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Subject: Push to axe Collins subs now, buy European
Aussiegunneragain    10/7/2010 12:44:07 AM
A RADICAL plan is being pushed by a group of senior Australian submariners. It is to retire two Collins-class submarines immediately and fast-track the purchase of four ready-made submarines from Europe. The proposal, which has been sent to both the federal government and the opposition, reflects growing concern among some former senior naval officers that the government's plan to build 12 of the world's most sophisticated conventional submarines is flawed and unrealistic. The proposal comes after Treasury last week urged the federal government to buy more off-the-shelf weaponry. The former submariners say that Australia cannot afford to wait until 2025 for the new submarines and must take urgent action to buy off-the-shelf submarines from Europe to progressively replace the under-performing Collins-class fleet. Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. Related Coverage No-show by subs slammed The Australian, 5 Aug 2010 It's up to us, says Collins sub boss The Australian, 4 Jul 2010 We all lose if we buy subs off the shelf The Australian, 4 Jul 2010 Torpedo a $400m embarrassment Adelaide Now, 20 May 2010 SA chases submarine billions Adelaide Now, 31 Jan 2010 End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. "Australia should rapidly acquire four locally built military-off-the-shelf (MOTS) submarines to address the submarine availability issue and address the growing capability gap between the Collins-class submarines and the modern submarines proliferating throughout the region," said Rex Patrick, a former submariner who assists the navy in undersea warfare training and who has authored the proposal. "The Collins-class submarine program has been an unmitigated failure and two of the submarines should be decommissioned immediately (the HMAS Rankin and HMAS Collins) -- they are not available anyway, there are no crews for them and maintaining them is placing an ever increasing burden on the navy's budget." The Rudd government's defence white paper committed to building 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 $36 billion, making it the nation's largest ever military project. The government says it is still committed to the controversial plan, but there is growing debate in the defence community about whether such a large, complex and time-consuming project makes strategic and economic sense. Mr Patrick argues it would be cheaper and easier for Australia to purchase proven off-the-shelf submarines from Europe, such as the German Type 214 or French Scorpenes, rather than try to build a new generation of unique, homegrown submarines like the Collins. He said 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. Under his plan, the first boat of an initial batch of four MOTS submarines would be operational for the navy within five years and the remaining three in under eight years. The first batch would be supplemented by two more batches of similar, but perhaps modified, design in the years ahead.
 
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Volkodav    European subs 'no match for local'    10/15/2010 8:01:07 AM

THE navy has fired back at critics of its push to have 12 new submarines built in Australia.

It says an "off-the-shelf" European boat would not have the range or capability to hit targets far away in wartime. Navy Chief Vice-Admiral Russ Crane suggested the answer could be a bigger version of the Australian-built Collins-class submarine.

It would also have a state-of-the-art propulsion system to allow it to cruise deep underwater for long periods.

A big advantage of a nuclear submarine is that it does not need to surface to run its diesel engines and recharge the batteries.

Andrew Davies, of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has calculated that to build the boats in Australia, as the government plans to do, would cost about $35 billion -- three times the cost of a fleet of French or German submarines.

Vice-Admiral Crane said that estimate was fairly crude but not entirely unreasonable.

"Until we do the assessment of cost versus capability, I don't think we really know yet what the detailed figure might be."

But he said the idea of buying a submarine "off the shelf" in Europe did not accord with the philosophy of having a national submarine capability.

"It isn't as simple as saying a couple of Scorpene submarines from France can replace our Collins-class submarines because they cannot. They cannot go anywhere near the capability of our Collins-class submarines."
 
 
 
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Aussiegunneragain       10/17/2010 4:42:15 AM



The question that needs to be asked is whether we really need all that capability for what we want to do with the subs. The way that I see it, the tasks that we absolutely need the subs for are either likely to be conducted in our immediate region or could be conducted out of the region with the support of a dedicated submarine tender. I woudl have thought that if MOTS subs are going to cost a third of what a unique Australian type will, I would have thought that we could easily purchase a tender as well and come out with change.
 
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Volkodav       10/17/2010 7:00:11 AM
The question that needs to be asked is whether we really need all that capability for what we want to do with the subs. The way that I see it, the tasks that we absolutely need the subs for are either likely to be conducted in our immediate region or could be conducted out of the region with the support of a dedicated submarine tender. I woudl have thought that if MOTS subs are going to cost a third of what a unique Australian type will, I would have thought that we could easily purchase a tender as well and come out with change.
 
It come down to the distance from base that needs to be transited and more importantly the indiscretion rate.  No conventional sub compares to the Collins class in these two critical areas.
 
Have a tender supporting a conventional sub is like holding a parade to anounce your arrival, where you have a tender you have a sub, if there is no tender and all you have is short range subs then you are saying loud and clear you do not have a sub in the area.  With the Collins you don't know where it is until it anounces its self, if it chooses to stay silent you will never know it was there.
 
The Collins Class is a European design, it is what we ended up with once it had been adapted to meet Australian requirements.  Having done some research I have come to believe we would have had different but more serious performance issues with the German design that with what we got from the Swedes.  The combat system was independantly contracted by the CoA and would have afflicted the Germans as much as the Swedes.  The big difference was the Swedes did listen to what was required to do the job, the Germans didn't the German option would have been better designed but not to the requirements it needed to meet.  The Collins could be fixed the alternative could not have.
 
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gf0012-aust       10/17/2010 7:48:34 AM

its am engineering myth to think that we can just buy any extant sub from europe and not have any work done to get it to work in our conditions.

the initial problems for us, for the singaporeans, even for the US when they leased Gotland was the fact that these subs were not designed for our waters and needed to be modified to do so - the swedes acknowledged this, but much too late and down the track.

the fixes made to collins were developed by DSTO and by 3rd party australian companies sub contracted.  In the case of the US lease of the Gotland, the sub struggled initially to adapt to US easy coast conditions - and these were not necessarily that dissimilar to their baltic tuning parameters.

anyone who thinks that we could just buy a scorpene or similar and not have to pay to actually get it to run and be hull tunes to our waters is fundamentally ignorant of what the costs are to design and integrate such a solution - and it would be a modification that we would need to do, as in the case of Kockums they didn't even understand some of the issues that DSTO raised - and issues in which they were ultimately proved right.

I for one would be loathe to see us go through this kind of exercise again.  we effectively paid for some of the development of the Gotland.  At least some of the specialised australian companies were able to go and sell their expertise to other friendly navies, but at a national development level?  not much joy came out of it.  the irony being that the 2 main australian companies outside of ASC that developed and perfected their sig management solutuions can't go and get "bragging rights" - the general public are none the wiser and by association have no comprehension of some of the very very significant design wins that were made.

we made design advances because the US and UK would not share some of their IP (anechoic tiles being the publicly available example).  Granted the US has now elevated our access to the same level of the UK now, but then they were not willing partners.  Any boat we buy will suffer from the same integration issues, it will certainly be an issue when you consider the degree of integration of euro platforms when you look at some of the critical US systems we use - and which the europeans don't get access to.  compromising this just to get a woolworths solution on some misguided belief that it will be cheaper to fit out and field and work within our other ewarfare solutions is convenient and selective appreciation of the complexity of what is actually done to bring such platforms to fruition

the most frustrating part of the collins/sea 2000 debate is that the tactical and strategic arguments are  being dumbed down to issues of long range and relevance of reach - there appears to be a fundamental lack of awareness about why we want large subs beyond the disposable comments about such range and reach.  the fact that some of this commentary comes from ex submariners makes me question their own motives in the debate.

I realise that the debate will get dumbed down for open source release, but I get a little cranky at some of these ex drivers who dumb down the debate to a convenience level when the significant issues of why we go large are not going to be in the public domain - so it provides them with a one sided opportunity to make Navy or even Defence look frivolous when they clearly are not going to discuss the rigour of tactical imperatives just to score points.

 
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Aussiegunneragain       10/17/2010 4:16:37 PM

Have a tender supporting a conventional sub is like holding a parade to anounce your arrival, where you have a tender you have a sub, if there is no tender and all you have is short range subs then you are saying loud and clear you do not have a sub in the area.  With the Collins you don't know where it is until it anounces its self, if it chooses to stay silent you will never know it was there.
The tender wouldn't necessarily have to be "in the area", just a couple of thousand kilometres to the area than Subiaco is. A tender that tops up a sub in the Indian Ocean near the Cocos isn't going to give away the presence of a patrol in the South China Sea.
 
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Aussiegunneragain       10/17/2010 4:19:28 PM

its am engineering myth to think that we can just buy any extant sub from europe and not have any work done to get it to work in our conditions.


Perhaps so, but designing and building an entirely new sub is degrees more risky and expensive than testing and buying an existing design and doing some work on it to make it work in our waters.
 
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gf0012-aust       10/17/2010 5:02:30 PM


Perhaps so, but designing and building an entirely new sub is degrees more risky and expensive than testing and buying an existing design and doing some work on it to make it work in our waters.
actually and ironically it isn't.  I've worked on 3 different sub projects.  the killer in 2 of them was the fact that we tried to bastardise existing designs to make them work for the relevant local conditions.  euro subs in euro conditions are fine, euro subs in asia minor, asia, pacific invariably if not always have problems getting them to work in local conditions.  issues such as thermocline layers etc are not simple events.  eg Kockums didn't even understand this in the early years - the arrogance that they knew what they were doing and that DSTO couldn't possibly understand sub design issues was breathtaking IMO.
 
the safest and easiest builds are greenfields as you start from a clean slate, you already know the conditions and you build accordingly.
 
I know of no sub project where adaptation and build to a different environment has come off well - they have all cost an arm and a leg - and this is by companies who are quite happy to claim expertise by longevity in the game.
 
building a sub isn't the hard part.
 
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gf0012-aust       10/17/2010 5:16:31 PM


The tender wouldn't necessarily have to be "in the area", just a couple of thousand kilometres to the area than Subiaco is. A tender that tops up a sub in the Indian Ocean near the Cocos isn't going to give away the presence of a patrol in the South China Sea.
every anti-sub war since 1914 where navies looked for subs on long range patrols involved looking for the tenderers.  In fact quite a few kills in the pacific involved US subs tasked to hack the tenderers as they knew the sortie rates and worked out patterns of behaviour.  ditto for some of the black may kills.  everyone id'd the blind spots for air coverage and sent in killers to those blind spots as that was the likely tenderer location.
 
the other reality is that the sensitive locations (eg the ones mentioned are good examples) are littered with arrays.  The 2004 Tsunami event being a good example of where subs were caught out but oblivious to the fact that seabed arrays were splattered around there.
 
there are a whole pile of  "tells" that when when pulled into the operating picture, start to narrow down where you can find the sub, the trick is to minimise the tells.  Tenderers are one of the things where alarm bells go off.
 
eg maritime surv satellites can and do track individual vessels - you can establish patterns of behaviour when watching them.
 
eg the maritime surveillance picture for the Indian Ocean is incredibly busy (Strait and Canal traffic, plus the sheer number of military assets in place from active navies such as the Indians, US, Chinese, Malays, Indons, Singaporeans, Sth Africans, French, UK, Pakistanis etc... but at any stage the surveillance authorities can identify vessels, identify crew, identify relevant manifests, identify track changes and identify patterns of known behaviour.
 
the mere spotting of a tenderer, or tender capable vessel in wartime would send alarm bells running - and it would be the first vessel killed in a fight.
 
 
 
 
 
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Aussiegunneragain       10/17/2010 8:00:30 PM
GF,
 
The real question is, when in wartime are we going to be running long range patrols out of Australia into the South China Sea? We do it in peacetime to get the electronic and acoustic intelligence, but I can't think of a scenario where we would have to in a war. In peacetime the presence of a tender might indicate that the Australians might be patrolling somewhere within 2000km of the tender location, but who really cares? If it goes out to provide the top up towards the end of the sub's patrol it will be too late for the target of the intel to alter its activities and it isn't like the sub or the tender is going to get sunk in peacetime.
 
To me the principal reason that we have the subs is for sea denial in the approaches to Australia or around the islands immediately to our north and as an ASW escort for taskforces or convoys. The smaller subs have enough range for the former and with the latter a tender can accompany, and be protected by, the force if needed.
 
Re the tropicalisation issue, I don't know the details beyond noting that there is a long history of submarines being built for European conditions being used in warmer waters. We ourselves operated the O boats, then you have the Daphne's (one of which destroyed an Indian Frigate in the 70's) and numerous others being purchased by navies in warmer places. The French have a coastline on the Medeterrainian so I doubt that they designed the Scorpenes without thinking of how to make them operate in warmer waters.
 
As far as I can see we are the only small, non-submarine designing nation that thinks that we have to come up with a customised local option for our conditions. It fits in with the typical pattern of behavior from the ADF of wanting to Australianise everything. I remain sceptical about the need and note that there are heaps of other things that we could spend the money on.
 
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gf0012-aust       10/18/2010 12:14:43 AM

GF
As far as I can see we are the only small, non-submarine designing nation that thinks that we have to come up with a customised local option for our conditions. It fits in with the typical pattern of behavior from the ADF of wanting to Australianise everything. I remain sceptical about the need and note that there are heaps of other things that we could spend the money on.

definitely not so.  in fact every conventional sub that I know of and have worked on east of mauritious has these issues.  the swedes found out much to their chagrine with Gotland on the east coast of the US,
prior to the oberons it was not an issue - nowadays ASW techniques and detection solutions require a much more sophisticated approach.
 
 


 
 
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