The US Navy and Australia need new diesel-electric submarines. Just don’t try to tell the conflicted American admirals who have been guiding our AUKUS disaster, reports Michael Pascoe.
Australia’s deal with France to acquire diesel-electric submarines was (in)famously scuppered by Scott Morrison in June 2021 and replaced by the present AUKUS deal. The headline is about a senior American naval strategist campaigning for the US to start building or buying diesel-electric submarines. I’ll come back to that.
Just as important for Australia, though, is his nailing of American admirals’ groupthink when it comes to subs. It’s groupthink that has weakened America’s silent service and is steering Australia’s maritime defence aground.
Lest we forget, it was a cabal of American admirals and former US Navy civilian officials that the Coalition hired to guide its submarine course, somewhat inevitably ending up with ditching the French option in favour of the AUKUS nuclear-powered debacle.
The wrong submarine strategy?
James Holmes is chair of maritime strategy at the US Naval War College. For a variety of very solid reasons, he believes the US should add diesel-electric boats to its present all-nuclear submarine fleet and do it fast. He’s not alone but warns the campaign is futile.
“I say this is a futile topic because nuclear-trained officers fiercely resist proposals that the fleet should revert, even in part, to conventional propulsion,” Holmes wrote in The National Interest last month. “The legacy of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, is integral to the submarine force’s institutional DNA.”
Like people sticking with whatever religion they are born into, US admirals are fervent members of the one, true nuclear-powered faith, and woe betide infidels.
Three years ago, the Washington Post exposed the extent of former US Navy personnel advising Canberra to go nuclear under the headline “Former US Navy leaders profited from overlapping interests on sub deal.”
“The Australian government has kept details of the Americans’ advice confidential,” WaPo reported. “The Post was forced to sue the U.S. Navy and State Department under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain documents that shed light on the admirals’ involvement.”
To refresh:
“Two retired U.S. admirals and three former U.S. Navy civilian leaders are playing critical but secretive roles as paid advisers to the government of Australia during its negotiations to acquire top-secret nuclear submarine technology from the United States and Britain.
“The Americans are among a group of former U.S. Navy officials whom the Australian government has hired as high-dollar consultants to help transform its fleet of ships and submarines, receiving contracts worth as much as $800,000 a person, documents show.
“All told, six retired U.S. admirals have worked for the Australian government since 2015, including one who served for two years as Australia’s deputy secretary of defense. In addition, a former U.S. secretary of the Navy has been a paid adviser to three successive Australian prime ministers.
“A Washington Post investigation found that the former U.S. Navy officials have benefited financially from a tangle of overlapping interests in their work for a longtime ally of the United States. Some of the retired admirals have worked for the Australian government while simultaneously consulting for U.S. shipbuilders and the U.S. Navy, including on classified programs.
“One of the six retired U.S. admirals had to resign this year as a part-time submarine consultant to the Australian government because of a potential conflict of interest over his full-time job as board chairman of a U.S. company that builds nuclear-powered subs.”
Gosh, you hire members of the nuclear-powered faith to advise, guess what they’re going to advise?
The Holmes article draws on two Naval Institute papers by heretical US Navy lieutenant commanders pushing for diesel-electric attack and missile subs to be added to the fleet. In part, their papers read as if they have been studying the work of MWM’s Rex Patrick, whose 2023 feature on these pages definitively made the case for the Ferrari of submarines not being fit for Australian purposes.
I just want a Ferrari, sorry, a nuclear submarine, no matter the cost
Diesel-electric subs
Aside from their superior performance in littoral waters, as Rex has reported, the diesel-electrics have the obvious benefits of being available faster and cheaper than the nuclear-powered subs America can barely build in time to replace the boats it’s retiring.
Perhaps most attractively from an American point of view (and that normally seems to be the Australian point of view as an obedient vassal state), the diesel-electrics offer strategic and tactical benefits, including for the launch of Submarine Guided Missiles (SSG).
“Five vertical-launch-equipped SSGs procured for the cost of a Block V Virginia would boast more combined missile firepower than that single Virginia — over half again as much, in fact,” writes Holmes. “Moreover, that firepower would be ‘distributed,’ or spread out, among several smaller hulls, consonant with the reigning US Navy doctrine of ‘distributed maritime operations’.”
The papers cite the Korean KSS-111 missile subs already at sea with “the production line running hot” as very viable options.
“Dispersing capability among numerous SSGs makes eminent sense. It means that, in the event of a war, the fleet could lose a boat in action without losing an inordinate share of its aggregate fighting power. The fleet would fight on.
“Just as importantly, five different SSGs could be at five different places on the nautical chart, whereas one SSN can only be in one place. Control of more geographic space is an invaluable commodity. A distributed fleet would empower naval commanders to scatter missile boats to vital maritime passages.”
And before anyone shouts “snorkel”, the new air-independent propulsion non-nuclear subs can stay submerged for weeks and are much quieter than the nukes.
Nuclear groupthink
That Australia eventually might receive a token number of extremely expensive nuclear-powered subs with only a fraction of the number being operational at any one time, compared with relatively quickly buying more subs more suited to our needs for less, is a no-brainer.
Unless, of course, you are a member of the nuclear-powered groupthink faith and only want Ferraris.
And beyond the US boats, if you believe in unicorns and the tooth fairy, lies the idea of yet-to-be-designed bigger British subs to be built in Adelaide. That’s the Adelaide that can barely build your common-or-garden varieties of warships, certainly not on budget and or on time, let alone magically acquire the vastly more difficult skills and technology to construct a new generation of nuclear-powered boats.
“Accumulation of defects”. A-G report scathing on Navy shipbuilding
By coincidence, hot on the heels of the Holmes article I received some thoughts on groupthink from economist Jeff Schubert, someone who has extensive experience in Russia and China, among other places, as an analyst and teacher. He cited the groupthink of Western academics on Russian reform in the early 1990s and the neocons’ Iraq invasion as examples of the disasters that follow.
“I have just listened to a Times Radio broadcast in which PR hack Sophie Gaston and other so-called AUKUS ‘experts’ claim that AUKUS is essential to Indo-Pacific security and that a ‘whole of government / society’ approach must be implemented to make AUKUS succeed. As should be clear by now, the invasion of Iraq was driven by zealots who led a ‘group think’ process while genuine experts on Iraq were marginalized,” he wrote.
“No ‘independent experts’ believe that AUKUS submarines can be built in Adelaide,
but ignorant proponents such as Sophie Gaston offer assurances to each other that this is possible while avoiding engaging with doubters and critics.”
That description fits Australia’s political duopoly as well. Labor and the Coalition combined last week to prevent a Senate committee inquiry into AUKUS.
They don’t want to consider independent opinions, let alone doubters or critics, when it comes to Australia’s biggest ever defence spend. They prefer to stick with their American groupthink. They know their place.
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.