Nuclear subs venture will transform Australia. By Greg Sheridan.

Australia’s AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal … will transform our nation forever, strategically, militarily, politically and perhaps economically. Its effects will be irreversible if it succeeds, and even more irreversible if it fails. …

Are we still a nation that can do big things over long-time horizons?

The answer to all these questions was once yes (except for nuclear, which hasn’t been asked previously). How will we go today? …

The CCP hates it:

Our federal agencies fully expect Chinese government agencies to generate social media and other political interference actions to foster as much opposition to AUKUS as possible. That the Chinese Communist Party so hates AUKUS ought to be the first big clue as to how consequential and beneficial it is.

Countering the myths:

Here are six emerging AUKUS myths: we don’t need nuclear subs; they’ll be obsolete before we get them; we shouldn’t try to build any in Adelaide; they’re too expensive; they will compromise our sovereignty and upset the region; it’s a mistake to get into such an intimate partnership with the Brits. …

Need:

In fact, we desperately need nuclear-powered subs. The problem historically was we couldn’t get them, or couldn’t get them in a reasonable time.

Chinese satellite and other surveillance technology is already so pervasive it can probably detect our conventional subs when they rise close to the surface to “snort”; that is, to take in air to run the diesel motors to charge the batteries. They snort for only a short period every few days, then submerge again. The boffins’ consensus is that by the mid-2030s Beijing will be able to hit the sub with a missile while it’s snorting. …

 

 

A nuclear-powered sub is an asymmetric weapon. It can destroy ships, mine harbours, destroy other subs, travel vast distances, attack land targets, be unknowable to a potential enemy, gather critical intelligence, insert special forces and much more. The later Virginias (and the subs we’ll build with the Brits) have big vertical launch capabilities from which they can fire almost any missile at almost any target. Australia has not had long-range strike capability since the F-111 fighter bomber. Virginia subs are much more powerful than F-111s.

Our having such subs would be a massively complicating, and deterring, factor for any adversary. Our numbers would be significant. If the US by then has 65 nuclear subs and China several dozen, then eight makes a considerable difference. ..

Adelaide construction:

Why then make them in Adelaide ever? A diplomatic secret is we wouldn’t have got them at all if we hadn’t committed to increasing the overall allied submarine industrial capacity by creating a production line in Adelaide. This deal is a huge commitment for the US and Britain too. A critical part of our contribution is to enlarge total allied capability. …

Once the AUKUS subs get going in Adelaide the plan is to build one every three years. We’ll ultimately build eight AUKUS subs and probably eventually retire the Virginias we get. By then, the mid or late 2050s, Australia will be much bigger. We might decide we want more than eight nuclear-powered subs. This could create a submarine culture of continuous build. We were crazy to let the car industry go. We are the least complex economy in the OECD with one of the smallest manufacturing sectors. We’ve got to pull ourselves back. This is a big part of that. ….

Cost:

The total, cumulative cost of the nuclear submarine program in the 32 years out to 2055 might be between $268bn and $368bn. Naturally, all the focus is on the larger figure. While it’s a lot of money, in fact it is in the fictional currency of “out-turn dollars”. That means a notional rate of inflation has been factored in for all of those 32 years. …

The NDIS costs $33bn. If it didn’t rise by a dollar, and there was no inflation, in 32 years that’s $1 trillion. Given its trend to increase markedly each year, and calculating out-turn dollars as the government has for the subs, the NDIS to 2055 is surely more than $2 trillion, perhaps closer to $3 trillion. …

No other country calculates submarine costs this way. Fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of the government’s figures leads to absurd claims, like that by Paul Keating, that you could build and run 50 conventional submarines for the cost of eight nuclear subs. This is utter nonsense. All subs are expensive. We’ll get the Virginias cheap because they are not brand-new. We’re certainly wealthy enough to afford eight nuclear-powered submarines.