Nuclear Submarines – the most complex endeavour in defence

By Muir Macdonald and Alan Nicholl

A paper for the SIA 11th Biennial Conference, Nov 20221

Disclaimer. The paper is offered privately by the authors and are their views; they are not speaking for any government, organisation or company. The authors have a firm belief that Australia needs a strong, nuclear Navy and that AUKUS presents a massive opportunity; they bring their experience and views to help the debate to achieve that goal.

Abstract

The authors have considerable experience of working complex defence programmes in the UK, as well as internationally, including Australia and the US. They offer that no programme comes close to the uniqueness of nuclear submarines. The procurement, operation and sustainment of nuclear submarine capability is the most complex endeavour in defence, yet can be the most rewarding, given the potency of political and military effect achieved by a nuclear submarine force.

The paper considers the complexities of other programmes contrasted with those of nuclear submarines and rehearses the unique features that inevitably demand an unusual approach and behaviours. This brings challenges – notably of explaining that uniqueness to those who live outside this world yet need to be onside – from the politicians who need political and geopolitical effect, to budget-holders who seek risk-free certainty. The ‘nuclear submarine mindset’ needs to be shared by the many to address the inescapable risks that cannot be transferred from government (the owner/operator/maintainer/funder) to other parties. Being a nuclear submarine nation cannot be transactional; instead, it demands a lifelong ‘enterprise’ approach and sustained, long-term investment.

From that backdrop, the paper considers what this might mean for AUKUS and for Australia. The extraordinary opportunity of a collaboration with US and UK will give an enormous boost and a fast-track from the learning in those nations to build on Australia’s excellent foundations of Oberon and Collins. The next step is a big one, yet doable. The authors identify three critical success factors, within and across the AUKUS nations, as a pre-requisite.

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful for the helpful comments and encouragement from friends in the UK, US and Australian submarine communities.

A submarine or ‘submarine capability’?

Nuclear submarines are the most complex, pieces of engineering on the planet. Compared with other engineering endeavours they have the unique combination of many features, such as the obvious ones of being: large; propelled under own power; the home and life-support for around 100 people; and capable of missions lasting many months without outside human intervention. Even by this simple list, other extraordinary engineering feats fail one or more tests: skyscrapers or nuclear power stations (don’t move); fighter aircraft and space shuttles (short mission length before ground support); space stations (support fewer people); and hypersonic missiles (don’t support any people). So far, so obvious – and our surface ship colleagues (especially those with experience of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers) would say, ‘so what, a warship passes this test’.

Indeed, and a surface warship would also pass the next round of tests that include: operating in nature’s most hostile environment, and (unlike civil shipping) having a mission with little discretion to avoid bad weather or sea conditions; carrying and launching a range of kinetic armament each with their own hazardous explosives and propellants; carrying and deploying a range of above water and underwater sensors and computing power; and staying as undetected as possible.

Yet the next round of characteristics clinches it. That hostile environment is even more inimical under water. Add to that the need to stay absolutely undetected, reducing the discretion for any transmissions in either day-to-day communications or in sensing/detecting equipment, all for very long periods. Missions demand autonomy of operation of ‘humans plus machine’ – the submarine must look after itself. Further, the whole purpose of nuclear submarines is to be ‘at war’ even in so-called peacetime, whether it is rehearsing special forces operations or intelligence gathering where no other platform can yet go, e.g. in trailing another submarine for days to establish signatures, style of operations, etc. That environment is hostile, not just by nature’s doing.

And, of course, a nuclear submarine has all the benefits of nuclear power, yet with the responsibility of managing and maintaining a complex plant beneath the waves entirely by the humans and engineered systems on board. This is a nuclear power station that has to be moved beneath the oceans and sometimes beneath polar ice, with its often-needy demands being satisfied without any outside help.

Just in safety terms, it’s a complex piece of systems of systems engineering to meld together a nuclear reactor, steam systems, hazardous propellants and explosives, high energy storage batteries and high voltage electrical systems, life support systems and their chemical agents, safety critical software, as well as the all-essential human beings. All these systems are interlinked and interdependent, all requiring near-continuous monitoring, management and maintenance. Standard Operating Procedures are an important part of achieving this, as are the Emergency Operating Procedures for when something goes wrong, as it inevitably does on a long mission. Central to a nuclear submarine’s safety is the nuclear reactor and its plant, so vital in sustaining propulsion and electrical power – yet this can trip and shut down when it needs to look after itself, presenting new hazards to the submarine. If managing all this were not a challenge, we put the lot inside a steel tube, seal it up and deliberately put it all into the planet’s most hazardous environment, for months on end – and that’s before ‘the enemy’ gets involved in adding their own brand of hazard.

But nuclear submarines are more complex than that.

Not only are they a complex system of systems combining humans and machines within ‘a submarine’ but they are part of a wider ‘systems’ context. The UK’s useful concept of DLODs2 goes some of the way to defining this next level of complexity of these systems within systems, all integrated to achieve the necessary ‘capability’. Australia and the US probably state it better using that word ‘capability’ up front in ‘Fundamental Inputs to Capability’3 and ‘Components of Capability’.

So, as with tanks, warships and military aircraft, a submarine is nothing without the surrounding environment. Those of us in Defence, in any nation, know that we should always think about capability in the round, embracing all these necessary inputs or components. As we might expect, the components of nuclear submarine capability all have their unique and different features each driven by that uniqueness of the nuclear submarine itself, the extraordinary missions it conducts and the challenges of the environment in which it operates.

Of all the DLODs/FICs/CoCs we’d highlight the people factors: personnel; training; management; command; and leadership. Whether it’s onboard a submarine, ashore in commanding a flotilla, in a naval base or in industry, or in government strategy and its implementation; everything flows from the right people in the right place at the right time, well organised and well led. Skills, experience and teamwork result from concerted and long-term investment in people, a lead-time that is measured in tens of years and must sustain for generations.

It’s even more complex than that

Those components of, or inputs to, capability are often complex, often competing with each other, and are often bespoke to nuclear submarines. Most are largely definable and deliverable from within a Ministry or Department of Defence. A Government Department can develop, procure, own and operate the specialist training, infrastructure, doctrine, command organization, logistics systems, etc. But there are several more factors which include the complexities of the industrial, financial, military, societal, regulatory, legal, and political environments. Usefully, the first to consider has recently been included as one the FICs – Industry.

Industrial

Industry provides many of the unique elements of capability – as equipment, systems, platforms, ashore infrastructure, services, maintenance, training, logistics services, and more. The industrial base includes the obvious major Tier 1s (or primes), the specialist systems houses, individual equipment suppliers, and a myriad of the smallest suppliers which have the specialist capability to produce that high-spec nut-and-bolt or which own the intellectual property to high integrity software code – specifically for nuclear submarine use. Again, uniqueness of the components of a submarine or of submarine capability means that many of the suppliers are the sole providers – monopolies critical to the overall capability and with no real market outside this specialised world5.

Even that tiny, specialist bolt manufacturer or software coder is critical. Both the UK and US have seen what happens when fragility occurs in their supply bases, e.g. when a small company faces bankruptcy because its whole business is not sustainable, or when a prime deemed ‘too big to fail’ hits seemingly intractable quality problems. Given the critical contribution of this largely monopoly supply base, the authors recognise the importance of helping their governments understand that the free market does not really operate, that competition is effective only in discrete areas, and the mantra (in UK and US Defence, for example) of ‘transfer risk to industry’ only goes so far6 within an acceptable price.

It’s a critical responsibility of nuclear submarine-owning governments to support their industrial base and to recognise what should be considered sovereign and what can safely be sourced from beyond their shores. This sovereignty question is particularly important as it needs long-term strategic thinking and investment. With so many of the skills, capabilities and facilities being unique to submarines, governments need to plan to sustain all these even when not fully utilised. Nations with large nuclear submarine programmes can aim to keep the industrial base occupied and ‘match fit’. However, as the UK learned in leaving a gap between the Vanguard Class and the Astute Class, it is easy to lose industrial capability that is not employed; and it’s very costly, and takes much time, to ramp up again. Australia’s surface warship programme understood this, leading to the implementation of Continuous Naval Shipbuilding, centred on Adelaide and Henderson, and widening into the supply chain.

Financial

A nuclear submarine comes with a price tag that beats any other single military platform. Multiply that by the number of boats and add to that the costs of the nuclear submarine-specific elements that comprise the total capability and you have a number that sticks out on any defence department budget sheet. Add the through-life costs of sustaining that capability for twenty-five years or more; add the maintenance and investment in upgrades and avoidance of obsolescence; add the investment in the industrial base to maintain sovereign capability; then provide for nuclear disposal costs; and a few more things. That budget sheet really does attract the eye of the taxpayer, a government’s opposition parties, and those who are also competing for a budget – whether it is an army, an air force or a health or education department.

But we’re not done yet. Like any complex endeavour at the cutting edge of technology with a unique industrial base and military operations that are necessarily ‘on the edge’, costs are notoriously difficult to predict. The authors recognise the unavoidable phenomenon of a ‘conspiracy of optimism’ seen in many large and complex programmes, with submarine programmes being no exception. This is a long way of saying that estimates and forecasts have a habit of increasing, and that’s before factoring the uncertainties of nuclear, mechanical, software and explosives that don’t behave as expected and need more than their originally planned care. Or perhaps there are difficulties in recruiting personnel, either in uniform or the industrial base, that add a further inflation factor. The size, novelty, inherent uncertainties and long-term commitments necessary, attract attention and are a full-time job to justify and defend if we are to maintain the necessary, continuous cash flow into the programme, for all its fundamental inputs to the total capability.

Military

We’ve included this heading to emphasise the unique military effect of nuclear submarine capability, and how this adds to the overall picture of complexity. Different nations operate their submarine forces differently and almost every mission sits in a shroud of secrecy8, yet we can make some generic observations. A nation owns and operates a nuclear submarine force for specific military effect (we discuss political and geopolitical effect later). By definition, this effect is not possible by surface warships, by aircraft or other means. It includes effects that can be achieved largely operating alone (e.g. surveillance, intelligence gathering, special forces support, or cruise missile land attack) or in a combined force with other arms (such as task force protection or anti-submarine operations). Deterrence is another unique effect, casting doubt in the mind of the enemy as to where one might be and with what firepower, closing off a sea area by the mere possibility of being there. In all this the mission is achieved by stealth, typically for long periods to shake off any early risk of detection.

Undetectability enables governments to ‘neither confirm nor deny’ an operation, this ambiguity and uncertainty being powerful in its own right. Typically, successes are kept internal and secret, yet failures can become embarrassing at best and, at worst, lose advantage over an enemy. Failures can also be in terms of an accident, nuclear or otherwise, or the awfulness of the loss of an entire submarine. The stakes are inevitably very high on both sides of the balance sheet – high risk, high effect. So, the complexity we’d highlight here is in the management of the balance between achieving military effect (the imperative of a mission) and maintaining the safety of the platform (the imperative of human life and national reputation).

Societal

Any defence capability will have its supporters and its detractors in society at large and we’ll not stray into that wider debate here. Instead, it’s where a nation’s society gets close to submarine capability where we need to be alive to the issues and the importance of building a supportive society. We’ll take just two issues: living with nuclear submarines; and developing and maintaining a willing, talented and committed workforce.

The public, around the world, generally see nuclear power as inherently dangerous and nuclear accidents as having catastrophic consequences. We recognise the concept of ‘societal dread’, the dread of things that people don’t understand or over which they have no control. Accidents like Chernobyl don’t help a public perception that is predisposed to expect the worst; this is despite nuclear power in general, and naval nuclear power in particular, having an excellent track record.

The issues come into focus at land-based nuclear facilities such as a nuclear submarine base where those in the neighbourhood will rightly have reservations that need sincere and constant management. Such management includes building a relationship of trust with openness and dialogue. It also includes the practical, to demonstrate the safety of operations while also involving the local society in contingency planning for an unlikely event, such as a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere. All this needs the cooperation of various agencies to be nurtured and maintained in a coordinated approach, notably by central government, local government, the navy, the regulators, industry suppliers and the local community. It can take time to develop the trust and mutual understanding to achieve the benefits of supportive local communities whose minds are genuinely put to rest.

Our second issue is the wider one of needing a society able to be a part of the nuclear submarine endeavour, working within and for the enterprise in almost every blue- and white-collar trade or profession one can imagine. Some will be civil servants, some will be in the private sector, and some will be in uniform, many serving onboard. Not only does the enterprise require talented individuals to be nurtured in their trade or profession, but also to be a part of an environment of extraordinary challenge and extraordinary job satisfaction. As we’ve continued to say in this part of the paper, many of the challenges are unique and one of the critical factors is experience. Experience takes time to develop, building on talent and/or qualifications, and it is essential to be able to work in an environment where every decision is taken in the unique context of nuclear submarine capability, where the stakes are high – high risks; high benefits. Looking in on UK and US experience, we’d say that there is a unique nuclear submarine culture within government, within the Navy and within industry. Even within the same company, the same navy, the same department; those working on nuclear submarines are typically highly tuned into their special responsibilities within an exclusive community. This is not to describe an elite (although it can be seen that way) but those who have a special calling, to work in the enterprise and who often (indeed need to) dedicate their working lives to the cause.

In summary, a nation’s society is a fundamental success factor for delivering submarine capability, whether dedicating themselves to working within the enterprise, or living their lives adjacent to the enterprise, with an absolute peace-of-mind.

Legal and Regulatory

The authors are not lawyers, and this is not a catalogue of legal considerations, but continuing the theme of unique complexity, we highlight some important factors. Nuclear submarines are typically not governed directly by legislation as defence programmes can usually claim derogations for their specific military purposes. In any event, international and domestic legislation is not well-configured for nuclear submarine ownership and operations. But international legislation designed for land-based nuclear energy and domestic legislation for health & safety are two examples that set expectations in governments and society for how nuclear submarines shall be operated and kept safe. For example, the international Convention on Nuclear Safety (for land-based nuclear plants) requires that, “States shall establish and maintain a legislative and regulatory framework addressing safety requirements, licensing, inspection and assessment and enforcement” and, “States shall establish an independent regulatory body to implement the framework…”. At another level, domestic legislation for health and safety in the UK, states, “It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees.”

Those two examples set out sensible requirements and shape reasonable expectations in society. The complexity is in interpretation for nuclear submarines; establishing a legal and regulatory framework that meets the rightful expectations of society, while enabling (naturally hazardous) military operations. Interpretation is a matter for individual states and very dependent on the style or philosophy a nation has chosen in its approach to managing hazards. For example, in civilian land-based nuclear power, some states have chosen a highly prescriptive philosophy where comprehensive and detailed rules are prepared by regulators for compliance by the operators. In contrast, a less prescriptive approach is adopted by other nations where a high level goal is established with the onus being on the operator to develop and justify the detailed solution to meet those goals. There is no international consensus on a single philosophy or approach. Interestingly, in the world of nuclear submarine operation and regulation, the US and UK have chosen different approaches, the US being prescriptive while the UK is non-prescriptive.

A further complication brings us back to the notion of ‘societal dread’ that can lead to a disproportionate response to nuclear hazards compared with other, more ‘conventional’ hazards. This is only natural – yet it can have awkward consequences, especially if there are two sets of legislation and two regulators, perhaps appearing to be in conflict. In nuclear submarines this can manifest itself as balancing the investment in people, systems and hardware to avoid the release of radioactive material with the investment to avoid the total loss of a submarine, say through ‘conventional’ fire or flood.

Suffice to say, the creation of the right legal and regulatory framework is a critical enabler, and so is the creation of effective organisations able to respond, comply, justify and deliver safe, effective nuclear submarine operations.

Political

The authors recognise that other commentators can describe the politics (and geopolitics) of any one nation better than us, but we’d unpack a few important observations. The very ownership of nuclear submarine capability is a political statement both for the home constituency of the general public (the electorate) as well as internationally for allies and ‘enemies’ (a government chooses both). Political leaders see that the whole point of nuclear submarine capability is to conduct operations that no other military capability can, and it is necessarily contentious, where dangerous covert, ‘deniable’ operations are undertaken.

The political and geopolitical stakes are high, both in terms of what a nuclear submarine can achieve and the consequences of any operational failure in peacetime, let alone in war. As we’ve said, successes inevitably go unseen to an electorate, while a ‘failure’ such as unplanned detection or an accident, can have high political and geopolitical consequences. The nuclear submarine owners’ club is fairly exclusive and political leaders rightly take their responsibilities very seriously, often asking to be close to operational plans, operations themselves and, of course, their nations’ responsibility for managing the safety and security of mobile nuclear plant and nuclear fuel. These wider political dimensions surface the inevitable consequences of ‘continuous commitment’ and sovereignty, which are important to briefly develop.

Once the potency of nuclear submarine capability is recognised and the considerable infrastructure (physical, human, industrial, legal, regulatory, perhaps international treaties, etc) is established, it becomes difficult to ‘switch it off’. Unless there is a dramatic change in the world order in either the threat or of the technology to counter the threat, a nation’s nuclear submarine capability and its enterprise are here to stay. As people in the enterprise retire, their successors have been nurtured to succeed them. As industrial facilities age, they are replaced by more modern versions, and, as the submarines themselves pass to end-of-life, they are succeeded by a next generation. This ‘next generation’ thinking rightly pervades the nuclear submarine enterprise within an atmosphere of continuous improvement (of military effect, of safety, of cost-effectiveness, of public acceptance). With this comes an inevitable political commitment of continuous investment and of maintaining a level of sovereignty. Such sovereignty is an important political choice, deciding what to maintain nationally and where to depend on overseas nations.

As we’ve built the picture we unpacked the political dimension last. But, of course, it is the first and most fundamental basis for owning and operating a nuclear submarine capability, responsibly and effectively.

Summary

This segment, which peels back some of the layers of complexity might be bulleted as:

• Nuclear submarine capability is created by the coordination of many fundamental inputs.
• Many of those inputs are unique to nuclear submarines and are not found in either the civil or other military worlds.
• A nuclear submarine force delivers unique military effects; in fact ownership confers the responsibility that they must deliver those military effects. The high-stake military benefits are set against the high-stake risks of achieving them safely and effectively.
• Nuclear submarine capability is delivered by an ‘enterprise’ of government, navy, industry, and allied nations. The laws of free markets and commercial business do not apply in most parts of the enterprise and it works within a unique regulatory framework, created specifically to satisfy society’s expectations. Risks are almost all carried by the owning/operating government who underwrites those risks – to achieve the unique benefits.
• Nuclear submarine owning/operating nations are in an exclusive club; they have a unique place on the world’s stage and take their unusual responsibilities very seriously.
• The ownership and operation of a nuclear submarine fleet requires a long-term commitment – politically, societally and financially. That commitment is indefinite.

Not everyone understands all this

The authors have worked in complex defence programmes for several decades, each having considerable experience leading programmes as civil servants, working within their departments of defence. We’d say that it takes around 10-15 years to build an appreciation of the complexities of the ‘domain’ of defence, the many competing perspectives and agendas within it, quite apart from the narrower domain of a particular type of military capability, such as complex missile systems, nuclear submarines or military aircraft. Experience confirms that defence programme leadership requires seeing, appreciating and shaping a range of perspectives and a range of experiences, taking all these with you, in order to achieve success. The project management textbooks would call this stakeholder management. As ever, there are those stakeholders within the bubble of a programme who live and breathe it every day and who ‘get it’, and there are those outside, who see the programme every now and again and who bring an important wider perspective, yet who rarely understand the complexities inside the bubble. Equally, those inside the programme often don’t always see a bigger picture.

We naturally take the viewpoint of leading from inside the bubble, focusing on the need to bring to bear the perspectives of politicians, senior civil servants (e.g. at the centre of defence or significant other departments such as treasuries), uniformed war-fighters and more.

Unsurprisingly there’s a tension between those inside and outside the bubble. This might be simplistically characterised as an arrogance and ‘we know best born out of deep experience’ from within the programme, contrasted with a ‘you need to see a bigger picture’ from outside. The tripwire for both parties is misunderstanding the complexities. It is our experience that programme success involves a considerable process of mutual education and understanding. This is made all the more challenging by an ever-deepening experience (and self-confidence) within the programme, and the essential requirement to work closely with politicians, other government departments, senior civil servants or senior war-fighters. By dint of elections or appointment systems, this wider group tend to pass through every few years, successively needing re-educating; while they, in turn, invariably bring a new context for the programme to adapt to (ranging from a new internal policy to a much wider change in international priority or threat).

Perhaps it helps to characterise all this with some of the typical questions whose answers are part of the all-important mutual education process:

• ‘Why can’t we cut short the submarine maintenance period and get the submarine to sea next week for an urgent mission?’
• ‘Why can’t you give me an accurate budget for the cost of a nuclear refuel on this submarine – we’ve done several already, haven’t we?’
• ‘Why is the contractor always late against the schedule and why do we seem to carry all the consequences of that lateness – can’t we incentivise better?’
• ‘Tell me again why we can’t delay the build of a new submarine by a few years, surely industry can pick up where they left off?’
• ‘Why can’t my planned submarine go deeper and faster with just a few tweaks in the specification and all within the same budget?’
• ‘Why do we have shortfalls in crew numbers trained and ready to go to sea when we approved a new training facility last year?’
• ‘This contractor is underperforming, why can’t we cancel the contract and go elsewhere?’

The questioners above are obvious characterisations, as they are below:

• The new Prime Minister needs to find savings in the budget of at least 10% and have the first submarine at sea 2 years earlier than planned, because the threat has changed, and they’ve made promises to allies and to the electorate.
• The new cross-government policy is that every purchase and procurement must be competed and resulting contracts must transfer all financial risk to the contractor.
• Our patrolling submarine has communicated that it has a reactor problem for which it has no spares on board to repair it – shall we continue with the mission or bring her home?
• The only supplier of submarine-grade left-handed widgets has announced imminent bankruptcy due to wider market forces, what shall we do?

Readers will recognise many of these and many more – they’re merely illustrations of the importance of difficult conversations that can only start to find answers once the wider complexities from within and without the programme are patiently discussed and understood. Only then can all parties have a clear context for the difficult decisions.

In our experience many of these conversations revolve around the following givens that flow from the complexities of nuclear submarine ownership and operation:

• The government holds all the financial, schedule and performance risk and, in transferring to industry what little it can, has to keep its owner’s eye close to industry to ensure risks are managed jointly.
• Submarine programmes have long timescales whether it is in design and build, training and development or refit and update. Investment takes time for benefits and effects to show through, typically several years.
• We’re not ‘buying a submarine’, or ‘buying a refit’ or buying a ‘training service’. It’s not a high-street transaction, but another instalment in investment in overall nuclear submarine capability, and another level of responsibility that only government can and must shoulder.
• Once a commitment is made, avoid change and allow progress to be as rapid as possible. The inter-relationships and interdependencies in a nuclear submarine programme are extraordinary. The most benign change in one area can have considerable knock-on effects, that ultimately add time and cost far beyond that expected. So, plan well, build is as much agility as possible, then stick to the plan.
• It’s a national privilege and considerable responsibility to manage a nuclear submarine programme, where just about every aspect of the enterprise is ultimately controlled by government. The privilege and responsibility are the price paid for extraordinary national political, military, and industrial effect and benefits.

In summary, the importance of continuous mutual education, trust-building and hence decision-effectiveness, across the entire government/industry enterprise, are important success factors. We could call this the development of the right mindset of risk and benefit ownership. PAPER – MACDONALD AND NICHOLL

Critical Success Factors

In this paper, the authors have tried to lay a trail of success factors that in our opinion are the essential pre-requisites for a successful nuclear submarine programme, especially from the owner/operator’s (the government’s) viewpoint. The reader can pick from several in the paper and no doubt will add their own. We’d boil it down to just three critical ones:

• The right mindset.
• An enterprise approach.
• Continuous investment, indefinitely.

In many ways, these factors flow from one to the next. Taking them in turn.

Mindset. We’ve emphasised the uniqueness of just about every aspect of nuclear submarines and their operating environment. We’ve observed the different ‘nuclear submarine’ culture of those involved, even by comparison with their close brothers and sisters in the world of complex surface warships. We’ve described the high stakes of nuclear submarine missions when balanced against the safety of the people involved. We’ve talked to the preservation of the highest levels of secrecy across every aspect of the programme. And we’ve talked to the unique responsibility of managing nuclear plants on their travels under the sea. In all this there are almost no comparable lived experiences in mainstream engineering, business, military or government endeavour9. This demands a mindset that is typically not found in these other walks of life and can take time to acquire for those within the nuclear submarine orbit. It’s a mindset that’s difficult to characterise but we’d say that it’s one that: is able to create new rules where normal rules do not apply; has an appetite and ability for managing unique risk through talent and experience; can work within an envelope of considerable secrecy; and is one that believes in, and cares about the significance of what a nuclear submarine force can and must do. This is a mindset that is professionally and emotionally invested in the programme and has the competence and confidence to carry their unique responsibilities. It’s a mindset that for many is carried for decades in careers dedicated to the programme. Equally it’s a mindset that is necessary in those that enable and support the programme from close by, particularly within wider government. It is a long-term commitment.

Enterprise Approach. At one level, the enterprise is a combination of the stakeholders in a value chain of contributions to achieve the entire capability, all as we discussed in developing the layered factors of complexity. At another level it is a supra-organisation of public and private sector organisations held closely together to common goals, with aligned motivations and which achieves results that are ‘more than the sum of the parts’. The individual contributing organisations have their own identities, their own motivations and their own capabilities, yet they also exist together to achieve collective outcomes. This requires extraordinary cooperation within government agencies and between government and industry. It also implies leadership (by the government as owner/operator/funder and ultimate beneficiary) and it implies an authentic code of conduct with aligned motivations (including commercial incentives). Above all it requires a clear understanding of risk (and its upside, opportunity): who carries which risk, who carries the consequences of the risk and who is best to manage/mitigate each element of risk. The authors believe that almost all the risks and their consequences are carried by government and so it is for government to construct the Enterprise in a way that best manages and shares risk, playing to the strengths and abilities of each participant, all within a shared endeavour. Naturally there are complex considerations of contracts, competition/anti-trust, incentives, profit (what’s reasonable?), other financial or non-financial motivations, intellectual property ownership, and more. Within the UK, the nuclear submarine enterprise has evolved and probably has never had a hard and fast definition, yet it operates within the principles above. More recent defence programmes have used similar principles in a more defined manner such as the UK’s Aircraft Carrier Alliance and UK’s Team Complex Weapons. So, the enterprise can and should evolve over time, yet it is ‘the Enterprise Approach’ that is important, promoting the right behaviours, managing shared risks, within aligned motivations. Creating and sustaining such novel arrangements is but one manifestation of ‘the right mindset’.

Continuous Investment. A government’s responsibility of ownership of nuclear submarine capability includes creating and maintaining mechanisms for managing the political, societal, industrial and programme complexities, all for the benefit of the nation and for allies. A single nuclear submarine has an operational life of around 25-30 years. Its gestation and its disposal can add another 10 years at either end – and that’s before adding the R&D and development of government/industrial capability beforehand or the long-term stewardship of nuclear waste and contaminated components afterwards. It is a long-term endeavour.

However, as we’ve said, once the military, political and geopolitical benefits of nuclear submarine capability are first realised it is difficult to ‘switch off’ this unique potency or to retreat from one’s place in the world. Indeed, once that breadth of infrastructure, industrial capability, and human know-how is established, this widely drawn sovereign capability becomes double-edged. On one edge is the ability to readily maintain the capability across upgrades, new systems and new classes of submarine. On the other edge this enterprise of infrastructure and people needs to be fed to be kept match-fit. A healthy enterprise is continually researching, designing, building, testing, refitting, training, nurturing and learning from experience – continually improving everything and continually moving with the times of changing threats, changing technologies and changing expectations of society. This is a programme that might have major milestones (the in-service date of a new submarine or the commissioning of a new testing or training facility) yet no end date – the programme is continuous, unless and until a decision is made to cease the responsibility of nuclear submarine ownership (on a date in the future). Nuclear submarine capability demands continuous and indefinite investment. And while the private sector may have suppliers who can see wider commercial benefit to invest in their own capabilities, the uniqueness of (and security implications of) many submarine components and services means that the bulk of investment does and must come from government. The enterprise is necessarily hungry and needs its government’s treasury to have a nuclear submarine mindset in considering how to budget and maintain investment in it, whilst recognising the wider economic and societal benefits that can spin out.

So, there we have it, we’ve attempted to close the loop from mindset, through enterprise, through continuous investment and back to mindset – all in the name of an extraordinary national capability.

What might this mean for AUKUS?

The authors have attempted to bring together their experiences of complex programmes and particularly nuclear submarines to emphasise complexity and uniqueness. We’ve offered some critical success factors from nations who are nuclear submarine owner/operators. It’s an aide memoire for those close to, or within, nuclear submarine programmes and may help those who are new to the field.

We tread carefully in offering what it means for AUKUS. We’re not inside the Task Force12 or nations’ discussions and have no privileged knowledge. Yet we have experience of international collaborations, of establishing complex enterprises and we have insights into the departments of defence of all three AUKUS nations. We also strongly believe that AUKUS is a very positive development with an enormous prize for all three nations, collectively and individually. We know that this enormous prize comes with enormous challenge yet it is achievable with extraordinary effort from all three partners.

Many foundations for success are already laid

All three nations have been submarine owner/operators for several decades. In nuclear submarines, the US and UK have between them over 120 years of creating and sustaining nuclear submarine operations on a continuous basis. This was forged from experience of many years of SSK operations, from considerable research and development in nuclear energy and an extraordinary determination on the part of the ‘Father of the Nuclear Navy’, Admiral Hyman G Rickover. This combined experience, born from setbacks and many successes is a formidable first foundation. Indeed, the UK would say that the alliance between the two nations has been both demanding and extraordinary – and remarkably effective and enduring.

Similarly, Australia has the considerable benefit of not only submarine operations but a partnership with the UK during the Oberon-Class years, and a ground-breaking, national endeavour in the Collins Class. The creation of a national, submarine build and sustainment capability was visionary and despite the inevitable bumps in the road, has led to the deployment of the world’s first large, long-endurance SSK and one of the most effective SSK forces in the world. Those bumpy moments, admirably captured by Yule and Woolner15, and during the design/build phase itself, in the McIntosh & Prescott Review, together with the sustainment learning that Coles identified, provide a bedrock of lessons for any future programme. Added to that, Australia’s recent programme for an even more formidable SSK force, the Attack Class, had made substantial progress adding more experience and bringing more lessons for the future.

Lastly, and significantly, we observe that AUKUS benefits from strong political support in all three nations, which is seemingly cross-party in all nations. The importance of this cannot be understated, given the need for a very long-term investment by the nations and the need to avoid distractions as administrations come and go, as opposition parties play political games, and as political priorities ebb and flow. The key word that can be the constant throughout the collaboration is ‘trust’.

Critical foundations to lay and embed

No doubt the Nuclear-Powered Submarine Task Force is scoping a considerable range of factors in its assessment, and will be surfacing and addressing the complexities we’ve outlined here earlier. We recognise that it’s one thing for us to catalogue complexities, it’s another to find solutions.

In seeking solutions, and delivering a nuclear submarine capability through-life, we’d offer that our over-arching three critical success factors are a pre-requisite. We’d say that the US and the UK already recognise these factors (if not take them for granted) and we’d expect that Australia can absorb this thinking as the partnership develops and flourishes.

The right mindset. Important lessons from Collins and Attack Classes, as well as Australia’s surface warship programmes will reinforce an understanding of risk and where it really lies. These lessons should give central government and the Department of Defence a different mindset from the more comfortable, transactional, transfer-risk-to-industry, approach that we observe in other defence programmes. The lessons from the US and UK will also come to bear as Australia’s sovereign responsibilities for managing naval nuclear power are understood and developed. And the high stakes (of mission effect and mission safety) will be a step up again from anything that Defence has experienced before. The mindset we describe needs to be developed in leaders and decision-makers across government, each imbuing others in the same appetite for managing risk and complexity, as a team. Achieving this suggests a ‘single controlling mind’ which might be an individual or might be a tight-knit group that defines and acts with a clarity of purpose and overall mission, has a new and different risk appetite, and a competence and confidence to manage that appetite and that inescapable, irreducible responsibility.

Enterprise approach. Flowing from the mindset is the concept of the Enterprise – the concerted collaboration of every stakeholder in the public and private sectors, across government and across nations. And, as we’ve said, the enterprise includes the public, for whom the nuclear submarine force is a pillar in their security and their place in the wider world. A real coup would be to develop support from the nation’s press for whom it is always easy to find fault in something complex and government-led yet not help their readers see the realities and benefits of managing complexity. An effective Enterprise requires extraordinary leadership, at all levels, and particularly that single, identifiable person or controlling mind, within government who carries the overall responsibility, and probably makes a career of it. That controlling mind can also have the character of ‘intelligent customer’, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the Enterprise, knowing who can manage what risks and who cannot, and knowing when to be demanding and when to be supporting. As with other major national programmes such as Collins, the Continuous Naval Shipbuilding programme, or the Snowy Mountain Scheme, these have objectives more holistic than the obvious – they are genuinely nation-building. They can create spin-off by-products that are about improving the nation for a much wider good. The United States’ Apollo programme would be one visible example of a national endeavour that achieved far more than putting a man on the moon.

Continuous Investment. And so, flowing from the factors of the mindset and the enterprise is the inevitable need to be ready for a continuous investment, for the indefinite long-term. Investment in people, in facilities, in the industrial base, in the civil service, in the uniformed navy, in research & development, and in the hearts and minds of the public. For the budget setters and politicians voting on those budgets, the cost/benefit equation is not always easy in terms of defining the cost nor putting a value on the benefits. Nor is it easy to decide the extent to which the programme’s budget is ring-fenced (e.g. hypothecated in law) solely for this purpose, or allowed to be veered and hauled in trading with other naval or wider defence programmes. Much depends on confidence in the programme’s management, yet with a competent, tightly managed enterprise, the costs can, of course, be controlled – as was shown in the UK’s Vanguard Class procurement.

Outcomes – known knowns and unknown unknowns!

In rounding off this paper we can bring the three critical success factors together and muse on what the future might bring. Perhaps it’s three nations, sharing a nuclear submarine mindset, working a tri-party collaborative enterprise and all three investing for the long-term, each playing to their different strengths, each supporting each other, sharing technology, people, experience, facilities, research and military doctrine. There is an arc of potential outcomes. At the more certain end is that Australia will be operating a nuclear submarine force. At the unknowable end, are the spin-offs that will come from this novel tri-partite cooperation, in the years and generations to come…

Authors’ Biographies

Muir Macdonald FREng CDir RCNC

Muir spent 30 years as a civil servant in the UK Ministry of Defence, nearly 10 years as Managing Director of BMT Defence Services and is now a freelance advisor. He has been involved in design or leadership in the Vanguard, Upholder, Swiftsure & Trafalgar Update, and Astute programmes as well as serving in uniform in the Falkland islands and the Clyde Submarine Base, supporting the Polaris fleet and older classes of SSN and SSK. He has had significant roles in surface ship procurement and in-service support, and in international collaborative programmes including with the US, France, Italy and NATO. In policy he has delivered the UK’s logistic support policy and was head of profession for project management. As a 2-star he was responsible for all ‘large’ aircraft procurement and in-service support. At BMT he led the company’s growth, becoming a ‘Best Company to Work For’ and winning a Queen’s Award for industry. He oversaw BMT’s work in the UK’s Submarine Support Management Group, many UK and overseas ship and submarine programmes including with Australia, notably support to the Coles Reviews of Collins Class and in the SEA1000 shaping and decision-support studies.

Alan Nicholl FIExpE MAPM MCIPS MILT MIoD RCNC

Alan is a former 2-star in both UK and Australian Departments of Defence, with deep experience of military acquisition across international boundaries. He specialises in developing supply chains and creating sovereign industrial capability; he was the architect of the export-led Defence Industrial Strategy for the Weapons sector in the UK, and a leading figure in establishing Continuous Naval Shipbuilding in Australia. In the UK, he was responsible for acquisition of weapon systems, spanning technologies from bullets through to the most sophisticated cruise missiles and maritime systems. This included leading several multi-nation collaborations and procurements from the US and other international suppliers. His background also embraces the UK Trident programme, and he was UK Head of Profession for Weapons, Ordnance, Munitions and Explosives. In Australia, Alan was responsible for delivering the A$45Bn recapitalisation of the Royal Australian Navy’s surface fleet, including the SEA5000 Future Frigate programme. He is now a freelance advisor and an Associate Director of Deloitte UK.