This paper was written 10 years ago for presentation at the Submarine Institute of Australia Science, Technology & Engineering Conference held in 2011. The author, Jock Thornton, is:
- A member of the NOC
- One of the editors of the NOC newsletter
- A former Royal Navy Commander with extensive experience as an engineering officer in nuclear submarines and in related programmes.
While the paper may have been overtaken by recent government decisions, the fundamentals of what may be involved in our proposed nuclear propulsion programme for submarines remain the same. Click on this link to open the paper Nuclear Submarines for Australia_A Hypothetical.
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Well we thankfully don’t have to worry about a French nuclear submarine. So that leaves it down to the US Virginia or UK Astute.
Given that Electric Boat is way behind in its deliveries of the Virginia to the US Navy and that the Astute construction program is coming up to finishing, I believe the Astute is the boat for the RAN. Being smaller whilst being extremely capable will enable us to operate it in the shallow waters of Asia as well as the deeper Indian Pacific.
2040s delivery time for these new submarines is the sticking point. There is in no way any reason why we can’t speed this process up to have our first nuclear submarine operational in 2030. Its just a question of knuckling down and getting on with it.
Nuclear Technology transfer completed by mid 2023, initial design completed by mid 2025, initial boat 1 build completed by end 2028, sea trials 2029, commissioned 2030.
Have Barrow construct the first two boats with ASC employees there to become qualified in constructing nuclear submarines back in Adelaide. The timetable above gives the supply chain ample time to become operational. It also gives the Navy time to train and qualify both Officers and Sailors, along with exchange postings to the USN and RN.
Finally leasing a boat from the RN would be extremely advantageous in the lead up to the commissioning of boat 1.
Finally I hate to bring up politics however its vital for our national security that the Liberal Nationals win the forthcoming federal election. If in the event that Labor need the Greens to gain government by forming an agreement with the Greens you can bet the Reserve Bank of Australia, that this submarine will be doomed.
An excellent and thoughtful contribution to gaining an appreciation of the complexities and politics of the SSN component of AUKUS. BZ
Jock, this was a prescient paper that you presented at the first SubSTEC conference. All of us thought your proposal was the way to go but would never find the political basis for it to proceed. Your assumption that a nuclear iindustry is ane essential prerequisite has now been side-etepped by the simplistic artefact of life-tiem fuelling of the reactor as though that removes any need for nuclear industrial sustainment. As I hope you will confirm, there are many aspects of nuclear propulsion that require depot level industrial support and the people providing that support much be properly tarined, qualified and licenced by a competent authority, which will need to be set up with the full approval of ARPANSA. This may be conveniently viewed as not part of the prohibited nuclear power industry but the dividing lines will become less clear as we move through this vital development.
The other point I would like to make is following the comment from Craig Ritchie that we must plan to do better than first of class AUSSN by 2040. After LOTE Collins boats will start decommissioning from 2038 and we must build up the submarine force numbers, not allow any reduction, thus requiring the first AUSSN to be delivered not later than 2035 for IOC in 2038. With a phased process of an ASTUTE program with US combat system integrated by Lockheed Martin this can be achieved IMHO with progressively more work at Osborne only paced by the licensing of workforce and infrastructure there.