If it's off the table then we may as well scrap it now because it means we are not even slipping into a death valley for the work force and industry that will grow around the submarines but rather diving headfirst into it. This quite literally is taking every lesson learnt on what we shouldn't do and doing the opposite.
“Can you have your cake and eat it too?”
Under the previous plan for 12 Attack class, yes you can.
The RAN was to receive a new boat every two years, or 24mths, (possibly a slightly bigger gap between the batches of three), industry could easily be sustained, after the 12th boat, industry starts on the next batch, the 13th is delivered, 1st boat retires, and on it goes.
And it also prevented a capability gap (Collins class boats retire every two years as planned).
But....... that’s all changed now with the number of boats being reduced down to 8 from 12.
So who gets priority now? Industry or the RAN?
My opinion it should be the RAN, it should receive the appropriate number of boats at the appropriate intervals.
Going to a 36-48mth drumbeat night be great for industry, it would be like being on a paid ‘go slow’ only working half a week, only work 4-6 hours a day, not very good for the RAN.
We might as well call the new SSNs ‘The Leap Year’ class.
I’m all for having a sustainable submarine manufacturing industry, but NOT at the expense of the RAN receiving what it needs in sufficient numbers and within a reasonable timeframe too.
So what’s the solution?
* do we shorten the service lives of very very expensive submarines that would probably have a 30yr reactor life?
* do we have ridiculously long drumbeat? 36-48mths?
* do we go beyond the ‘at least eight’ to ‘at least ten’ or more?
Here’s one idea from left field...
We do a deal with either the UK or US (depending on which design is chosen), to become part of their supply chain.
They supply completed sections to us (eg, back half complete with reactor), to get the RANs fleet of SSNs operational in a shorter time.
And then in between our build/replacement cycles, we build non reactor sections for them.
Is that a possible compromise?
Anyway, we have another year or so ahead of us to speculate as to the path Government will take.
Even then I would imagine a lot of questions will remain unanswered.