Tag Archive for: UUVs

Australian SSNs will open up opportunities for advanced undersea operations

The announcement of the agreed pathway for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) under the AUKUS deal provides clarity about how and when Australia will have this important capability.

The process begins with an increased tempo of visits to Australia by the US Navy this year and by the Royal Navy from 2026. From 2027, HMAS Stirling in Western Australia will receive rotations of SSNs from the US and UK. The next step will occur in the early 2030s, when Australia will buy the first of three, and potentially up to five, US Virginia-class SSNs. These purchases will allow the Royal Australian Navy to avoid a capability gap as its Collins-class conventional submarines approach obsolescence before the first ‘SSN AUKUS’ boats appear in the early 2040s.

The new SSNs will be built in the UK and Australia in the 2030s and 2040s and form the long-term basis for both nations’ submarine capability, eventually replacing the Virginia-class SSNs as they retire in the 2060s. A fleet of at least eight SSNs will be acquired under the plan.

It’s a long-term program stretching for decades into the future. And that future will inevitably involve more advanced undersea warfare capabilities—which the AUKUS pact recognises as a priority technology under its second pillar.

A key will be enhancing networked command and control in undersea warfare. The oceans are largely opaque to traditional radio transmissions, and submarines have historically been reliant on very low-frequency (VLF) radio for communications. But the nature of VLF means that transmission rates are extremely slow, making it impossible to do anything more than send simple text messages.

Two possibilities that could open up the undersea environment for high-speed data networks are quantum communications and high-bandwidth laser-optical communications that can reach submarines several hundred metres below the surface. Fixed sonar arrays and the uncrewed undersea vehicles now emerging as a new type of undersea warfare capability could also allow easier underwater communications.

In particular, the role of advanced uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) encompasses the artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced undersea warfare priorities in pillar 2 of AUKUS. UUVs are a natural partner to advanced crewed submarines such as the Virginia-class SSNs and the future SSN AUKUS boats. It’s important that UUVs can be deployed, employed and recovered directly from the RAN’s future SSNs, and that should influence the design of SSN AUKUS.

A larger class of UUV—extra-large UUVs, or XLUUVs, such as the US Navy’s Orca—have the potential to operate independently or as a crewed–autonomous team underwater. The Virginia-class SSNs and SSN AUKUS must be able to work with the US Navy’s Orca-type XLUUVs. Australia’s efforts in this area include Anduril Corporation’s Ghost Shark, which is expected to be developed into an XLUUV.

Although the focus has understandably been on the pathway to acquiring SSNs, this capability should be seen as a component of a system of systems in 21st-century undersea operations. Crewed submarines such as the Virginia or SSN AUKUS boats will operate alongside XLUUVs and smaller UUVs deployed from the submarine. They’ll be connected by information networks using quantum or laser-optical communications.

Submarines have long been reliant on the ubiquitous sonar but, by the 2050s, Australia’s SSNs are likely to have a far greater understanding of the undersea environment by being able to ‘plug and play’ with a variety of sensors and platforms. In acquiring Virginias and SSN AUKUS, this more complex undersea environment is a priority in considing how the SSNs will be employed.

Australia’s defence planners must respond to the reality that our adversaries are developing similar capabilities. China, for example, has invested heavily in developing AI-controlled UUVs that could be used for anti-submarine missions. It is making steady progress on quantum communications technologies, as well as laser-optical systems that could open up new paths for high-speed underwater communications.

It may become easier to detect submarines using new ways of peering beneath the waves. A 2020 report published by the Australian National University’s National Security College identified potential disruptive advances in technologies to detect nuclear-powered submarines. In asking whether the oceans might ever become transparent as a result of technological innovation, the report suggested that systems such as satellite-mounted remote-sensing systems, and other types of sensor meshes integrated with AI, could pinpoint submarines at depths of up to 500 metres.

Does this mean that Australia’s investment in SSNs is wasted? Not at all, but it may become much more important in a less opaque ocean for crewed submarines to work with UUVs and operate in a networked undersea environment in new ways. In the same way that crewed military aircraft such as the F-35A joint strike fighter will employ ‘loyal wingmen’ such as the MQ-28 Ghost Bat to penetrate ahead of them in a contested air environment, Australia’s SSNs must be able to network with and employ a range of advanced UUVs that can operate independently and are armed to deal with an adversary’s UUVs or submarines.

Investment in AUKUS’s pillar 2 with a focus on advanced technologies is just as vital as acquiring the SSNs. Simply operating nuclear submarines without their having the ability to network with other capabilities still being developed would make them more vulnerable to swarms of intelligent and autonomous UUVs operating off the loop. To avoid sending crewed submarines into waters where they’ll be more exposed, it makes sense to dispatch sophisticated UUVs into harm’s way. The undersea regions will become less opaque, making crewed submarines more vulnerable to detection. It’s vital that Australia’s SSNs be seen as part of a broader networked undersea system and that we make rapid progress on developing and employing sophisticated XLUUVs and new approaches to undersea communications.

Australia’s defence conversation must be about more than submarines

Most of Defence’s grilling in Senate estimates yesterday was about plans and issues around getting eight nuclear submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. There was forensic questioning about who said what to whom about the cancellation of the French contract and about advice given to Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the timetable for the first nuclear submarine. We heard that the goal is to get at least one before 2040, and to ‘move things left if possible’ to get more than one by then.

Great slabs of questioning focused on workforce and immediate job losses and on whether Defence would have a ‘capability gap’ because the current Collins-class submarines might be retired or ineffective before the nuclear boats turn up in any numbers.

Watching the exchange between shadow foreign minister Penny Wong and Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, head of the Nuclear-Powered Submarine Task Force, you got the feeling that there’d be a national cheer if a nuclear submarine was scheduled to arrive in December 2038 instead of January 2039, with congratulatory phone calls from the Pope, the Queen—and maybe the Dalai Lama. A further round of calls could come when the subs, not just their schedule, actually appear.

I get that the initiative to partner with the US and UK on nuclear submarines through AUKUS is a hugely important one for the security of our nation and for the wider Indo-Pacific. And I understand that submarines are powerful weapons that make potential adversaries think twice.

But we risk continuing a national obsession—seeing submarines as the one ‘magical animal’ defining the Australian Defence Force and our national security. That obsession has arguably done more harm than good over the 12 years since the 2009 defence white paper called for Australia to have not six Collins submarines, but 12 new ones. We’ve turned pursuing the perfect at the expense of the good into an art form.

It’s important to work out how we get nuclear submarines into service safely and without delay. But prioritising acceleration of the fiendishly complicated set of activities to create everything we need to help build and then crew, operate and sustain these nuclear-powered weapons because we want to rapidly increase the ADF’s offensive power would be a mistake. It may simply result in a troubled and delayed program. We are replete with examples where Australia’s (and other) defence organisations have done just that.

Nuclear submarines will be a very potent deterrent weapon—if the plan for delivering them prioritises effective capability over secure jobs for people interested in working on and in them. We also need to stick to the plan once we have it and sustain public and political support for it.

The national conversation we should be having, though, is bigger and different to this, and it starts by putting the submarine obsession into perspective.

There are many ways to make Australia a harder military problem for potential adversaries and many of these also help Australia contribute to deterring a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, notably one begun by an aggressive China. Submarines are one contribution to that effort.

The priority for political debate and pressure on the government and Defence to deliver fast needs to move from the submarine program to everything else that the ADF can be equipped with over the next 1, 3, 5 and 10 years. This was raised by Liberal Senator and former general Jim Molan at the Senate estimates hearing in a brief but insightful exchange with Defence leaders. Molan asked what effects submarines delivered that other capabilities couldn’t. The answer from Chief of Navy Michael Noonan was that the only one was ‘persistence’. The secretary, Greg Moriarty, and Chief of the ADF Angus Campbell also suggested that other capabilities could deliver those effects.

But the focus shifted straight back to the magical obsession with submarines. This matters, because it flavours a national debate in ways that imply that on any given day, Australia is at the mercy of its enemies if some number of submarines—more than the current six—are not about to embark on patrols. Regardless of what else we, let alone our allies and partners, have and are doing. And AUKUS, the Quad and the Five Eyes partnerships tell us we have engaged and powerful partners.

What might more of this valuable national debate time be spent on if we can lift our attention for a moment from submarines, submariners and shipyard workers old and new?

How might we spend some of the $44.6 billion annual defence budget to make the ADF more capable and powerful?

The conversation we should have is about how other systems can provide the military effects we need in the short- to medium-term faster, more affordably and with less risk than SSNs. It should be about unmanned undersea systems (uncrewed submarines) which already exist in both the UK and US and which we can make here well before 2026. About investing in more Boeing’s Loyal Wingman unmanned aircraft and larger, longer-range versions of them than manned F-35 fighters. We should do what Greg Mapson, former commander of the navy’s unloved mine countermeasures arm, suggested recently: acquire large numbers of sea mines and work out how to deploy them in places that worry potential adversaries using existing ADF ships, planes and submarines—and the unmanned subs we should be getting in the water.

And at least some quality time should be spent examining and testing Defence plans to make some of the advanced missiles the ADF has and is buying—including long range strike missiles.

We might all benefit from hearing how Defence can adopt NASA’s incredibly successful approach to partnerships with space start-ups like those that rapidly turned into Blue Origin and Space X. NASA’s open mindedness to doing things differently to the well-worn development and acquisition manual has resulted in a new, faster, cheaper business model for satellites, space vehicles and their launch and resupply.

The particularly important missing part of this conversation is an overriding interest in holding government officials (military and civilian), ministers, corporate leaders and project managers to account for plans and investment that have key delivery dates, and doing so while they are still in their jobs.

And we need to hold them to account after empowering them with resources and allowing them to take some risks and escape the interminable processes and layers we have inflicted upon ourselves with just about any important public or private undertaking.

This isn’t about ‘captain’s calls’ or eliminating paper trails. It’s about how we can shift from engineering-era acquisition, development and approval processes, and contractual relationships to processes designed around the much faster digital design and production processes we see with SpaceX and NASA—or Atlassian or DefendTex. In timeframes that don’t start with skilling up our grandchildren.

Government and commercial partners in Israel would be able to help us here too because timely improvements to Israeli defence capability are important to them and they are good at doing practical things to achieve them.

This different national conversation will test the bipartisanship we know Australia needs on national security. It’ll also demonstrate whether we all really understand the security environment we are living in. Unlike hypothetical discussions about 2039 and 2040, it’ll ensure that at least some of the intense debates we’re having are about what we’re doing that helps us in the here and now.

Unmanned systems are the future, and Australia’s navy needs to get on board

In the next 15 years, the development of unmanned systems in the air, on and under the waves and on land, alongside sophisticated networks of ‘sensors and shooters’, is likely to accelerate. Australia must be ready to respond. In a speech at the recent 2019 Sea Power conference in Sydney, Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds argued that:

The challenge for Navy, for Defence and for the nation, is how to remain flexible enough in defence acquisition to augment major platforms using new and emerging technologies to secure both our offensive and defensive advantages … Unmanned underwater, air and surface vehicles assisted by artificial intelligence are other rapidly emerging areas of technology that will change traditional ways of thinking about naval warfare and sea control.

At the moment, especially in relation to unmanned systems, the Royal Australian Navy’s mindset isn’t likely to meet the challenge identified by the minister. The large platforms that will come into operational service after a long acquisition cycle are in danger of being rendered impotent in the face of swift changes in new technologies, including unmanned autonomous systems.

The navy is currently focusing on small, tube-launched unmanned underwater vehicles that can undertake basic mine-clearance tasks or surveillance. But that emphasis may prove to be misplaced if such systems are overtaken by much more capable platforms that can operate entirely independently from manned submarines.

Fully autonomous unmanned underwater and surface vehicles with global range, extended time on station, and sophisticated sensor and weapons capabilities are likely by the mid-2030s, at relatively low cost and without the personnel challenges that manned naval vessels bring.

Both the US and UK navies are looking to acquire extra-large UUVs. The US Navy reportedly has a contract with Boeing for five Orca XLUUVs at a total cost of $300 million and an entry into service by 2022. It has sailed its Sea Hunter unmanned surface vehicle across the Pacific, in what may be the beginning of a transformation into a mixed manned–unmanned fleet.

If it followed the US and UK examples, by 2035 the RAN could introduce a fleet of 24 XLUUVs for about $1.5 billion, plus operating costs and the cost of building robust command-and-control networks. That’s about a quarter of the cost of a single Attack-class boat. That sounds a very attractive proposition for expanding the navy’s combat mass through unmanned systems at a lower cost compared with additional crewed platforms.

This is not a call to scrap the Attack-class submarine or abandon the Hunter-class frigate. It is a call to strengthen our emphasis on building manned–unmanned teaming at sea. We also need to consider the role of unmanned systems, not just as a niche capability akin to a small recoverable torpedo, but as an entirely new class of primary military capability for the Australian Defence Force.

Australia should be considering how unmanned systems, on and under the waves—operating entirely independently from manned platforms when necessary, but as part of a teaming approach when possible—can be incorporated into the ADF’s future force structure. We should aim to have a mix of manned and unmanned platforms at sea, in the air and on land, including sophisticated long-range, long-endurance and armed autonomous platforms.

Above all, we need to be boldly imaginative. Constraining our thinking to tube-launched UUVs on the Attack submarines is neither bold nor imaginative. Once we cast aside orthodox mindsets and ask more forward-looking questions, innovative thinking can be more easily take hold.

How might our fleet of Attack-class subs work with a platform similar to the Orca XLUUV or Sea Hunter USV in future war? Could we use such unmanned systems to control key maritime straits to prevent a major-power adversary from projecting naval forces into our maritime approaches, or to act as forward sensors for our shooters, resident on our naval surface combatants?

In an era of advanced supersonic anti-ship missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles, deploying crewed naval surface combatants such as the Hobart-class air warfare destroyers or Hunter-class frigates in heavily contested environments such as the South China Sea could be disastrous. It’s better to rely on large, long-range unmanned systems that could give the ADF the ability to go into harm’s way without risking heavy loss of life.

Unmanned autonomous systems have enormous growth potential that if fully developed could remake the navy. One debate on capability that keeps re-emerging is whether Australia needs fixed-wing naval airpower and, if so, whether we should acquire a squadron of STOVL (short take-off and vertical landing) F-35B joint strike fighters to provide that capability, perhaps operating from an adapted Canberra-class landing helicopter dock ship.

If we’re thinking about how best to incorporate unmanned systems into the ADF in a more holistic way, rather than F-35Bs on a converted LHD offering only a 70% solution, it may be better to locally design and construct a purpose-built vessel to support an entirely unmanned air wing.

This could comprise fixed or rotary-wing UAVs such as the Northrop Grumman Firescout or the US DARPA’s Tern, for naval intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as fixed-wing armed UCAVs to conduct strikes and to support naval air defence at long range. The latter could, for example, be based on a navalised variant of the Boeing Australia ‘airpower teaming system’ loyal wingman concept.

The minister set a challenge for Australian defence industry, stating that:

Industry must do its part—from research and development, to construction; from through-life support to disposal. We need construction infrastructure to deliver the projects; and the workforce to do everything from designing and building ships and submarines, to integrating combat systems and managing the complexity of major programs.

Developing a vessel designed for fixed-wing naval aviation capability, based on emerging unmanned autonomous systems, would enable Australia’s defence industry to contribute directly to meeting the challenge posed by the minister. Navy and Defence should be bold enough to make that happen.