Sub experts urge Scott Morrison to go on Attack
Ben Packham
Some of the nation’s most experienced submariners are urging the government to slash years from the delivery of the nation’s $90bn Attack-class submarines by designing the boats around the clock and dramatically reducing their construction schedule.
The plan, obtained by The Australian ahead of Scott Morrison’s meeting this week with French President Emmanuel Macron, calls for the government to pile pressure on France’s Naval Group to “expedite Attack” by requiring the company to run a design team in each time zone.
It also calls for the government to push the capabilities of its soon-to-be-built digital shipyard in Adelaide, reducing the construction “drum beat” to one year per boat after the first Attack-class sub is “debugged”.
The government would have to shoulder additional risk but the reward would be the first Attack commissioned as early as 2030 – rather than the scheduled 2034 – and potentially another eight produced by 2040.
Retired submarine commander Peter Briggs and retired submarine warfare expert commodore Terrance Roach, together with Anzac-class frigate shipbuilder John White, said dual design teams had been used successfully on the Collins-class design and could help deliver the Attack-class boats sooner.
“The best way out of the swamp we are in is to speed up the Attack-class program and make it work earlier,” Rear Admiral Briggs said.
The group said getting on with the Collins-class “life-of-type-extension” program was vital to address medium-term capability risks, and urged a “rapid assessment” of a new “Son of Collins” boat “to provide leverage over Naval Group” and hedge against failure of the Attack program.
It said after years of delays, “decisive” action was required.
The troubled Attack-class program, at an impasse over the price of the detailed design contract, will be top of the agenda when the Prime Minister meets Mr Macron in Paris on Wednesday (AEST).
Mr Morrison is expected to seek a commitment from the majority French government-owned Naval Group to dedicate more resources to the Attack-class program, and work more collaboratively with Defence.
It’s unclear whether the company will free-up the necessary capacity to work on the Australian boats, as its top priority will be the delivery of France’s next generation of ballistic missile submarines, due to enter active service in 2035.
Naval Group chief Pierre-Eric Pommellet said in February “the whole company will be mobilised” to deliver the new French subs.
Rear Admiral Briggs said running two design teams – one in Australia, one in France – would allow construction on the first boat to get under way sooner.
“The government has to force the French to put a second design team on the program, exploiting the time difference between the two countries to speed up the design process, but the design must be Australian-led,” he said.
The proposal follows a report by some of the country’s leading naval shipbuilders, revealed by The Australian last week, that warned that the Morrison government’s timeline for extending the life of the Collins-class subs was too ambitious, risking a major capability gap by the 2030s.
Senate estimates heard last October that the planned two-year construction drum beat for the Attack-class submarines was the result of workforce planning and the need to avoid a “valley of death” at the end of the program.
Submarine program manager Greg Sammut said the program could be compressed if necessary.
“The submarine construction yard will have the capacity to produce more than one submarine every two years,” he said.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said the government needed to do everything it could to bring forward the Attack-class build. “I have never understood how … it is still a decade before you get to construction,” Mr Jennings said. “For God’s sake, we fought a war in that time.
“I would be saying to Defence, ‘Tell me how you can squeeze two years out of the waiting period before we start constructing’.
“Rather than 2034, what if we said 2031 was the objective?
“Defence would run around and tear their hair out and then ultimately come back with a plan saying ‘This is how you would do it. You will probably have to accept more risk, but that’s how it goes.’ ”
Mr Jennings said the two-year construction drum beat was “always about keeping industry going” and a “valley of death” at the end of the program could be avoided by building more than 12 submarines.
Rear Admiral Briggs is a former submarine commander who later oversaw the introduction into service of the Collins-class submarines from 1999 to 2001.
Commodore Roach is a former submarine warfare specialist and former director of Defence’s Submarine Warfare Systems Centre.
Dr White was chief executive of Transfield and Tenix Defence during construction of the Anzac-class frigates, and co-author of the White-Winter review to sort out problems with the navy’s Air Warfare Destroyers.
Canberra and HMS Choules
