First, ditch the notion of building in Adelaide. Construction in Australia is the single factor that cripples Australia’s plan to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines.

It’s the sole reason why delivery of the first boat to the Royal Australian Navy probably can’t occur until around 2040, making the program laughably—or tragically—irrelevant to our increasingly urgent regional security problem.

To build in Adelaide, as the government says we will, facilities there must be prepared and managers and workers must be hired and trained for an exotic new endeavour. Of course, it could all go off the rails and take longer than expected.

Worse, because we can’t begin building early, this plan implies that we’ll add a worrying additional source of risk to the schedule and budget: extensive development work. No submarine class for which deliveries would begin around 2040 can be a design that is now in production.

The only excuse for this madness is the one that supposedly justifies all our naval construction: that we allegedly can’t support naval vessels if we don’t build them. But more than a century of experience of any number of countries, including Australia, shows that that’s not true. Imported ships of off-the-shelf design can be supported locally simply by training maintainers and buying enough spare parts.

No less complex an organism than the entire Australian Defence Force aircraft fleet is supported in that way.

So let’s instead plan for a rapid import program for submarines of the US Virginia class. Most of the industrial and technical challenge then becomes expanding US facilities to meet our requirement. If all went well, US industry might deliver our first nuclear submarine nine years earlier than Adelaide could, with far greater dependability in time and specification and also at lower cost. Even if things slipped by a year or two, we would still be running far ahead of Adelaide time.

The UK, the other partner in our new AUKUS security arrangement, doesn’t feature in this proposed scheme because its smaller submarine industry would be too hard to gear up to build quickly for us.

The US industry, comprising two shipyards and an array of suppliers, is currently able to build two Virginias a year, more or less. It’s also preparing to build ballistic-missile submarines of the forthcoming Columbia class. (I say ‘more or less’ because the industry has in fact been struggling with its workload. More on that soon.)

Australia should simply pay to gear up the US companies to build a third Virginia a year. It so happens that we have an authoritative and fresh quote for the price of doing that: US$1.5–2 billion ($2.1–2.8 billion), according to a Pentagon statement in June.

Considering that we formerly expected to pay at least $50 billion (in 2018 dollars) for 12 large diesel submarines of French design built in Adelaide, that gearing-up cost is manageable.

Anyway, creating an Australian construction establishment would cost more than expanding the current US one. Duplicating existing facilities usually does.

Production costs in the US would also be lower, because the experienced operation there would build at a rate three times higher than could be achieved in Adelaide.

On top of this, our boost to the US building rate would probably cut the unit cost from the current US$3.5 billion per Virginia. A saving of 5% sounds plausible. And the US Navy would get that benefit, too.

There are two complications in gearing up the US industry. One is that, since the companies are already struggling with demand, we would have to expect Washington to firm up the US’s capacity to a genuine two boats a year as we invested for its expansion to three.

Second, there’s a chance that the US will want to increase its own order rate this decade, sometimes adding a third boat a year for itself. That would increase the ramp-up challenge.

But there is nothing impossible about even a very large surge in nuclear submarine construction. It has indeed been done on a far greater scale before. In 1952, the US laid down one nuclear submarine, the first ever. Over the following three years it laid down only two more, but then five in 1956, two in 1957 and 10 in 1958.

Note, too, that we wouldn’t have to gear up the whole production process instantly, because various activities start at various times during the eight years in which a Virginia is built. Making one of these boats begins with orders for certain parts (mostly for the nuclear propulsion plant) two to three years before the main construction effort starts.

So the pacing issue is the notice needed to increase the production rate for those long-lead parts. Considering the speed of earlier ramp-ups, two years’ notice is probably enough.

Australia should immediately propose to pay to expand US capacity for making the long-lead parts.

Receiving submarines quickly is so important that we should do this even before the US agrees to supply Virginias to us at all (and it hasn’t, yet). If for some reason the whole possibility falls through, we will at least have provided the US with useful additional capacity, probably at a cost to us of no more than a few hundred million dollars.

This, then, is the proposed timetable: agree in 2021 to begin gearing up the US industry, commence long-lead production for the first boat in 2023, begin the main construction effort on it in 2025 or 2026, and take delivery in 2031. And we would order an additional Virginia each year, receiving the eighth in 2038.

Weary observers of Australian naval shipbuilding programs will roll their eyes at this, thinking that nothing works so smoothly; they might want to add two years to the schedule. Well, we could add those two years—and we’d still have eight submarines from the US as quickly as Adelaide could give us one.

But I would point out that when I say the US industry has struggled lately to deliver submarines on time, I mean that it has run months late—not years and years late, as we’re used to seeing here.

For even an off-the-shelf import program, a little development work would be needed. The Virginia class has never been an export design, so the US Navy would need to review it and remove features. At least those for handling nuclear weapons would need to come out. But four or five years would be available for this work before general construction of the first boat commenced. That should be plenty when the task is taking out functions, not adding them.

There would be one more time saving, probably worth at least a year. After that first submarine was delivered, it would quickly become operational, because it would just be one more boat in the US’s stream of reliable, ready-to-go Virginias. Also, it would probably have a largely US crew, since Australian sailors would at first be learning how to run it. And we’d use well-oiled US Navy procedures for working up that crew to operational status.

The first of anything is expensive. Theodore Wright studied this in the 1930s and found a mathematical relationship between how many of a thing have been made and how much cheaper and faster production becomes. Wright’s Law states that for every doubling of production, the cost drops by a certain percentage determined in large part by how complex the production line is.

It’s hard to imagine a more complex production line than that for nuclear submarines. Look at Britain’s difficulties as it builds seven boats in its Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) program.

Wright’s Law suggests that by the eighth and final nuclear submarine made in Australia—provided everything goes well—our production will be about half as efficient as the Americans who have already produced 19 out of a planned 66 Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

America’s shipyards currently produce 2.6 Virginia-class submarines each year, and some in Washington are lobbying for that to be increased. These American-designed and -built boats, bought in batches, are finished on time and on budget—two concepts that Wright’s Law doesn’t assume for the first dozen of anything so complex.

After a 17,500-man-year design investment, the sail-away cost of an American-made Virginia-class submarine currently stands at $4.8 billion. Generally, the total program cost (including things like support facilities in Australia) is 1.5 to 2 times the sail-away cost. This puts the total program cost per American-built submarine between $6.7 billion and $9.6 billion. Having them made in Australia will add billions to this figure, with a current upper estimate of $14 billion per boat. Going by our recent experience with the Attack class, and observing Wright’s Law, the final figure could be well beyond this.

Then there’s timing. In the US, a recent batch of nine Virginia-class subs was scheduled to take 10 years to produce. In a period when timing is critical to our national security, setting up production lines in Australia will add years, most likely over a decade, to the program. This isn’t due to any inherent weakness in Australian manufacturing; it’s largely due to the inefficiencies suffered in making the first batch of anything so complex.

Yet having our SSNs built in the US would depend on America’s willingness to increase its own production capacity. The US Congress has listed ‘the contributions that SSNs make to fulfilling [defense and national security] strategies’, and funding, as two factors influencing its decision to increase production. In terms of the US building our submarines, the AUKUS pact satisfies the first requirement, and Australia providing the funding answers the second. This means America would be able to scale up production to suit Australia’s demand.

Well over $35 billion and several years will be saved by making Australia’s submarines in the US.

And if the Americans build the submarines, Australia can leapfrog a generation of technology while refining the engineering skills required to design and manufacture autonomous underwater vehicles. Submarine design is far simpler when humans don’t need to live inside them. Breathable air, water, food, waste, medical, living spaces and some elements of protection from attack are all off the table with AUVs.

Fewer personnel are needed to operate AUVs. With the money saved by building the submarines in the US, Australia can invest a further $20 billion in developing an AUKUS industrial hub for AUVs in South Australia, using the formidable engineering skills already available there. Autonomous submarine technology will spur more innovation in Australia than building the non-nuclear parts of eight nuclear-powered boats. Australia will be able to export these autonomous submarines to its AUKUS partners.

The AUKUS announcement was a watershed for Australia. Nuclear submarines are clearly more effective than conventional submarines, yet we must choose carefully where to focus our efforts. The next generation of US nuclear submarine, the SSN(X), may be the last to require human crews. While there is understandable pressure to partly manufacture the nuclear submarines in Australia, it would be a bad decision.

Theodore Wright’s analysis provides us with a clear way forward. Building the submarines in the US won’t just save a prodigious sum of money and take precious years off the schedule. It will also dramatically improve Australia’s defence capabilities, aid the AUKUS alliance and foster a domestic supply chain for the next generation of defence equipment.

When journalists used to ask me whether I thought we should continue with the Attack-class submarine program, I’d answer with the old joke about the American tourist lost in the back blocks of Ireland. After struggling with his map, he finally sees a shepherd and asks for directions. ‘How do I get to Dublin?’ The wizened local ponders, then answers: ‘Well, I wouldn’t start from here.’

And that was the issue. I wouldn’t have started our transition from the Collins class with the Attack class, but once we were five years into that journey, was there an alternative? Well, the government has now chosen a new path, but as we ponder the road ahead of us, we have to admit we’re even further from Dublin. Defence had been saying the first Attack-class boat would be operational in 2034. It now believes the first future submarine will be in service two to four years later, which would get us to 2036–2038. Anthony Albanese, the leader of the opposition, has said the boats ‘would not be in the water until 2040’, which suggests that’s the date he’s been getting in his private briefings.

While we’ve been struggling with our map, time has continued to pass. Governments can make all the decisions they like, but just as Cher lamented, they can’t turn back time. Our submarine transition journey started with the 2009 defence white paper, which stated that Australia would acquire a fleet of 12 new submarines. Back then, the first boat was meant to be operational 16 years later, in 2025. Twelve years down the track, we’re looking at a date in the late 2030s—still at least 16 years away. Put another way, over the past 12 years we haven’t gotten a day closer to the goal.

Like many of you, we at ASPI are trying to work our way through what the government’s decision means. I’m starting by being agnostic about whether it’s a good idea or not, or a better one than the previous submarine plan, and simply trying to understand what’s involved in successfully transitioning from our Collins fleet to the future nuclear-powered (SSN) fleet. In particular, we’ll be looking at the key risks and what needs to be done to address them.

The first one that stands out is the capability risk associated with the transition’s new schedule. Trying to visualise that schedule is an assumption-rich activity, but we know some aspects of it. The Collins class was originally planned to start retiring from around 2025. As we moved through time and the future submarine schedule moved off into the future, it became clear that Defence would need to perform a life-of-type extension (LOTE) on some Collins boats to ensure they could serve long enough to prevent a capability gap emerging during the transition. Instead of retiring, the boats would go through an additional and enhanced full-cycle docking that would give them an additional 10 years of service.

As the future submarine schedule evolved, it became clear that a larger number of Collins would need to go through the LOTE, and we’ve now reached the point where Defence Minister Peter Dutton has stated that all six Collins will be put through LOTEs. The first one will start in 2026, be completed in 2028, and allow that boat to serve until 2038. Subsequent boats will follow on a two-year drumbeat. That’s the first key point to grasp. The LOTE was our strategic mitigator for the capability risk and we’ve already played that card before we start on our new journey.

We’ve a got a reasonable idea where the Collins can get to, but what is it trying to link up to at the other end? That’s where we need to make some assumptions. Let’s say the first SSN will be operational in 2038 in line with some of the government and Defence’s comments (we’ll look in future at whether this is a reasonable assumption). But we also need to understand the delivery schedule for subsequent boats. The Attack class was going to be delivered on a two-year drumbeat to support the goal of continuous naval shipbuilding. If you want continuous shipbuilding with a fleet of eight boats, then a three- to four-year drumbeat is necessary since submarines have a planned life of around 30 years. Doing it any faster than three years seems very hard given the cold start for our submarine industry, the large size of the boats and the unfamiliar technology. Plus, a roughly three-year drumbeat is what the United Kingdom’s Astute-class SSN program has achieved. So we’ll go with that.

I’ve entered those assumptions in a table. The first observation we can make is that there is no ‘float’ left in the schedule. The first Collins will be due to retire as the first SSN enters service. Already there’s no margin for any slippage.

Second, the Collins boats will have an average age of 43 at retirement. They’ll have gone through an extensive program of upgrades, but that’s about 50% longer than they were designed to last. Aside from the question of whether they’ll still provide a relevant capability into the 2040s, ageing systems face reliability issues.

Third, any SSN delivery drumbeat slower than two years means Collins boats age out faster than SSNs are delivered. That means the number of boats in the fleet will fall. With a three-year SSN drumbeat, the fleet will reach a low point of four submarines around 2046. It won’t get back to six, the current number of boats, until the mid-2050s and won’t reach eight until the end of the 2050s.

Finally, SSNs provide greater capability that conventional boats, particularly when long transits to the operating area are involved, as they are for our navy. But they still need to be available for operations. Four boats gets you only one or sometimes two available for operations.

Nothing is completely carved in stone here. The Collins could potentially be operated for longer, perhaps as a training fleet, helping to grow the larger number of submariners we’ll need for the SSNs. But this look at a schedule does suggest some high-priority activities to manage risk. One is examining whether we can break out of the timelines needed to build SSNs in Australia so we can get them faster. The other is looking at complementary technologies to hedge capability risk. I’ve noted previously that our submarine fetish means we have become obsessed with them—yet there are many other areas of technology that can deliver some of the effects we seek from submarines faster.

Over the coming weeks I’ll continue to unpack these issues. But there’s a sobering thought to finish up with. A couple of days ago a conversation with an industry colleague reminded me of a thought I had when the Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala tragically sank in a torpedo training accident on 21 April this year with the loss of all 53 crew. The parallels with where our navy will be in the late 2030s are now even more striking.

The Nanggala was 40 years old. Its last major refit had been completed nearly 10 years earlier. The Indonesian navy was in the process of bringing into service a new class of submarine, simultaneously growing the size of its force and introducing new technologies while needing to keep its older boat going. It no doubt would have been struggling to find sufficient experienced submariners to operate both classes. Meanwhile, Indonesia was being confronted with the coercive behaviour of an aggressive neighbour and its navy needed to demonstrate capability and resolve by showing it had effective submarines.

Capability transitions are difficult. The coming one to nuclear submarines will likely be the most difficult one the Australian Defence Force has faced. There’s no margin for error when dealing with submarines or nuclear safety, let alone both together, but we are already putting ourselves under pressure.

Amid the flags and fine words announcing the arrival of AUKUS, no one should mistake the reality that the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia each have their own desperate need for this quasi alliance to succeed.

After the debacle of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden needs a vehicle to refocus the US on the biggest strategic challenge of our age: an angry and authoritarian communist China.

Britain needs a foreign-policy focus after Brexit and has decided that it needs a launching pad into the Indo-Pacific.

And Australia needs friends after several years of being punished by Beijing for the sheer rudeness of failing to subordinate our national interests to China.

More than at any time since the since the end of World War II, the strategic interests of Australia, the US and the UK closely align. This must amount to more than just the self-admiration of like-minded democracies. We need to pool our scientific, industrial and defence capabilities in ways that add strength to a collective pushback against Beijing.

The US will put a price tag on giving Australia access to its closely guarded nuclear propulsion technology for a fleet of new submarines. Washington’s expectation is that Australia will not only look after its own security needs but also play a leading role in stabilising the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

This will come at a significant cost. We should work on the assumption that defence spending will grow from around 2% to 3% or 4% of GDP. To support a more prominent regional role, we also need to dramatically increase our spending on the anaemic and listless Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Canberra politicians and officials simply will not absorb the message that the strategic leadership role Australia needs to play, and which our allies expect of us, will cost dramatically more than we like to spend.

Time for some reality checks: Prime Minister Scott Morrison advised that there will be an 18-month period to scope out a nuclear propulsion pathway for Australian submarines, but he insists that these boats will be built in Adelaide.

We are six years into developing the Attack-class submarines and nowhere near a finalised design. By moving to nuclear power, we have now massively increased the technological challenges for Australian industry. Insisting on an Australian build will see a nuclear submarine delivered about four years later than the first Attack-class delivery date of 2034.

The UK and US are currently building nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines. Either would be a suitable option for Australia and we should resist the temptation to fiddle with the design to suit ‘Australian conditions’. Even if the intent is to build onshore in future, the immediate objective should be to get the first few Australian boats built in either the UK or the US.

If we can’t bring a first-of-class Australian nuclear-powered submarine into service within the decade, we should think again about starting down this track at all. Rather than seeking to relocate in short order the full intellectual property and industrial capability required to build nuclear-propelled submarines, why not as a starting point develop a model like the Joint Strike Fighter where Australia builds components used across the US or UK fleets?

Based on early briefings, it seems that the plan for these submarines is to repeat the capability design and development strategy that has just failed for the Attack class. This will not work in the timeframe needed.

Beyond just building the boats, an immense amount of work must be done to prepare for their arrival. The Royal Australian Navy will need a large cadre of nuclear-trained personnel, safety regimes will have to be updated, work must commence on a new east coast navy base. Port Kembla near Wollongong may be the best choice. Navy facilities at HMAS Stirling in the west and in Darwin must be expanded.

Defence released a statement yesterday saying the ‘Australian Government will no longer be proceeding with the Attack Class Submarine Program’. That project has become a disastrous case study in how not to acquire defence equipment.

Almost from the moment the French design was selected in April 2016, Australian governments ignored the need to explain the decision. Successive ministers left it to Defence officials to dismiss questions in parliamentary committees. It was as though Australia’s largest ever defence acquisition was never to be justified to the Australian people.

Malcolm Turnbull’s departure as prime minister left the Attack-class friendless and a Defence organisation dead in the water of public opinion.

This could easily happen again with, let’s call it, the AUKUS-class nuclear submarine. To deliver this boat, the government needs to construct a floating and watertight Defence organisation.

Substantial effort needs to be invested in our relationship with France, which is too readily dismissed by Australia’s outdated Anglo elitists. France is a critical partner for Australia in the Pacific and has pushed back against Beijing harder than many other European countries. Morrison must work to triage a valuable relationship with Paris.

Beyond submarines, yesterday’s announcement also promised Tomahawk cruise missiles for the navy, hypersonic weapons for the air force and ‘precision-strike guided missiles’ for the army, and there are plans for a range of exotic technologies including artificial intelligence and quantum computing. These acquisitions will transform the Australian Defence Force. Gone are the days of replacing old equipment with slightly more modern versions of the same thing.

A transformed ADF needs a new strategy. After the coming election a new defence white paper is needed. My advice would be for the government to produce that well away from the Department of Defence. New thinking is needed. We should take advantage of this AUKUS moment to fundamentally recast our defence policy, shed historical baggage and thoroughly modernise the ADF.

The People’s Republic of China and its usual array of backers will bemoan the ‘provocative’ arrival of AUKUS. However, thinking people inside the Chinese Communist Party will realise that AUKUS is here because of Xi Jinping’s decision to make China the assertive bully.

AUKUS is the best thing to have happened in years to give Xi pause in his international risk-taking. The stronger AUKUS is, the less likely it is that there will be an attack on Taiwan. Avoiding such an attack would be an invaluable outcome, one worth a submarine in its own right—and well worth the updating of our policy settings.

In Adelaide’s The Advertiser newspaper on 7 March, former defence minister Christopher Pyne said, ‘Then there is the nonsensical argument that the Attack Class submarines are no good because they aren’t nuclear. Almost all of these arguments are driven by people who either know nothing at all about submarines and defence or have outdated information that is no longer relevant.’ Pyne must therefore believe that Australia’s current and recent submarine commanding officers know nothing about submarines.

The 2016 defence white paper called for Australia’s future submarines to be ‘regionally superior’. As a former commander of the submarine force, I don’t know any submarine commanding officer over the past 30 years who has any doubt that, overall, nuclear-powered submarines are superior to diesel submarines of similar vintage. Australia’s new Attack-class submarines will probably be superior to most diesel submarines in our region, but they won’t be superior to China’s nuclear-powered submarines entering service in the 2040s and beyond. China’s navy is numerically larger than the US Indo-Pacific fleet now and is forecast to be more powerful than the American fleet by 2035. Australia’s 12th Attack-class submarine won’t enter service until around 2054 and will be in service until about 2080.

Pyne went on to say, ‘Australia does not have a nuclear industry. One cannot be created overnight.’ Pyne might have the cart before the horse. The Americans had their first nuclear-powered submarine in service before their first nuclear power station. The nuclear power station program in the US had been languishing until Captain, later Admiral, Hymen G. Rickover was appointed to head the nuclear reactor development for both naval and civil applications. In the early years, it was trained nuclear submariners leaving navy service and going into the commercial power sector that allowed that industry to grow rapidly.

The claim that Australia can’t have nuclear-powered submarines because it doesn’t have a nuclear industry has never been tested. An Australian ability to manufacture and reprocess nuclear fuel wouldn’t be essential in order to own and operate nuclear-powered submarines. Modern American and British submarines are built with nuclear fuel to last the life of the vessel. Japan has 33 nuclear reactors in power stations but doesn’t manufacture or reprocess nuclear fuel. This is also true of many countries in Europe and the Middle East that have nuclear power. Australia buys advanced combat aircraft and weapons that are manufactured overseas, so why not nuclear reactors and the whole-of-life fuel they require? Nuclear-powered submarines could be built in Australia with imported reactors.

Notwithstanding that reactors and fuel can be purchased from other countries (the OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights is from Argentina), why doesn’t Australia have a larger and more diverse nuclear industry? Of the top 20 economies (Australia is 13th), 17 have nuclear power. Australia, Italy and Saudi Arabia are the three exceptions. Italy imports 16% of its electricity from adjacent countries, more than half from France where it is produced from nuclear power. Saudi Arabia is acquiring nuclear power. And, as various countries commit to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, it’s noteworthy that no major economy intends doing so without nuclear power in the mix.

Diesel submarines have been around for about 120 years and nuclear submarines have been around for about 65 years, so neither form represents new technology. With a choice between the two technologies, the leading Western maritime powers of the US, UK and France all adopted the nuclear option with no diesel attack submarines, because nuclear power is the more effective and superior technology.

At the time when replacements for Australia’s Oberon-class submarines were being developed in the 1980s, it’s almost certain that neither the US nor UK would have sold nuclear submarines to Australia. With the Cold War at its peak, their focus was on the Soviet Union and the possibility of maritime warfare in the North Atlantic. France was just starting to develop its first nuclear-powered attack submarines. But what about when it came time to explore options to replace the Collins-class submarines?

The 2009 defence white paper announced that the Collins class would be replaced and Australia’s submarine force would be expanded to 12 boats. The defence minister at the time, Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon, directed the department that, in developing options, it was not to bring forward any nuclear proposal. Three years later, when he was no longer defence minister, Fitzgibbon admitted it was a mistake ruling out a nuclear option; however, neither of his successors altered the ‘no nuclear’ guidance to the department. Consequently, when the Coalition government came to power in 2013, only conventional options had been developed.

The notion of conventionally powered submarines’ suitability for Australia in the second half of this century needs to be challenged. The Attack-class program should proceed as replacements for the six Collins-class submarines to avoid a capability gap; however, options to acquire nuclear-powered submarines for the additional six boats and eventually replacements for the six Attack-class submarines should be pursued immediately.

Submarines could lead to a broad nuclear industry in Australia. This possibility will be the subject of a seminar to be held at ASPI on Thursday 15 July, jointly hosted by the Submarine Institute of Australia and UNSW Canberra. More information is available here.