They’re expensive, take 20 years to make, and Australia alienated France by buying them – but our new subs could be worse.
The $ 100 billion bill faces inevitable, massive failures. The 20 year delivery date is optimistic and probably too late. Now a top academic has dropped a bomb on Australia’s nuclear submarine dreams – calling them the dinosaurs of the deep.
“Subs … just have one big trick. You are secret. But if a submarine is discovered in a conflict, it’s dead, ”says Roger Bradbury, Professor Emeritus of Complex Systems Science at the Australian National University.
What this means for these immensely complex and expensive machines, he explains in a short article by Defense Connect.
Bradbury says he and a team of analysts have identified a number of technology trends that could affect submarine warfare. The AI-based conclusion predicts that the oceans will become “transparent” by 2050.
“A transparent ocean will be the result of a coming integration of undeveloped sensor systems, and it will likely come together quickly,” he warns. “The submarine era will likely end with a bang, not a whimper.”
Put simply, your one big trick is not going to work anymore.
$ 100 billion boat bill
Unfortunately for Australia, Prof. Bradbury believes this extinction level event will occur by 2050. This is in the middle of the planned delivery of our largest and most expensive defense project of all time.
Earlier this month, under the new AUKUS Pact, Australia signed a $ 90 billion deal with the United States and the United Kingdom to buy diesel-electric submarines from France in favor of conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines .
Australia’s eight new boats won’t come cheap. The SMH has reported that it costs around A $ 5 billion to build each U.S. Virginia-class nuclear submarine, but adds additional development and planning costs, including the additional financial burden of building the fleet in Australia rather than the U.S. or Britain, and that bill could end up being north of $ 100 billion.
The tide turns
At the same time, new technologies are piling up against submarines at a rapid pace. And like the heavily delayed F35 stealth fighter, Australia’s nuclear boats risk emerging in a world where they are no longer entirely relevant.
“There is always an arms race between opposing weapon systems, forcing each of them to evolve or die. Sometimes development is gradual … sometimes there is just a sudden extinction, ”wrote Prof. Bradbury.
The difference between evolution and extinction, he says, is often related to specialization.
“If the system is highly specialized, there may not be any evolutionary ways to survive in a changing world.”
With their immense complexity and long construction time, submarines are highly specialized beasts.
They are currently “apex predators”.
Unseen. Unheard. Fatal. In combination with the size and diversity of the world’s oceans, this results in a natural advantage.
A submarine can take out an unsuspecting surface fleet of warships that are much larger and more powerful than itself. They are also useful for gathering intelligence, laying mines, and completing missions for special forces.
But only the best are of use in hunting down other submarines. When it comes to stealth, submarines have had the upper hand for half a century. But the happy days of the sub might be over.
Decreased Returns?
Submarines are a unique threat. They are ideally suited to sit silently away from strategic locations and wait for the opportunity to strike. They have the potential to close arteries and stifle the economy.
But what if they can’t? Then a cornerstone of modern naval thinking is turned on its head.
As early as 2017, US Naval War College strategy professor James Holmes sounded just as warning.
“A visible boat is a vulnerable boat,” he said.
“Finding such traces of the presence of a … submarine – and translating that information into actionable tracking and targeting data – would destroy all or part of its main advantage – its ability to disappear under the waves,” argued Holmes.
There are many anti-submarine defense projects in the works. Here are just a few.
A new radar is already in use. It’s a huge retractable capsule that screws under the US P8 Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft. It can scan the sea surface with high definition radar. Artificial intelligence can then scan these images for tiny traces of a submarine’s wake.
The US defense research agency DARPA is also pursuing a big data approach. It tries to use the behavior of marine life – like shrimp and phytoplankton – to infer the presence of a submarine.
The main threat is the proliferation of drones.
Underwater gliders. Surface based automated canoes. They are cheap and are becoming more and more reliable. Everyone can work for weeks and only report if their sensor suite finds something interesting.
Then there are big drones. These can perform many of the tasks of a full-blown submarine on their own. Without risking a crew’s life.
Adjust or Die
The Australian National University’s Indo-Pacific Strategy: Undersea Deterrence Project recently published a report by US researcher Sebastian Brixey-Williams.
He argues that similar attacks on “transparent ocean fear” have been common in the past few decades.
However, he warns that submariners need to keep an eye on the rapid pace of change.
Drones, AI and new sensors “could turn out to be game changers that could make the difference in favor of ASW (anti-submarine warfare),” he writes. “Still, with the history of science and technology littered with unforeseen obstacles and elusive breakthroughs, and with many of these technologies currently classified, it is difficult to provide a fixed schedule for game changers in ASW.”
But submarines can still have life in them. They will have to change over time.
We can expect strange new shapes to replace the relatively simple cylindrical designs currently in use. These are needed to further reduce the noise they make through the water and the wake that can drag behind them.
And as with stealth aircraft, strange angles and turns – along with new exotic and expensive composite materials – may be required to absorb and deflect probing sensors.
They also have to carry their own drones. And lots of them.
Missing Link?
Submarines carrying torpedo and cruise missiles have had their day, argued Professor Holmes.
“It may be appropriate for the silent service to rethink its boats as underwater aircraft carriers – except that they operate fleets of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) instead of airplanes.”
U-boats have to become mother ships, he says.
You can sit safely and at some distance from your destination. Your drones take all the risks.
“It can be instructive to think beyond the aircraft carrier as an analogy for this type of underground warfare to come,” he said. “But as always, the devil lurks in the details.”
For such a role, submarines would have to carry a considerable number of a variety of drones.
No current design – nuclear or conventional, British, American or French – provides for this.
And that could be the reason for their extinction.
Adaptability must be built in.
Just like an aircraft carrier, a submarine mothership with drones can customize and upgrade its small ship to meet a new threat much faster than changing the submarine itself.
And that’s all due to the benefits of autonomous drones.
You can improve a submarine’s offensive ability. But you can also be defensive. This can include bait. But it could also be drones that are supposed to destroy enemy drones before they – in turn – find the enemy submarine.
Drones could also carry active sonar – the device that emits a loud “ping” that echoes objects in the vicinity. The problem is that the generator of this “ping” also reveals its own location. If it was a drone, the manned boat could be safely hidden nearby.
However, submarines are likely to remain much safer than fully exposed surface vessels for some time. But things are changing.
“In short, submarines will not be as extraordinary as they used to be,” says Holmes. “You will have to learn new habits. They’ll be more like surface officers, forced to train in active defense and counterattack in order to survive, rather than relying on invisibility. They need to be more like airmen operating squadrons of offboard vehicles to increase their combat range. And subs will no longer be loners sent out to do great things in independent operations.
“In short, there is not just a technological, but a cultural revolution going on.”
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel
