MELBOURNE: A group of retired senior Australian submariners have sent a proposal to the Australian government that would see two Collins class submarines withdrawn from the fleet and scrapped. They would be replaced by four off-the-shelf Type 214 or Scorpene class submarines.
Proponents of the plan point out that the two submarines in question, HMAS Rankin and HMAS Collins, are laid up due to a shortage of crews and are reportedly in poor condition. The plan’s authors suggest that the Australian Navy cannot wait until 2025 to replace the Collins class.
The current Australian Navy plan is to build 12 large, sophisticated submarines in Australia to replace the six Collins class boats from the mid-2020s. The plan to build 12 large homegrown submarines has been costed by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute at more than AUD36 billion, making it the nation’s largest ever military project. Supporters of the new plan say that a military off-the-shelf submarine would meet Australia’s strategic needs at a fraction of the cost of building a new class of Australian submarine.
The problem with this proposal lies with that basic assumption. The reason for the way the Collins class was configured is that Australian naval strategy required the boats to undertake missions at great distances from their home bases and to sustain such operations from their own resources. Existing variants of Type 214 and Scorpene class submarines are probably more capable than the Collins class at shorter ranges but do not have the long-range, long-deployment characteristics demanded by the Australian Navy.
Thus, new variants of both designs would have to be created to accommodate the Australian requirements, and it was similar changes to an existing design that resulted in the Collins class debacle.
