that has strategic ‘strings attached’.

Andrew and Ben acknowledge there are ‘strings attached’ with Option J, but they don’t look sufficiently far ahead at what the region might look like in 10–30 years’ time when the new submarines will be in service.

They take an essentially short-term view of the regional security environment. They acknowledge that American power is declining in relative terms but then don’t project forward to where that trend might lead. The more you look out to the longer term, the greater are the ‘strings’ attached to Option J.

As I have argued elsewhere, there are four main ‘stumbling blocks’ to reaching a way ahead with the submarine program: Australia’s unique requirement for a ‘big’ conventional submarine; the downside of locking ourselves into American systems; the difficulties in making an accurate assessment of the future strategic environment; and trends in submarine detection that may make it more difficult for Australia to deploy submarines into East Asian waters.

The geopolitics of the region are changing faster than most anticipated. Credible scenarios for the longer term must include a significant decline in American power and influence as well as conflict between China and Japan in which Australia would not take sides. In these regional circumstances, Option J would involve some loss of long-term strategic independence for Australia. The European options bring with them longer-term strategic flexibility.

Japan is an inherently insecure country. In the current strategic environment a closer security relationship between Australia and Japan is more to the benefit of Japan than it is for Australia. Placing too much emphasis on a strategic relationship with Japan suggests a strategic inferiority complex on the part of Australia. That’s not to say we shouldn’t have a security relationship with Japan, it’s only to say that we need to recognise that Japan is searching for friends for support in its fractious relationship with China. It’s not a matter of choosing sides in Northeast Asia as Andrew and Ben suggest—it’s more a matter of being able to maintain even-handed neutrality.

The argument in the ASPI report that Japan may replace China as Australia’s major trading partner is also open to question. China is also a buyer of Australia’s LNG. The report cited in the ASPI report originates from early 2014 before the global collapse in the LNG market. Latest indications are that Japan’s LNG demand is slowing as nuclear power stations come back on line under the Abe administration.

The last issue is the need to anticipate future developments in submarine detection systems and signal processing. The seas are becoming more transparent. Over the life of the new submarine, it may become impossible for Australia to deploy submarines covertly through the northern archipelagos and into the East Asian seas. Indonesia attaches considerable importance to monitoring naval movements through its archipelago but in the past, oceanographic conditions in its straits, such as Lombok and Makassar, have been too noisy for fixed underwater sonar arrays to detect submarine movements. However, this situation could well change as developments in signal processing make fixed arrays more effective.

Even if we wanted to deploy submarines to East Asia in 25 years’ time, we may not be able to do so with assured secrecy. If this were the case, then a smaller European submarine could well meet Australia’s requirements with a saving of billions of dollars to the Defence budget.