Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0

[John Newman]

" If you were going to add additional submarines to our industrial base that would be detrimental for us."

So Australian politicians are detrimental to the US Navy. Good to know.

Pretty damming, then adding the UK is in the same situation seals it. No early submarines coming from anywhere. No magic dream boats. What unsurprising news. Not sure what Dutton was alluding to or he was talking to given this. Maybe he can explain. Maybe he had seen under siege and thought he could steal a few submarines and a battleship from the US with some nuclear weapons without them knowing..
View attachment 49622

Collins LOTE, goes ahead, Collins come out of the water, Hobarts come out of the water for their upgrade, Anzacs need life extension to make 2045 and upgrade, they come out of the water... The new OPV doesn't have a gun, it needs to come out to have a 25mm gun fitted...

Super dooper.

I’d be pretty confident in saying that US Vice Admirals don’t make US Government policies and decisions, equally senior Sirs in the RAN don’t make Australian Government policies and decisions either too.

As to Duttons comments, maybe he knows more than we do?

Who’s to say that a ‘political’ solution wasn't being discussed where the US Government was prepared to give up two production slots to Australia to allow for early delivery if we chose the Virginia design?

Wouldn’t be the first time the US Government has given up production slots.

Until we get the official announcement next March, I wouldn’t rule anything in or out, and that includes a hybrid Astute, with US reactor, combat and weapons systems.

 

[Redlands18]

I’d be pretty confident in saying that US Vice Admirals don’t make US Government policies and decisions, equally senior Sirs in the RAN don’t make Australian Government policies and decisions either too.

As to Duttons comments, maybe he knows more than we do?

Who’s to say that a ‘political’ solution wasn't being discussed where the US Government was prepared to give up two production slots to Australia to allow for early delivery if we chose the Virginia design?

Wouldn’t be the first time the US Government has given up production slots.

Until we get the official announcement next March, I wouldn’t rule anything in or out, and that includes a hybrid Astute, with US reactor, combat and weapons systems.

Actually, in the ABC article provided by @seaspear above, the UK DEFSEC mentions the possibility of an AUKUS Sub design for all 3 Navies.

 

[John Newman]

Actually, in the ABC article provided by @seaspear above, the UK DEFSEC mentions the possibility of an AUKUS Sub design for all 3 Navies.

Like I said, a future submarine could be a hybrid, could be a hybrid Astute, could be a hybrid of SSN(R) or SSN(X).

My selection, in order, is a hybrid Astute (US reactor, combat and weapons system), an out of the box Virginia, the outside selection is SSN(R/X) but I think they are maybe too far down the road (design wise) to meet the required in service date.

Anyway, just have to wait until March next year for the real answer.

 

[hauritz]

I’d be pretty confident in saying that US Vice Admirals don’t make US Government policies and decisions, equally senior Sirs in the RAN don’t make Australian Government policies and decisions either too.

As to Duttons comments, maybe he knows more than we do?

Who’s to say that a ‘political’ solution wasn't being discussed where the US Government was prepared to give up two production slots to Australia to allow for early delivery if we chose the Virginia design?

Wouldn’t be the first time the US Government has given up production slots.

Until we get the official announcement next March, I wouldn’t rule anything in or out, and that includes a hybrid Astute, with US reactor, combat and weapons systems.

Even if they did give up a couple of submarines they would be operating in the same part of the world they would have ended up anyway. The only difference is that Australia would be picking up the bill.

 

[John Newman]

Even if they did give up a couple of submarines they would be operating in the same part of the world they would have ended up anyway. The only difference is that Australia would be picking up the bill.

I don’t think you understand the point I made.

Giving up ‘production slots’ doesn’t mean you give up ‘total production’ of your required number of submarines.

The US has given up production slots to Australia before, mostly aviation assets.

It’s simply a method of letting the customer (eg, Australia) receiving delivery early, the US in turn adds those x number of assets for delivery later in the production run.

The whole point is to ‘win’ a customer for the Virginia design, you supply some from the existing line, while at the same time a second line is set up in the customers country.

Is that clearer?

EDIT:

Just to add to giving up production slots, or other inducement, to order a nations product:

* F-111C - back in the day the US offered Australia 24 x B-47E ‘free’ as an interim capability to replace the Canberra bomber, we didn’t take up the offer, I also understand the UK offered to base Vulcan bombers here if we chose TSR-2.

Ultimately we received 24 x F-4E as an interim prior to the F-111C delivery.

* HMS Invincible - we were going to procure Invincible (to be renamed HMAS Australia), the UK Changed it’s mind.

The UK offered to build a 4th Invincible in the UK, and as an interim give us HMS Hermes for free, didn’t happen in the end.

* F-A-18F, MH-60R, C-17A - to the best of my knowledge the USN and USAF gave up ‘productions slots’ to Australia for early delivery of those three aircraft types.

There are other examples too.

 

[Stampede]

" If you were going to add additional submarines to our industrial base that would be detrimental for us."

So Australian politicians are detrimental to the US Navy. Good to know.

Pretty damming, then adding the UK is in the same situation seals it. No early submarines coming from anywhere. No magic dream boats. What unsurprising news. Not sure what Dutton was alluding to or he was talking to given this. Maybe he can explain. Maybe he had seen under siege and thought he could steal a few submarines and a battleship from the US with some nuclear weapons without them knowing..
View attachment 49622

Collins LOTE, goes ahead, Collins come out of the water, Hobarts come out of the water for their upgrade, Anzacs need life extension to make 2045 and upgrade, they come out of the water... The new OPV doesn't have a gun, it needs to come out to have a 25mm gun fitted...

Super dooper.

A concerning situation that will need some creditable answers.

We will continue to speculate and have our personal fantasy fleets but at the end of the day we have to work with the reality of what can be achieved within a given time frame.

I trust the review does not disappoint and provides some hope rather than confirm our increasingly vulnerable position.


Cheers S

 

[StingrayOZ]

It’s simply a method of letting the customer (eg, Australia) receiving delivery early, the US in turn adds those x number of assets for delivery later in the production run.

How does that happen when the US is not able to meet its current requirement with 100% of the production run and industrial capacity?

US Navy avoided a 2022 ‘trough’ in submarine fleet size, but industry challenges threaten future growth

The Navy avoided a shortfall of attack submarines by extending the lives of older Los Angeles-class boats. Growing the force, though, will depend on industry's ability to continue building two -- if not more -- Virginia-class SSNs a year on top of the Columbia-class boomers.

www.defensenews.com

America's dangerous submarine shortage

While China and Russia modernize their submarine fleet, ours is degrading.

www.politico.com

Shrinking Silent Service: The U.S. Navy Faces a Massive Submarine Shortage

The U.S. Navy has too few submarines to deter Russia, China and North Korea, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command told a House of Representative subcommittee.

nationalinterest.org

Submarine maintenance backlogs and delays take toll on fleet’s development work at sea

The SSN fleet is meeting its operational obligations overseas, but there's not enough bandwidth for at-sea time to develop future tactics.

www.defensenews.com

CBO: Navy Still Needs Bigger Workforce To Dig Out of Submarine Maintenance Backlog - USNI News

The Navy still has major challenges in digging out of its longstanding submarine maintenance backlog even after growing the workforce at the public shipyards, according to a Congressional Budget Office report. In a report about submarine maintenance released on Thursday, the CBO found that the...

news.usni.org

The Capacity of the Navy’s Shipyards to Maintain Its Submarines

The Navy’s shipyards have experienced significant delays in completing maintenance on submarines. In this report, CBO projects that required maintenance will continue to exceed the shipyards’ capacity and examines options to reduce delays.

www.cbo.gov

Portman, Colleagues Send Letter Urging the Navy to Address Maintenance Backlogs at the Navy’s Four Government-Operated Naval Shipyards

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Representatives Tim Ryan (D-OH), Shontel Brown (D-OH), and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) sent a letter to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro expressing their concern about the maintenance backlogs at the Navy’s four...

www.portman.senate.gov

Navy Attack Subs Lost More Than Two Decades Worth Of Operational Time To Maintenance Delays

The service has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars for boats sitting idle and a top Congressional watchdog warns it could get worse.

www.thedrive.com

I guess I am skeptical. Of squeezing more blood from a stone already well squeezed. I hesitate that Australian "experts" will be able to tell the US how to make nuclear submarines better than the US experts actually making nuclear submarines for ~60 years. The US has been trying to improve SSN production longer than Australia's interest in SSNs.

Not sure the UK and the US are prepared to give up boomer production time, and essentially the main viable leg of their nuclear triads, to assist Australia's political problems are sub building because we were unable to assess threats, we wasted decades failing to draw up a project, then we annoyed every major sub producer globally when we did get down to specs, damaging relationships with Germany, Japan and France. Then cancelled it. Then went chasing unicorns with no plan for crew, industry or capability and started pissing into other nations sovereign nuclear capabilities.

Maybe smarter people can see a way around that or some kind of greater strategy there.

ASPI seems to think they can get a couple of submarines built overseas. Dutton seems to think they can get some submarines build in the US. Both seem to believe its just a political problem, not an engineering one.

The full interview With Admiral Pappano, Program Executive officer of Strategic Submarines. He's in charge of the Colombia and Ohio Submarine programs and the transition between those. Would seem to be in a pretty good position on what is happening and how likely any US submarine build for Australia would be. He is an Engineer.

Nuclear Deterrence and Missile Defense Forum: RADM Scott W. Pappano - Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies

The Mitchell Institute invites you to join our virtual Nuclear Deterrence and Missile Defense Forum event with RADM Scott W. Pappano, Program Executive Officer, Strategic Submarines. The admiral joins us to discuss the Columbia Class ballistic missile submarine and D-5/2 ballistic missile...

mitchellaerospacepower.org

It does seem like a hybrid build of US and UK technologies is on the cards, probably assembled here. I can't help but notice only a few RAN sailors will be going to the US and seemingly a lot more will be going to the UK. I guess we will know more in March. It will be interesting which reality and world view wins out. Political ones, or Engineering ones.

 

[John Fedup]

At this point, the only bad choice that can happen next March is no choice.

 

[Mikeymike]

I can't help but notice only a few RAN sailors will be going to the US and seemingly a lot more will be going to the UK.

That could either indicate the Astute is preferred design or could easily just be that the UK has less legislative issues with putting Australian Sailors on their boats. Especially if they are already dual nationals, which i suspect Australia has more UK/Aus dual citizens than US/Aus.

 

[DDG38]

Makes sense that a good portion of RAN submariners are going to the UK given the squadron's entire training program has a strong foundation in the RN's sub course. Whereas the RAN has much smaller experience with the USN training pipeline.

 

[Lolcake]

I posted an article earlier this year where the HII shipyard rep came out and said they were more than capable of 3 ships a year but needed a steady line of work proposed from Congress to make it worth investing in the shipyards to build at such a capacity, so it's interesting to see the admiral coming out and saying this. I'm scratching my head as to what's going on.

Then you had Duttons comments and a different US admiral reinforcing what Dutton was saying. Bit of a merry go round.

 

[spoz]

I posted an article earlier this year where the HII shipyard rep came out and said they were more than capable of 3 ships a year but needed a steady line of work proposed from Congress to make it worth investing in the shipyards to build at such a capacity, so it's interesting to see the admiral coming out and saying this. I'm scratching my head as to what's going on.

Then you had Duttons comments and a different US admiral reinforcing what Dutton was saying. Bit of a merry go round.

And the estimate to go to a three boat a year production (which the USN would love to be able to do, btw) was under $US 10 billiion; a figure Congress has been reluctant to give them. Now, if Australia ponied up will all or most of that…..

I’m away from home (at sea off the Kimberley coast) so don’t have access to my references, but the figure comes from a CRS Report of a couple of years ago - recent enough that the figure wouldn’t be wildly different today.

 

[Volkodav]

I don’t think you understand the point I made.

Giving up ‘production slots’ doesn’t mean you give up ‘total production’ of your required number of submarines.

The US has given up production slots to Australia before, mostly aviation assets.

It’s simply a method of letting the customer (eg, Australia) receiving delivery early, the US in turn adds those x number of assets for delivery later in the production run.

The whole point is to ‘win’ a customer for the Virginia design, you supply some from the existing line, while at the same time a second line is set up in the customers country.

Is that clearer?

EDIT:

Just to add to giving up production slots, or other inducement, to order a nations product:

* F-111C - back in the day the US offered Australia 24 x B-47E ‘free’ as an interim capability to replace the Canberra bomber, we didn’t take up the offer, I also understand the UK offered to base Vulcan bombers here if we chose TSR-2.

Ultimately we received 24 x F-4E as an interim prior to the F-111C delivery.

* HMS Invincible - we were going to procure Invincible (to be renamed HMAS Australia), the UK Changed it’s mind.

The UK offered to build a 4th Invincible in the UK, and as an interim give us HMS Hermes for free, didn’t happen in the end.

* F-A-18F, MH-60R, C-17A - to the best of my knowledge the USN and USAF gave up ‘productions slots’ to Australia for early delivery of those three aircraft types.

There are other examples too.

Our Perth Class DDGs and Adelaide Class FFGs were allocated from US production slots. I'll have to dig them out but I used to have more detail on this.

 

[StingrayOZ]

At this point, the only bad choice that can happen next March is no choice.

Certainly a lot of challenges. Thats before we get to crewing, disposal etc.

Makes sense that a good portion of RAN submariners are going to the UK given the squadron's entire training program has a strong foundation in the RN's sub course. Whereas the RAN has much smaller experience with the USN training pipeline.

This has always been my thoughts. The RN makes for easier synergy with the RAN than the USN. AU-UK across the ADF has a huge and ongoing legacy. We have branched off entire sub crews with the UK before. Secondments and mixed crews are just going to be easier with the UK.

I posted an article earlier this year where the HII shipyard rep came out and said they were more than capable of 3 ships a year but needed a steady line of work proposed from Congress to make it worth investing in the shipyards to build at such a capacity, so it's interesting to see the admiral coming out and saying this. I'm scratching my head as to what's going on.

Then you had Duttons comments and a different US admiral reinforcing what Dutton was saying. Bit of a merry go round.

There is certainly a lot of commentary. I think some of the other US admirals were hopeful. Harry Harris had said some positive sounding things in the public, without committing anything, but he is a diplomat, in Korea. Certainly it doesn't look like the US is going to create a whole new submarine production line. Even expanding their existing lines seems, difficult.

And the estimate to go to a three boat a year production (which the USN would love to be able to do, btw) was under $US 10 billiion; a figure Congress has been reluctant to give them. Now, if Australia ponied up will all or most of that…..

Money can solve problems, but its not the only constraint. Sometimes the devil is in the details, to expand a training pipeline or some sort of capacity, you can hit multiple walls at the same time. So then suddenly become exponentially more difficult and expensive. I would tend to weight more in more recent information, more from people closer to the frontline of production.

Even if we could get the US to magic up a slot for us, the timeframe may still not suit. Viriginas and Astutes are coming to the end of their run, SSBNs follow quickly. Then both Navies are talking about entirely new generation of subs, sharing more with their SSBN than with the previous class of attack subs.

Certainly the November preliminary and the March review are going to have to be magical documents. Subs are but one problem for the ADF and AusGov.

 

[hauritz]

At this moment I have pretty much given up on any quick fix as far as early access to nukes is concerned. Even Marles has conceded that it is unlikely this will happen. All I am really expecting from the Defence Review at this stage is the selection of submarine type, a plan and timetable for its construction and how we intend to cover the almost inevitable capability gap.

it wouldn’t be the first time this sort of thing has happened with the ADF. Remember the delay between the retirement of Perth class destroyers and the introduction of the Hobarts or even the capability gap while we were trying to fix up the Collins.

Sadly this is nothing new. It is just that now is about the worst time for it all to happen again.

 

[spoz]

Report I was looking for is here: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL32418,
August this year. Section concerned is page 19 under “Issue for Congress - Industrial Base Capacity for Building Both Virginia and Columbia Class Boats”. The figure, based on testimony by the USN In June 2021, is much less than I remembered- 1.5 to 2 billion, plus the workforce increase

 

[oldsig127]

Sadly this is nothing new. It is just that now is about the worst time for it all to happen again.

It's why our continuous shipbuilding plan was implemented with the idea that by the time a full cycle of frigates and destroyers finished the oldest of them would still be new enough NOT to have needed an expensive and time consuming mid life update.

Except, as you say, it's the worst time possible because practically any interim solution will bring the whole thing crashing to a halt, perhaps never to be tried again. I won't be around in 30 years to see what political stupidity, crystal ball failure or internecine bastardry does it next time.

oldsig127, listening to Superhornets practising for Riverfire.

 

[ddxx]

The issue with the existing continuous shipbuilding plan is that it's built around a stagnant surface combatant fleet size of 12, which in turn results in a slow drumbeat. Neither of which are suitable for our strategic environment, the urgency of requirement or our national strategic needs in terms of presence and naval diplomacy.

The plan as is effectively keeps us at 11 combatants until Hunter 9 is delivered sometime in the mid 2040s .... at least two decades from now.

Arguably, the 1986 Dibb Review's recommendation for up to 18 surface combatants should be our baseline target. And that's doable if we have a proper low, medium, high mix - in terms of platform capability and crew requirements.

 

[ASSAIL]

And the estimate to go to a three boat a year production (which the USN would love to be able to do, btw) was under $US 10 billiion; a figure Congress has been reluctant to give them. Now, if Australia ponied up will all or most of that…..

I’m away from home (at sea off the Kimberley coast) so don’t have access to my references, but the figure comes from a CRS Report of a couple of years ago - recent enough that the figure wouldn’t be wildly different today.

Enjoy Spoz, I spent 30 yrs pearling on that coast.

 

[StingrayOZ]

August this year. Section concerned is page 19 under “Issue for Congress - Industrial Base Capacity for Building Both Virginia and Columbia Class Boats”. The figure, based on testimony by the USN In June 2021, is much less than I remembered- 1.5 to 2 billion, plus the workforce increase

Im not sure that translate into ability to build AUKUS submarines at the rate of 1 per year.
That sounds like the $1.7b to upgrade Portsmouth dock 1 for the Virginia class from the LA class.

House of cards (Opinion) | Shephard

The USN has high ambitions but investment is needed, as outdated shipyard infrastructure could undermine its ability to field and maintain a 355-ship navy.

www.shephardmedia.com

The quote is just navy money, not industry money required. Probably just for the dock expansion and navy costs for that.

There is currently a fight for workers between the Colombia and Virginia submarine programs. Look at page 21 of that document you linked.

Congressional review flags Virginia Class delays, cost pressures

Cost and schedule risks linked to the construction of Block V Virginia Class submarines have been detailed in a newly published report. A new Congressional Research Services report has flagged issues

www.defenceconnect.com.au

Wading into troubled waters here, one of those intra-service rivalries. Boomers and Attack programs competing for money and resources. Not perhaps the construction of Australian submarines.
But this goes deep into American procurement and industrial complexes. But these are certainly the questions that could be asked about expansion of capability and how much support can happen.

But that is an interesting document with lots of details... But our interpretations would need moderation probably from someone more familiar to decrypt it.

The document does mention effectively the backlog of service for subs means effectively 4 submarines are missing from the fleet (but the issues are across 7.5 subs). Even if new capacity was found, backlog of existing maintenance and delays with block V might just gobble all that up. The US has its own problem with subs. Sure they are churning them out, but that doesn't translate into spare capacity for Australia.