Australia is planning to build some new submarines.
Never mind of the last ones we built, the Collins class at a cost of (apparently) $6billion, we ended up with 6 subs, at least two of which still need repairs to go in the water and according to some reports we only have the crew for one submarine anyway.
We're planning to build 12 submarines, bigger and more complex than before, at an anticipated cost of $35 billion. Never mind that I don't believe any "cutting edge" military build has ever, anywhere in the world, come out on budget, and we could apparently buy off the rack for half of that. We're going to have unique subs designed solely for Australia, built within Australia. I believe a politician at one point described it as a 'Nation Building exercise', or words something like that. (Yes, because spending billions of dollars on a few subs will prove so helpful to my children passing through school).
The argument passing around some circles now is that the submarines should be nuclear, not conventional. The objection that as we don't have a nuclear industry we couldn't service the damn things is waved away on a "Then we'll get a nuclear industry" basis, although one person advanced the idea of in fact leasing the submarines from the US, and letting the Yanks service them. The fact that apparently US law prohibits such is answered by the US altering their law in thanks for our help in Iraq.
I believe the military purpose for the submarines is to deny the ocean surrounding Australia to enemy shipping (with special note of the area north), and I accept the idea that one submarine the enemy doesn't know the location of can be more effective than half a dozen destroyers the enemy does (ratio pulled entirely out of my arse, and not to be taken literally)
Nb, from Wiki:
The role of the new submarines will be to collect intelligence, attack ships, submarines and land targets with missiles and torpedoes and land special forces teams. The submarines' capabilities will also act as a deterrent against military attacks on Australia.
So my question is, all service objections waved aside (perhaps the US does alter their laws, perhaps Q does come down and magically make a whole nuclear industry appear and have the entire voting population happy about it), what indeed would be the best submarine for us? Should we go nuclear, or are conventionals indeed quieter and better in an anti-ship role? What's best for Australia, in the future circumstances we can reasonably expect? Do we want bigger and more complex, able to fill more roles, or smaller and more focused? Cheaper and easier to maintain off-the-rack, or optimised special build?
Not that any of this will make any difference anyway; we're getting a dozen bigger and more complex conventional subs at a price of $35 Billion plus the rest, and God only knows where the crews are coming from, but I can't help wondering.
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I'd have thought buying the newest German boats would be way to go. They're cutting edge, non-nuclear but have air independent propulsion to give them more endurance and would be a fraction of the price of developing your own (as well as actually working).
Nuclear boats are, I think, more useful for if you want to project power, since the role envisaged for the Australian ones is defensive nuclear boats would be over the top.
Being surrounded by water, I would think it would be useful to develop the capability to make submersibles, submarines, and stuff like that. Especially if it gets you a whole nuclear industry to go with it.
Everything I've seen about the latest German subs has been pretty kickass. Maybe you could rent a couple of their design teams?
And like Phant says, you're surrounded by water. Naval power is a good thing for you.
I wouldn't suggest going nuclear unless you can do the whole thing in-house, including fuel them.
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Just because you're digging a bunch of glowing radioactive rocks out of Ayer's rock does not mean you have the massive and complicated nuclear infrastructure needed to create complicated nuclear power plants for military machines - particularly when you've never ever even done it before.
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Canada should get with you guys on that, actually. Especially since we've got the fucking Americans nosing around our northern waters. If we had the capability to send nuclear subs under the ice to patrol our own borders, that would pretty much eliminate any reason for the US to poke its nose in our territory without permission.
Saskatchewan could provide the Uraniun, Newfoundland and Labrador could bring back their shipbuilding industry, everybody wins!
Phred, I was referring to the commercialization of the technologies. As it is, I don't think many companies have the technical know how to build subs, and it could be a good spin-off industry. After the Navy has their boats, the yards aren't going to sit idle, they're going to put their skills to good use in building civilian subs.
We do have one of the largest uranium deposits. However our nuclear capability consists of one nuclear reactor mainly used to produce nuclear material for medical purposes, eg nuclear med scans, radiation therapy etc. We tend to export the stuff instead.
We don't have nuclear power plants and when people suggest it the politicians on the left block their ears and go "clean coal" for the win. And the greenies kick up a shitstorm. The politicians on the right go nuclear is great but refuse to support it with things like a carbon tax to actually make it competititve because climate change and global warming is leftist propaganda, or some such rubbish.
Given how well we made our previous subs I can't see the need for nuclear power subs given the state of our nuclear industry unless we use it as a spring board to improve more nuclear generation with the aim of eventually using it for civillian purposes. Oh yeah, did I say nuclear is good.
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I was thinking of cooperating in the design of the boats. Actual construction and fuelling could take place in the country of purchase, and I suppose there could be some modification for climate if needed. I assume Australia doesn't plan on cruising all the way to Antarctica and would stick to its local waters and maybe go into the Pacific and Indian oceans a bit. And Canada probably wouldn't go off on trips to the Azores or Bahamas or whatever and would stick to the adjacent areas in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic.
I wonder if that's actually something to consider when designing a sub? If it's meant to primarily patrol the Arctic Ocean with some patrolling the N. Atlantic and N. Pacific, would it have different design requirements than a boat patrolling around Australia?
And wouldn't the New Zealanders be upset if you brought it over their way?
mr friendly guy wrote:We do have one of the largest uranium deposits.
We have the largest single deposit known, 23% of the world's known reserves, and a whole bunch of Thorium to boot (tied with India for the #1 spot). In terms of production, we're second only to Canada, but iirc we have more actual ore (we just don't mine as much).
A scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'
It’s a trip of 7,844 nautical miles to circumnavigate Australia once and about 4,500 nautical miles from Perth to the Horn of Africa one way. This is longer then the straight line distance a USN submarine had to traverse to go from Oahu to Shanghai in WW2, and US subs refueled at Midway to help things along. The shear amount of range involved in operating around Australia demands nuclear power to respond in any useful amount of time. A diesel sub only cruises at about 10 knots when trying for optimal endurance. That’s besides all the other advantages of nuclear power in a sub. But I don’t see it ever happening.
No existing diesel sub meets Aussie requirements. They need something a lot bigger then usual, which could transport a pretty big torpedo-missile battery as a side benefit. Collines failed because they took a very small submarine of about 1,000 tons and scaled up the design to three times that without thinking. This could well turn into something bigger then a Tango.
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JointStrikeFighter wrote:How could developing our own shipbuilding industry possibly be useful to the nation *I'm a smarmy asshole*
Developing our industry is a point to consider. I personally don't give it much weight, as I suspect it'll wither on the vine, but that's only a personal opinion and I've been wrong in the past. As this is, boiled down, a strategic question, the country's industry should be considered.
Smarmy asshole? I'll concede I bought that with my tone.
I'll assume you're for home-built for the home industry boost.
While I have put nuclear on the table with the intervention of Q (about the only way I can imagine it happening in the foreseeable future), I will rule out nuclear weapons and other WMDs. That would be completely fairyland.
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Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
Actually, the problem with Australia, is whether the nation wants to uplift itself from a natural resource/agricultural economy, and some bits of services and high tech sectors, to a fully high technology economy. But I suspect this would demand quite a change in culture that most would not abide.
Otherwise, there's simply no way you could set up something as intensive as a shipyard industry or nuclear industry to service all this.
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As Friendly Doc already said, for Australia to have a tech shift towards nuclear power, it needs massive social change. The general opinion of it is fear, the the greens promote that fear like crazy. If clean fusion were magically cracked tomorrow, they'd still hold it back for several years to be 110% sure that there wasn't any radioactive waste, and it wasn't going to cause 'another Chernobyl'.
OK, lets have a look at the supply side of this equation.
There are five suppliers of diesel-electric submarines on this earth. The Russians offering Project 636 and Project 677, the Chinese offering Project 039 and 041, the Japanese building Soryu, a Franco-Spanish consortium offering Scorpene and a German-Swedish consortium offering Klasse 212 and Klasse 214. Everybody else who builds submarines licenses the design from one of those five.
Of these, the Japanese do not offer their boats for sale on the export market so they can be dropped from consideration. The Chinese boats are junk. The Russian designs were pretty good twenty years ago but their sensors, silencing and command systems are now decades behind world standard. They'e a good deal for a navy that isn't very serious about operations and/or is desperately short of cash but for a serious power-projection navy, they just don't hack it. So the Chinese and the Russians can be dropped from consideration. That leaves just the French-led team with Scorpene and the German-led team with Klasse 214.
There are five suppliers of nuclear-powered submarine technology on this earth. They are the United States with Virginia, Russia withe Project 885 and Project 971, China with Project 093, the U.K. with Astute and France with Barracuda. The Chinese boats aren't just junk, they're dangerous junk. The United States does not and will not export its nuclear technology. So they're both out. The U.K. is joined at the hip to the United States so they're out. That leaves Russia and France, both of whom have signed deals to export nuclear submarine technology. The Russian boats use highly-enriched reactor fuel, the export of which is prohibited under nuclear proliferation treaties. That's why they lease the boat to India, not sell it. If the boat needs to be refuelled, it goes back to Russia. Also, the Russian boats are years behind the curve on submarine technology. They're best boat is, at best, 1990s standard and that just doesn't hack it. So, we're down to France.
Just on plain availability, the choice is strictly confined. If the selection is for a diesel-electric it's either France or Germany. If its a nuclear boat, its France.
So, let's look at that nuclear and diesel-electric choice. This is largely a matter of geography. Australia's position in the world and its shape means the submarines have to have long range. Great. It's a long way from Australia to the operational scenarios. That means the boats have to have long range. They'll be operating in waters dominated by a very numerous navy with large numbers of assets albeit employing ASW operators with the technical skills of the Three Stooges. But, ASW is a numbers game and the sheer volume of assets is critical. So, the submarines will require a long underwater endurance. Because they have a long transit time, they require a large weapons load-out in addition to their large fuel supply to provide endurance on station. They also require a sophisticated sensor suite so they can locate and engage targets/missions without external assistance. So speaks the operational requirement.
Congratulations, the Australian Navy has just defined a nuclear-powered attack boat and they know it.
This isn't a new conclusion. Back when the Collins Class was being formulated, the fact that the operational requirement was perfectly well known and accepted. In fact, the operational requirement can only be met by the use of a nuclear-powered design. If the nuclear-powered option is ruled out, then the operational requirement has to be compromised in order to provide a submarine that can be built using diesel-electric technology. That's what basically lies behind the Collins Class; the competing design teams (France, the UK, Germany and Sweden) offered submarines that were the closest approaches to nuclear-powered performance that they could manage. The French, the Germans and the UK knew what they were doing and what the task required; their boats were big, heavy and very expensive. The Swedes didn't; they had no real idea of what building a modern ocean-going submarine involved let alone one with the Australian specs. All they had ever built were little coastal boats that tooled around in the Baltic. They got the idea that if they enlarged one of said coastal boats they could achieve miracles. And therein lay the seeds of the Collins class fiasco.
Since then, air-independent propulsion has arrived. Wheee, it allows us to build a diesel-electric boat with the performance of a nuclear boat. We know that because there's this article in Naval Technology that says so. Hang on a minute, that article was written by the AIP sales team. Could it be exaggerating a little? No, its exaggerating a LOT. What AIP buys you is the ability to charge batteries under water. It does not increase speed of advance (4 - 6 knots for a diesel boat, 30 knots for a nuke) it does not increase overall endurance and may actually reduce it. Depending on the technology chosen, it may preclude charging batteries while under attack.
There are two choices for AIP. One is the Stirling diesel; this allows the use of standard bunker fuel to run the diesels underwater without snorting. It's simple, relatively economic and noisy. The other is fuel cell technology. This requires LOX tanks to run a fuel cell system that generates electricity. It's blindingly expensive, very complex and silent. The Germans love it. Note that AIP in whatever form doesn't actually buy us very much so why is it being promoted so heavily? Well, back in the 1980s and 1990s people sold a lot of diesel-electric submarines on the export market and these boats were delivered at the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s. They're pretty much new. The catch is that the building surge meant that everybody who wants a new submarine pretty much has one. So, somehow, they have to be persuaded that the boats they just bought are obsolete and need to be replaced. Enter AIP. It's not a survival system for submarines, it's a survival system for submarine builders.
OK, so we have the choice between an AIP-equipped diesel-electric and a nuclear-powered boat. The politics against nuclear-power in Australia are pretty strong and appear to be firmly entrenched. That basic political constraint means that a diesel-electric boat is the preferred option. That means the bidders will be French and German and here's the catch. The Klasse 214 comes nowhere near matching the specification. Nor does Scorpene, even the largest member of the Scorpene family (the Spanish S80) doesn't come close. So, those two designs can, at best, be used as a basis for a much larger design that would meet spec. It doesn't really matter which is chosen, the two boats are very close in overall quality and I wouldn't care to chose between the two design teams.
However, at this point, something interesting happens. There already is a large, long-ranged version of Scorpene; its called Barracuda and it's nuclear-powered. As the French design team get to work on their Scorpene (AUS) bid, they'll use a conventionally-powered version of Barracuda as a base. Essentially, they'll put a diesel-electric + AIP power train into the Barracuda hull. Somebody is going to ask why are we doing this? Why are we compromising a perfectly good design?
Let's look at Barracuda a little more closely. As we do so, something becomes apparent; this is not the same as the US, UK and Russian boats. It's designed in a quite different way and the reason why comes from its design history. Back in the 1970s, the French produced the Agosta-70 design diesel-electric boats for their own navy. At the time they thought that quite a few navies would be interested in an export nuclear-powered submarine so they created a nuclear-powered version of Agosta-70. Because this was an export boat, it had to use low-enrichment fuel to avoid restrictions from non-proliferation treaties. So, they designed the power train to use low-enrichment fuel and accepted the shortish life between refuellings by designing the system to be very easy to refuel. The idea flew like the proverbial lead brick. Nobody was interested. So, the French Navy decided to adopt the design and put their own electronics into it (not the kiddie playschool stuff they give to export clients) as their Rubis class fleet SSN. Well, when they did, they got a horrible surprise. The basic hull form of the Agosta was totally unsuited to nuclear power employment. The Rubis class were about as noisy as a steam train with arthritis having an orgasm. The hull needed a major rebuild to "cure" the noise problem. This rebuild was called Amethyste (it's a contorted French acronym, AMElioration Tactique, HydrodYnamique, Silence, Transmission, Ecoute if you really must know) and the rebuilt submarines became the Amethyste class. Now, at that time, Agosta-70 was looking pretty ancient on the export market and an attempted upgrade, Agosta-90 wasn't much better (only Pakistan was dumb enough to buy it). So, somebody came up with a bright idea, why don't we put a diesel-electric power train in the Amethyste hull and that'll give us a world-class diesel-electric boat. So, they did, they tinkered with and improved it and cleaned it up and that gave them Scorpene. Then, since the French Navy now needed a nuclear-powered boat to replace the Amethyste class, they stuffed a nuclear reactor into the Scorpene hull and that gave them Barracuda (a little bit more complex than that but the short version will do). Now, put the kiddie playschool electronics back into Barracuda and we have a nuclear-powered export SSN.
Just recently, the French sold a package to the Brazilian Navy that includes four diesel-electric Scorpenes and one nuclear-powered Scorpene. You see, the French stil use that low-enrichment, easy-to-refuel reactor system so their submarine don't need to breach the non-proliferation treaties. In fact the nuclear-powered Scorpene doesn't need any shore-based nuclear infrastructure at all It uses exactly the same fuel rods that are used by French-designed commercial nuclear reactors. They can be changed either in Australia using existing shoreside infrastructure (a deliberate design choice by the French) or the boats can be sent back to France for refuelling once every ten years. The package bought by the Brazilians actually includes shoreside facilities for making their own fuel rods but that's their option, it isn't a necessary part of the deal. The idea that Australia would need an extensive shoreside nuclear power industry to support an SSN fleet simply isn't true for the nuclear-powered Scorpene. The boat was specifically designed not to need that. It would be needed for UK or US designs because they use highly enriched, weapons-grade fuel (and thus need refuelling once every thirty years if that) but the French boats don't.
So, putting it all together, my personal recommendation would be the purchase of an enlarged derivative of the Scorpene with DCNS being told to put in an unrequested second bid with nuclear-powered Scorpene as an alternative. That way Defence can either go with existing prejudices and buy the diesel-electric variant or (if they have a sudden attack of common sense) take the nuclear option. Or, they can get the first and they do a crafty switch to the second later.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Which particular treaties ban the export of high grade { >20 percent U235, > 12 percent U233, unsure for Pu } fissile material? How many of them have come into force this century?
As I understand it, under the NPT, a non-weapon State { eg, Brazil } can legally pursue high grade fissile for all bar device use - powering ships and submarines is not a problem. Diversion, of course, is another issue entirely.
Similarly, HEU export by at least one weapon State - the USA - has happened enough times to spawn a regulatory structure around it - the NRC. Was that permitted under treaties the US had ratified, or did it happen despite such ratification? Another instance, this time involving reactor fuel, is a 1998 Russo-German agreement involving approx 1200 kg U{90} supplied to the FRM-II research reactor near Munch.
Well, it's 2 am local and my keyboard is playing up on me, so I'll shut up now.
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fnord wrote:Which particular treaties ban the export of high grade { >20 percent U235, > 12 percent U233, unsure for Pu } fissile material? How many of them have come into force this century? As I understand it, under the NPT, a non-weapon State { eg, Brazil } can legally pursue high grade fissile for all bar device use - powering ships and submarines is not a problem. Diversion, of course, is another issue entirely.
The problem here is the definition of high grade. 20 percent enrichment for power stations etc is perfectly OK and that's what the French ships (surface and submarine) are designed to use. As I said, the fuel bars used in the French naval reactors are exactly identical to those used in commercial power stations and are handled the same way. That was a deliberate design choice. 20 percent is a "high" level of enrichment by commercial standards.
The enrichment levels used in US and UK naval reactors have much, much higher levels of enrichment than 20 percent. They need to be handled very carefully indeed. The Russians are intermediate between the two.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
If the Aussies really want nuke boats they could work with the Brazilians in order to reduce cost of development, but if they want to stick with SSKs an enlarged an upgraded TR-1700 is a possibility (it is much longer ranged than the largest Scorpene).
montypython wrote:If the Aussies really want nuke boats they could work with the Brazilians in order to reduce cost of development, but if they want to stick with SSKs an enlarged an upgraded TR-1700 is a possibility (it is much longer ranged than the largest Scorpene).
Except the TR-1700 is a long-obsolete design produced by a design team that doesn't exist any more (TR-1700 was more of a rival to Klasse 209 than anything else although, again, the situation is more complex than that). In addition, the TR-1700 design really, really sucks. It gets its long range by having fuel tanks stuffed into every tiny portion of the hull which means there are large numbers of oddly-shaped tanks. Maintenance is a real nightmare. Remember TR-1700 was part of the original competition for the Collins class and it was kicked out at an early stage. Why that happened was something of a mystery for a few years until the Argentines opened up and blew the gaff on how much trouble they were having with them,
The range thing is interesting. On paper, the TR-1700 has almost twice the surface range of a Scorpene (12,000 nm vs 6,500 nm) but expressed in terms of endurance, the Scorpene has more than twice the endurance (50 days as opposed to 30). That suggests that the stores capacity on the TR-1700 is disproportionate to the fuel stowage. The only real explanation for that is that TR-1700 was designed to run on the surface at high speed for long periods and thus gulp fuel.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Hey Stuart, what do you think of Canada's needs for a sub? We have all that coastline in the north to patrol, plus our eastern and western coasts as well. Would it be practical for Canada to get submarines, nuclear or diesel? Or would we be better off with ice breakers for the same price?
From rereading the torturous development history of the Collins class, if the Australians need a long ranged SSK it would need to be dimensionally comparable to the Japanese Soryu class or the Soviet Tango class in order to have the requisite range and performance necessary to fulfill its mission requirements. Whatever sub design selected would essentially be a de novo design for all intents and purposes.
Phantasee wrote:Hey Stuart, what do you think of Canada's needs for a sub? We have all that coastline in the north to patrol, plus our eastern and western coasts as well. Would it be practical for Canada to get submarines, nuclear or diesel? Or would we be better off with ice breakers for the same price?
Canada does have subs, four diesels of the Victoria (formerly Upholder) class that we got off the British because they where going for an all nuke sub force. They've been contriversial due to problems bringing them back to service after they were mothballed. As such I'd be curious to hear opinions from board denizens on whether they are capable boats that we got a bargin on like they were initially touted to be and if they meet Canada's particular needs.
From my very limited knowledge of such things I'd say we'd be better off with nukes given that the number one reason why we'd want a submarine force is to enforce sovreignty in the high arctic where things like range and ability to operate for long periods under sea-ice are major factors. But given Canada's limited military procurement budget I don't know if the Victoria's fill our needs at a better cost.
"
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