John Newman
The Bunker Group
A big open question (maybe the soon to be announced DSU and an eventual update of the NSP will provide some answers?), my question is:
“After spending many 10s of billions of dollars setting up an SSN manufacturing industry, how do we sustain it between the production of the original eight AUKUS SSNs and their eventual replacement class?”
Roll the clock back to the Attack class and the plan was to produce 12 x Attack boats.
Assuming the Attack boats had an approx 30 year service life, it would have been possible to produce four batches of ‘three’ with an approx 24mth drumbeat, possibly stretch it a little between each evolved batch, and by the time the 12th boat was completed you started on boat ‘13’ which would become the replacement for boat ‘1’ of the first batch.
This same approach doesn’t work with 8 x AUKUS SSNs, 24mth drumbeat doesn’t work, a 36mth drumbeat doesn’t work, you’d have to stretch it to ‘at least’ a 48mth drumbeat or so, that would be rather expensive and stupid to say the least.
The US of course produce large classes of SSNs, with SSBN construction sprinkled in between.
The UK just manages to do it by producing SSNs followed by SSBNs, and repeat that process as necessary.
Back here in Oz, how do we sustain that very very expensive infrastructure and workforce? After only eight boats, how?
As we and the UK will be jointly producing the AUKUS class clearly the production process has to be reasonably ‘aligned’ with each other, they of course have the luxury of starting on SSBNs as their ‘gap filler’.
One thing I didn’t mention is the service life of the AUKUS boats, from what I understand the PWR3 reactor has a 30 year service, give or take.
What are some possible solutions?
We could produce more than eight SSNs (let’s not forget the previous Morrison LNP Government used the words ‘at least eight’ subs).
Would it be viable to add a ninth or even a tenth boat? Would that allow for sustainment of the industry?
Can we ‘link’ into the UK supply chain? Can we produce sections or modules for future UK SSBNs to fill the gap?
And/or in those ‘lean’ years, can we plug into the US SSN and SSBN supply chain?
I’m all for SSNs for the RAN, and I’m all for as much local manufacture and ultimately assembly as is possible, but how do we sustain the manufacture process? How do we avoid a future SSN ‘Valley of Death’ situation?
How???
“After spending many 10s of billions of dollars setting up an SSN manufacturing industry, how do we sustain it between the production of the original eight AUKUS SSNs and their eventual replacement class?”
Roll the clock back to the Attack class and the plan was to produce 12 x Attack boats.
Assuming the Attack boats had an approx 30 year service life, it would have been possible to produce four batches of ‘three’ with an approx 24mth drumbeat, possibly stretch it a little between each evolved batch, and by the time the 12th boat was completed you started on boat ‘13’ which would become the replacement for boat ‘1’ of the first batch.
This same approach doesn’t work with 8 x AUKUS SSNs, 24mth drumbeat doesn’t work, a 36mth drumbeat doesn’t work, you’d have to stretch it to ‘at least’ a 48mth drumbeat or so, that would be rather expensive and stupid to say the least.
The US of course produce large classes of SSNs, with SSBN construction sprinkled in between.
The UK just manages to do it by producing SSNs followed by SSBNs, and repeat that process as necessary.
Back here in Oz, how do we sustain that very very expensive infrastructure and workforce? After only eight boats, how?
As we and the UK will be jointly producing the AUKUS class clearly the production process has to be reasonably ‘aligned’ with each other, they of course have the luxury of starting on SSBNs as their ‘gap filler’.
One thing I didn’t mention is the service life of the AUKUS boats, from what I understand the PWR3 reactor has a 30 year service, give or take.
What are some possible solutions?
We could produce more than eight SSNs (let’s not forget the previous Morrison LNP Government used the words ‘at least eight’ subs).
Would it be viable to add a ninth or even a tenth boat? Would that allow for sustainment of the industry?
Can we ‘link’ into the UK supply chain? Can we produce sections or modules for future UK SSBNs to fill the gap?
And/or in those ‘lean’ years, can we plug into the US SSN and SSBN supply chain?
I’m all for SSNs for the RAN, and I’m all for as much local manufacture and ultimately assembly as is possible, but how do we sustain the manufacture process? How do we avoid a future SSN ‘Valley of Death’ situation?
How???
