AUKUS Gets Awkward Down Under
A controversy threatens to blow the alliance’s nuclear submarine deal out of the water.
FP, By Maddison Connaughton 24 Mar 23
Even among Australia’s roll call of opinionated former prime ministers, Paul Keating stands out—not least for his unmatched ability to dress down those who oppose him. But few thought he would ever turn this skill on his own political party, the Australian Labor Party, which finally seized government in 2022 after a decade in the wilderness. That was until last week, when Keating publicly condemned the AUKUS defense pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for signing it.
That tripartite deal, details of which were announced with fanfare just two days earlier, was “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government” since conscription was attempted during World War I, Keating said during an appearance at Australia’s National Press Club. The decision to purchase nuclear-powered submarines—at a cost of up to 368 billion Australian dollars ($245 billion)—would invariably draw Australia into any potential conflict between the United States and China, he warned.
No words were minced: “Signing the country up to the foreign proclivities of another country—the United States, with the gormless Brits, in their desperate search for relevance, lunging along behind is not a pretty sight.”
Another former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull of the Liberal Party, also chimed in with concerns, though he put them slightly more delicately.
…………….Turnbull has questioned whether the use of U.S. submarines—employed as a stopgap until British-designed, Australian-built subs are complete—could compromise Australia’s sovereignty. ……………….
Sam Roggeveen, the director of the international security program at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, told Foreign Policy that his sovereignty concerns regarding AUKUS stretch beyond personnel. “When you build a weapon system that is almost specifically designed to operate thousands of kilometers to our north, and which is perfectly suited to fighting a military campaign against China,” he said, “then at the final moment when the call comes from the White House—‘Will you take part in this war, or won’t you?’—it will be very difficult, almost impossible, for Australia to say no.”
………… Should this relationship continue to devolve, AUKUS could prove “very dangerous” to Australia, dragging the country into a conflict between the two great powers. Ultimately, more debate was needed about the deal, he said, particularly because Australia will bear all of its cost and risk………………………………………………………….
“Many rank-and-file [Labor] members would and do agree with Keating’s criticism, if not all aspects of his argument,”said Chris Wallace, a political historian and professor at the University of Canberra. And some local branches, the bedrock of the party, have recently been pushing back against the deal.
Similarly, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was founded in Australia in 2007, warned that AUKUS posed “both a major proliferation risk and could be seen as a precursor to Australia acquiring nuclear weapons.” The organization said the purpose of the submarines was, clearly, “to support the [United States] in a war in northeast Asia. Whether with China, North Korea or Russia, there is an alarming risk of any such war escalating to use of nuclear weapons.”
Recent polling suggests the Australian people may also be coming around to Keating’s point of view. Leading pollster Essential found this month that the public’s belief that AUKUS would make Australia more secure has fallen to just 40 percent, down from 45 percent when the pact was first announced back in 2021. On the question of the nuclear-powered submarines in particular, Essential reported that 55 percent of people surveyed either thought the purchase was unnecessary or too expensive.
…………………………………. “There is no rational basis for the Albanese government facilitating the withering expense of nuclear submarines,” Keating wrote, “other than to suit and comply with the strategic ambitions of the United States—ambitions which slice through Australia’s future in the community of Asia, the basis of our rightful and honourable residency.”
The backlash to the recent announcement, from adversaries and allies alike, Wallace said, should prompt the Albanese government to go back to the drawing board and actually vet whether the deal—including the procurement of submarines powered by weapons-grade uranium—was the best option for Australia. “Instead, the government made the announcement first and expected everyone to back in behind it,” she said. “They were dreaming.”
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https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/24/aukus-australia-submarine-deal-paul-keating/
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To sign or not to sign. Australia’s dilemma over the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
‘Would the US alliance survive?’ Signing nuclear weapons treaty comes with risk
SMH, By Matthew Knott and Paul Sakkal, April 4, 2023
The Albanese government is weighing whether to make a dramatic break with the United States and sign an anti-nuclear weapons treaty that would aggravate Washington and launch a new era in Australian security policy.
Anti-nuclear campaigners are urging the government to join over 90 countries and sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) before the next election, a step that would see Australia abandon a key pillar of the US alliance by removing itself from America’s “nuclear umbrella” in the Asia-Pacific.
Labor’s national platform commits the party to signing and ratifying the treaty – which prohibits member states from participating in any nuclear weapon activities – but only after certain conditions are met.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been a strong supporter of signing the treaty, describing the idea as “Labor at our best”.
The US strongly opposes the treaty and has previously urged friendly nations not to support it, on the grounds it would undermine peace and security.
……………………… A spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the government will consider the treaty “systematically and methodically as a part of our ambitious agenda to advance nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament”.
“There are a number of complex issues to be considered,” she said.
…………………………………….. Gem Romuld, Australian director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said “if the government is committed to non-proliferation and disarmament, it will sign the TPNW during this term of government”.
“That would be warmly welcomed by countries across the Asia-Pacific, most of which have already signed the treaty, as well as most of the Australian public,” she said.
Romuld acknowledged ratifying the treaty would represent a “big change for Australia, ending a practice we have had in our security policy for a couple of decades” by prohibiting Australia from hosting American assets armed with nuclear weapons, such as B-52 bombers.
………….. Romuld said the AUKUS pact – under which Australia will acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines – does not prevent the government from signing the treaty. “In fact it only underlines the importance of it,” she said.
………………….
Labor MP Josh Wilson, the chair of the joint standing committee on treaties, said the TPNW represented a “much-needed jolt of momentum in the global nuclear disarmament effort”.
“In my view Australia should aspire to sign and ratify, while in the meantime being engaged, supportive, and open to incremental progress,” he said…………… https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/would-the-us-alliance-survive-signing-nuclear-weapons-treaty-comes-with-risk-20230403-p5cxo3.html
Australian Labor prepares return to disastrous Forward Defence doctrine
Pearls and Irritations, By Brian Toohey, Mar 31, 2023
Nearly everything the Labor government says about nuclear subs is ludicrous and highly damaging.
Despite Defence Minister Marles apparently saying Australia will not participate in a war over Taiwan, Hugh White (ex- Dep Head Defence) says the US would never sell nuclear submarines to Australia without guarantees they will always be used in a US war. The reason is that these subs are taken from off its own line of battle. They are not additional submarines from the production line. Once again, Australian sovereignty does not exist in the sense of being able to use US weapons how we want to do after buying them.
Marles now says the nuclear subs are not for war, but to protect Australian merchant shipping. A leading economist Percy Allan points out there are 26,000 cargo ship movements to and from Australia each year. Nuclear subs have terrible maintenance problems and if we buy the expected three second hand Virginia Class attack subs from America, only one might be operationally available at any time and probably none.
One sub, let alone none, can’t protect 26,000 cargo shipping movements, but mainstream journalists swallow this nonsense.
Before his sudden conversion to pacifism, Marles wanted to deploy the nuclear subs off the Chinese coast to fire long-range cruise missiles into the mainland. This represents a return to the Forward Defence doctrine that failed in Singapore in 1942, and later in Vietnam. Arthur Calwell gave a magnificent anti-war speech in 1965. He was fully vindicated when the Vietnamese won a war against a horrendously destructive invasion that was a war crime. Now, Albanese effectively supports war.
With Labor now returning to the disastrous Forward Defence doctrine, it’s worth remembering the Coalition defence minister in 1969 Allen Fairhall scrapped this doctrine and cut military spending by 5%, while there were still 7,000 Australian troops in Vietnam. The Coalition then switched to the direct defence of Australia. Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating all embraced the defence of Australia, not forward defence. Keating also adopted a long sighted policy of seeking our security in Asia, not from it.
Later, in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Howard reverted to do America’s bidding in another war crime of aggression.
Australia’s best defence is it’s surrounded by water and a long way from China or India. There is no evidence either is a threat. If this changes for the worse, the Defence of Australia doctrine will come into its own.
Marles and Albanese will recklessly position nuclear subs off China. But that’s where China’s forces are concentrated. Because Marles and Albanese would be playing to China’s strengths, they would then be responsible for a disastrous military blunder when the subs are sunk.
It would be much better to play to our strengths, by defending the approaches to Australia by buying highly advanced, medium sized, submarines that are superior to nuclear subs.
Marles estimates his subs will cost up to $368 billion (realistically over $400b). As explained later, that includes the crazy decision to pay the UK to co-design 8 new submarines for Australia. This dwarfs the next highest defence acquisition —$17 billion for F-35 fighter jets.
The US Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service have an outstanding record for exposing appalling waste and incompetence in US submarine shipyards. One Virginia sub was tied up at a jetty for five years before it could be fixed. The US has a military budget of $US880, yet Albanese is donating $3 billion to help improve the shipyards.
Marles did not take the responsible ministerial step and commission a cost-effectiveness study of the options before splurging $400 billion. Australia could get ten superior conventional submarines for a total $10-$15 billion from Japan, South Korea or Germany that could deter any hostile ships approaching Australia from a couple of thousand kilometres away. Submerged drones and mines could also help at a low cost.
Japan’s new Taigei subs use highly advanced batteries that run silently for several weeks without needing to surface to charge the batteries. South Korean and German submarines are about to get much improved batteries. These new subs can run silently on hydrogen fuel cells as well as batteries.
Nuclear subs are easier to detect. When they go at high-speed, they make a detectable wake. Being much bigger, they have a stronger magnetic impression than suitable conventional boats.
Like other subs, nuclear ones have to come to the surface to stick up periscopes and radar and electronic warfare equipment. They produce an easily detected infrared signal due to the reactor constantly boiling water for steam engines to propel the subs. (Nuclear power does not propel the sub. Puffing Billy does.)
Another huge problem with nuclear subs is the government has rightly said it will take all the highly enriched uranium waste at end of the sub’s life, then safely store it. This requires the waste to be vitrified overseas and returned in thick drums for burying deep in stable dry underground rock formations for hundreds of years and heavily guarded. Each reactor weighs 100 tons and contains 200 kg of highly radioactive uranium. When used in nuclear power stations, uranium is enriched to about 5%, the same as for French and Chinese nuclear submarines and 20% for Russian. It’s 93% for ours, greatly exacerbating the disposal problem.
I recently asked Australia’s principal nuclear safety organisation, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency about how such waste could be safely stored. It refused to answer. Perhaps it was intimidated by Defence.
Marles exacerbated the problem by saying the waste uranium would be stored “on” defence land. It can’t be stored safely on top of the land. It must be stored deep underground. He’s not dealing with low-grade hospital nuclear waste.
Neither the US or the UK has a high-level underground nuclear waste repository. They could easily pressure Australia into securing their waste from their nuclear subs reactors here.
It seems likely the burial site will be on land in central Australia that is important to Australia’s indigenous population. Whatever happens, it is essential there is no repeat of the way the indigenous people were wilfully exposed to radiation during and after the British nuclear tests in the 1950s and 60s in Australia’s south and central desert areas…………………………………………………………….. more https://johnmenadue.com/labor-prepares-return-to-disastrous-forward-defence-doctrine/
AUKUS, the Australian Labor Party, and Growing Dissent
the Royal Australian Navy would be far better off acquiring between 40 to 50 of the Collins Class submarines to police the coastline rather than having nuclear powered submarines lying in wait off the Chinese shoreline.
March 25, 2023, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/aukus-the-australian-labor-party-and-growing-dissent/
It was a sight to behold and took the wind out of the bellicose sails of the AUKUS cheer squad. Here, at the National Press Club in the Australian capital, was a Labor luminary, former Prime Minister of Australia and statesman, keen to weigh in with characteristic sharpness and dripping venom. Paul Keating’s target: the militaristic lunacy that has characterised Australia’s participation in the US-led security pact that promises hellish returns and pangs of insecurity.
In his March 15 address to a Canberra press gallery bewitched by the magic of nuclear-propelled submarines and the China bogeyman, Keating was unsparing about those “seriously unwise ministers in government” – notably Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles, unimpressed by their foolish, uncritical embrace of the US war machine. “The Albanese Government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One.”
In terms of history, this was chilling to Keating. The AUKUS security pact represented a longing gaze back at the Mother Country, Britain, “shunning security in Asia for security in and within the Anglosphere.” It also meant a locking alliance with the United States for the next half-century as a subordinate in a containment strategy of Beijing. This was a bi-partisan approach to foreign policy that saw the US dominating East Asia as “the primary strategic power” rather than a balancing one.
For Keating, the impetus for such madness came from a defence establishment that dazzled the previous Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. That effort, he argues, was spearheaded by the likes of the US-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Andrew Shearer of the Office of National Intelligence. They even, he argues, managed to convince PM Albanese, Marles and Wong to abandon the 20-month review period on the scope of what they were seeking.
The steamrolling Keating was also unsparing in attacking a number of journalists for their ditzy, adolescent belligerence. The sword, once produced, was never sheathed. Peter Hartcher, most notably, received a generous pasting as a war infatuated lunatic whose anti-China campaign at the Fairfax presses had been allowed for years.
In terms of the submarines themselves, Keating also expressed the view that the Royal Australian Navy would be far better off acquiring between 40 to 50 of the Collins Class submarines to police the coastline rather than having nuclear powered submarines lying in wait off the Chinese shoreline.
As we all should know, submarine policy is where imagination goes to expire, often in frightful, costly ways. For all Keating’s admiration for the Collins Class, it was a nightmarish project marred by fiascos, poor planning and organisational dysfunction within the defence establishment. At stages, two-thirds of the Australian fleet of six submarines was unable to operate at full capacity. The lesson here is that submarines and the Australian naval complex simply do not mix.
The reaction from the Establishment was one of predictable dismissal, denial and distortion, typical of what Gore Vidal would have called deranged machismo. Instead of being critical of the powers that are, they have turned their guns and wallets on spectres, ghosts and devilish images. The tragedy looms, and it will be, like many tragedies, the result of colossal, unforgivable stupidity.
At the very least, the intervention by Keating, notably in the Labor Party, has not gone unnoticed. Within the Labor caucus, tremors of dissatisfaction are being recorded, breaches growing. West Australian Labor backbencher Josh Wilson defied his own party’s dictates by telling colleagues in the House of Representatives how he was “not yet convinced that we can adequately deal with the non-proliferation risks involved in what is a novel arrangement, by which a non-nuclear weapons state under the NPT (Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty) comes to acquire weapons-grade material.”
Wilson’s views are not outlandish to the man. He is keen to challenge the notion of unaccountable executive war powers, a problem that looms large in the Westminster system. “To assume that such decision-making is already perfect, immutable, and beyond scrutiny,” he wrote in December last year, “puts Australia at risk of making the most dangerous judgments without the best institutional framework for doing so.”
A gaggle of former senior Labor ministers have also emerged, even if they initially proved sluggish. Peter Garrett, former environment minister and front man of Midnight Oil, while proving a bit squeamish about Keating’s invective, found himself in general agreement. “The deal stinks with massive cost, loss of independence, weaking nuke safeguards & more.”
Kim Carr, who had previously held ministerial positions in industry and defence materiel, revealed that the matter of AUKUS had never been formally approved in the Federal Labor caucus, merely noted. Various “key” Labor figures – again Marles and Wong – agreed to endorse the proposition put forth to them on September 15, 2021 by the then Coalition government.
He also expressed deep concern “about a revival of a forward defence policy, given our performance in Vietnam.” For Carr, the shadow cast by the Iraq War was long. “Given it’s 20 years since Iraq, you can hardly say our security agencies should not be questioned when they provide their assessments.”
For former foreign minister, Gareth Evans, there were three questions: whether the submarines are actually fit for purpose; whether Australia retained genuine sovereignty over them in their use; and, were that not the case, “whether that loss of agency is a price worth paying for the US security insurance we think we might be buying.”
Will these voices make a difference? They just might – but if so, Australia will have to thank that political pugilist and Labor veteran who, for all his faults, spoke in terms that will be considered, in a matter of years, treasonous by the Empire and its sycophants.
AUKUS – “These are the horrors”
Instead of humiliatingly accepting the smirking American ‘we neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons visiting your country’, the Albanese government could reassert a little of our lost sovereignty by stating up front, no nuclear weapons never.
The AUKUS submarines will not be here to defend Australia, but only to attack China in a subordinate role with the American forces.
Pearls and Irritations, By Richard Tanter, Mar 24, 2023
AUKUS. This is a horror for which I now fear for the lives of my children and their children. Every time a Labor member of parliament or senator puts foot outside their office to appear in public, turns up at a public meeting, we need to ask them: why have you betrayed us? Why have you allowed this to happen? What are you going to do?
Transcript of a speech at the Anti-AUKUS Rally, Naarm, State Library of Victoria lawn, 18 March 2023.
These are horrors.
This is a horror for which I now fear for the lives of my children and their children.
This is now changing the direction of Australia for the next forty or fifty years.
We have never seen anything like this in peacetime Australia. At any stage.
This must not stand.
But it’s with the suite of profound horrors that we must start with.
The horrors of AUKUS
Firstly, the automatic involvement in war.
We have already been tied to the United States by the bases – by Pine Gap, by North West Cape, by the Space Surveillance Telescope that take us into space warfare, by the many other Australian bases to which the US has access.
We are already tied in, hard-wired in many cases, to the American war machine.
And the ADF is barely an autonomous force today.
But AUKUS takes us very much further down that road.
We already know what the submarines are there for.
In a rational world I actually think submarines are very important for the defence of Australia – but not in the form of this politically-driven, call-from-Washington-inspired scheme for long-range, long-endurance nuclear-powered submarines whose only rational use is to attack China.
Not on their own – Keating’s right about that calling them toothpicks thrown at a mountain – but in concert with American submarines and carrier task forces.
Maybe not immediately nuclear-armed, but almost certainly capable of nuclear-attack as well.
The AUKUS submarines will not be here to defend Australia, but only to attack China in a subordinate role with the American forces.
The horror of that fiscal black hole.
What does that $368 billion actually amount to? As if we have any idea of what the value of a dollar will be in forty years time – the lifetime cost of AUKUS will be an order of magnitude higher, certainly two or even four trillion dollars.
But what that means in terms of the sacrifice from what’s needed from government for decent health and survival for the Australian people is itself horrific.
This moves us towards what I think is an almost irrevocable position of enmity as far as the Chinese are concerned.
Principally because the only rational strategic role for those submarines is to contribute, potentially, to an American existential threat to China.
Even if we stop tomorrow, is China going to forget that?
Why should they?
We’ve revealed our hand.
We have a Minister for Defence who is effectively the minister for Washington, and this is where we have come to.
The horror of the sacrifice zone that the high-level nuclear waste storage site that is to be somewhere built in Australia.
I have to say that of all things that have shocked me about this scheme, this is one that has shocked me most.
Not just because I made the mistake of thinking that Albanese might be halfway reasonable because in my role as a former president of ICAN I had relations with those people, and he pledged he would support a nuclear ban treaty.
Well, that’s not happening now unless we make it happen.
But the announcement of a nuclear waste dump for high-level toxic nuclear waste, radioactive for thousands of years, is another world all together.
I had foolishly thought that they would follow their own mantra for the past year of saying that ‘this will be a sealed reactor full of highly enriched uranium, and to prevent diversion to nuclear weapons, the US will deliver it sealed, and when the fuel is exhausted it will return to the United States sealed for disposal, somewhere safe, where no-one else can get at it …’
More fool me. More fool me.
They betrayed us again, and that nuclear sacrifice zone of high level waste is going to be a huge problem – and struggle – for decades and decades.
What really troubles me as someone who works on strategic issues and thinks that defence issues are real and important, is that this the largest defence expenditure – if we can use the word ‘defence’ with a straight face in this context – this massive defence expenditure actually disables our genuinely necessary defence capabilities.
There will be very little money left over for anything else in defence.
Worst of all, it disables the possibility of what we have come here today to call for – an independent defence and foreign policy – because there will be nothing left.
I heard one of those defence experts quoted in that authoritative source, Nine Entertainment’s Red Alert on the front pages of The Age – the same report that said yes, we have allies, we have Diego Garcia – all 27 square kilometres of it grabbed by the Brits and rented by the Americans, and we have Guam – the tiny American colony almost wholly taken up by US military bases – it would be funny if it wasn’t so awful and so telling about the government’s grasp of the actual facts – I saw that one of those experts said ‘we have to accept that if there is a war with China ‘that means Pine Gap goes’.
Actually I think that’s quite true, under certain circumstances. But the blitheness, the casualness with which that is said tells us a lot about how these people think.
Because if ‘Pine Gap goes’ in a nuclear missile attack, then Alice Springs and most of its 25,000 citizens ‘go’ too. No need to think about that, is there?
Just the casualness with which this is proposed and debated, apart from the ignorance, is stunning and revealing.
And the last part of the horror for me is the nuclear permissiveness which is now beginning to swell in discussions in Canberra security circles.
The momentum that is going to be built out of this first step of nuclear-powered submarine will mean we’re already going to have naval training for this; we’re going to have expanded nuclear engineering programs at places like the ANU.
We’re going to have military and naval careers built around this.
We’re going to have an industry here which has a deep interest in going the next step from naval nuclear propulsion to a civilian nuclear power industry.
We also know, because this is preceded by the US B-52 bombers at RAAF Tindal near Katherine in the Northern Territory – not nuclear-armed bombers at present, but quite definitely possibly nuclear-armed in the future at the stroke of a presidential pen –that those bombers will be used as part of an attack on China.
And what’s really important to understand now is that the South pacific Nuclear Weapon Free Zone, which Australia signed and says it’s proud of, has a loophole in it sponsored by the Australians to meet US needs, which says there are to be no nuclear weapons in the territories of the member states, like Australia, except in the case of ‘transits’ or ‘visits’.
Transits and visit in these days of American rotational deployments can cover an awful lot of interpretations.
The Albanese government could do one very simple thing to address this fear: it could declare that under no circumstances will any nuclear weapons from any country be allowed into Australia.
Not for a visit, not of layover in transit, just never.
No nuclear-armed aircraft, warships or submarines will ever be allowed to enter Australia.
The USS Asheville nuclear-powered attack submarine in Perth at the moment at Stirling Naval Base, and its successors, will never be allowed to return without a verifiable declaration that they come without nuclear weapons.
Instead of humiliatingly accepting the smirking American ‘we neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons visiting your country’, the Albanese government could reassert a little of our lost sovereignty by stating up front, no nuclear weapons never.
The strategy of AUKUS
The strategic part of what’s happening at the American bases in Australia (aka ‘joint facilities’) is part of all this.
You know what is happening at Pine Gap, the giant American-built and American-paid for joint surveillance station outside Alice Springs.
You know about the wonderfully-named Harold E. Holt Naval Communications Station on the tip of North West Cape in Western Australia – a critical submarine communications base for American nuclear submarines and in the future for these AUKUS submarines. It’s immensely important, and probably another priority target, most likely nuclear under certain circumstances.
But just down the road the US has built a giant and highly advanced space telescope.
That doesn’t sound very much, does it.
But what it’s there for is our contribution to American plans for space warfare, to ensure what the US calls ‘space dominance’. And you understand perfectly well how critical space is for all militaries – and indeed our whole society – today.
We are deeply and increasingly plugged into that activity.
All governments have talked for the last thirty years about ‘the joint facilities’ – we don’t have any American bases, of which Australia has full knowledge and concurrence of any activities conducted at these bases.
When you peel that back, and when you talk to ministers – I can tell you I am continually shocked by their ignorance, as well as their deceptions………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://johnmenadue.com/these-are-the-horrors-of-aukus/
Richard Marles’ ill-advised spending on completely inappropriate Tomahawk missiles for Australia’s existing submarines
Marles the drunken sailor: Rex Patrick on Defence Minister’s haste to defence spending waste
by Rex Patrick | Mar 22, 2023
News yesterday that our Collins Class submarines will get fitted with Tomahawks reveals a serious lack of understanding about the tactical use of land attack missiles on submarines. Exposing the blithe war enthusiasts of the Murdoch press, former submariner Rex Patrick explains why Tomahawks on a Collins is a dumb idea.
Richard Marles is behaving like a drunken sailor as he spends your money. Drunken sailors, most of whom are happy souls, buy things like several rounds for everyone in the bar, pink Hawaiian t-shirts for themselves and their families, or tattoos of the name of the girl they met the night before. Upon sobering up they realise that what they had purchased was a hole in their wallets.
And that’s what Mr Marles will discover in time. The Tomahawk missiles he’s purportedly buying for our Collins Class submarines, as reported in The Australian yesterday, are not a good match.
Let me explain why.
Submarines and Tomahawk Missiles
Just after noon on 19 January 1991, during operation “Desert Storm”, USS Louisville became the first submarine to launch a land attack missile in anger, when she fired eight missiles at targets in Iraq. She did this operating from the Red Sea. Shortly afterwards, USS Pittsburgh became the second submarine to launch Tomahawks when she fired four more missiles from the Mediterranean Sea.
Submarines have subsequently fired land attack missiles in a number of other operations.
USS Miami fired some into Iraq In 1998 at the start of “Desert Fox” (the 4 day bombing operation undertaken in response to Iraq’s failure to comply with UN Security Council resolutions). USS Albuquerque, USS Miami and HMS Splendid fired some into Kosovo a year later as part of “Allied Force” during the Balkan war. HMS Trafalgar and HMSTriumph fired them into Afghanistan. In 2001 as part of operation “Enduring Freedom,” and in 2003, 12 US Navy submarines and the Royal Navy submarines HMS Splendid and HMS Turbulent attacked land targets in Iraq as part of “Iraqi Freedom”.
Finally, in March 2011 guided missile submarines USS Florida, and nuclear attack submarines USS Providence, USS Scranton and HMS Triumph fired some into Libya as part of operation “Odyssey Dawn”.
The role of land attack from submarines is clearly established.
Why land-strikes from submarines?
A submarine’s endurance, autonomy and relative impunity to detection allow pre-strike positioning to occur several weeks or months prior to the commencement of hostilities. This can occur without the “presence” of a force that might otherwise negatively influence diplomatic efforts to resolve an issue. The submarine can also conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance until such time as the land strike capability is needed. The submarine can be discreetly withdrawn if offensive action is not required.
The submarine also allows a land strike capability to be deployed into an area of operation where there is a lack of sea or air control, with the aim of attacking enemy defences to make the area safer for other more vulnerable units to enter. This includes ships with larger missile magazines and aircraft who can return the next day to launch more missiles.
Finally, when the strike order is given, having an undetected submarine very close to shore provides an advantage when striking the most sensitive of military targets or executing the most time critical attacks. Launch surprise maximises targeting effectiveness and minimises the chance of the weapons being intercepted. Close-to-shore submarines can also reach targets that are further inland.
Collins submarines’ limitations
Almost all submarines fitted with Tomahawks have nuclear propulsion, The Spanish S-80 submarines are the exception.
That’s because conventional submarines have their limitations………………………………………………………………………………………
Defence of Australia or like a tattoo?
There’s hardly a case to argue that our Collins class submarine’s need land attack cruise missiles to help defend Australia.
They would only be acquired to assist in a conflict with China, where we’re acting as part of a coalition. But even then, the issues associated with conventional submarines armed with Tomahawks are highly challenging and make the choice highly questionable.
So is Richard Marles behaving like a drunken sailor? Yes. But with some difference. Mr Marles seems loose with the money, but can’t really bring himself to look back on his commitment to spend.
The cost and unnecessary suffering of military spending
By Brian Toohey, Mar 14, 2023, https://johnmenadue.com/briantoohey-on-cost-of-defence/
The authoritative Peterson Foundation calculates that last year the US spent more on its military than the next nine countries together. This means more than China, India, Russia, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea combined. In 2023, the US allocated $US 858 billion to military spending compared to China’s $US224 billion. China’s spending is 1.7% of GDP compared to 2% for Australia and 3.5% for the US.
Military spending accounts for nearly half the discretionary spending in the US budget. The President could redirect over two thirds to deprived areas of the budget and still have the most powerful military forces in the world. Until something like this happens, many Americans will suffer unnecessarily and the country experience continuing internal turmoil. The US has been in far more wars that China.
The Costs of War project at Brown University revealed in 2021 that the US was involved in eight wars in the previous 20 years, costing it an estimated $8 trillion and killing more than 900,000 people. Earlier, Australia joined the US in losing a war of aggression in Vietnam that cost lives of 3 million people.
China has not been in a serious conflict since 1979 when it made a brutal incursion into Vietnam before withdrawing. The US and Australia didn’t object strongly because they supported China’s intention to punish Vietnam for overthrowing Pol Pot’s appalling regime in Cambodia.
Unlike the US and Australia, China has not been involved in a war of aggression since the Communist party came to power in 1949, except for of its takeover of Tibet in 1950. Tibet had been under the control of Chinese emperors from 1720 until the early 1900s. The anti-Communist Republic of China then claimed Tibet was part of China, without trying to enforce this. Otherwise, China has not tried to take over any country.
If China were an expansionist power, it would have already taken over bordering Mongolia, a defenceless, democratic state with abundant mineral deposits. Nor would it have made several important concessions to settle land border disputes.
China announced recently that its defence spending will increase by 7.2% in 2023 compared to 7.1 % in the previous year. This minor increase hardly suggests China is building up to attack Taiwan, let alone go to war with Australia which is committed to spending billions more on its military, supposedly to deter China. Contrary to the situation in the US, numerous underwater choke points bottle up China’s naval forces close to its shores.
However, China’s spending is now widely asserted to show it is about to engage in a campaign of aggressive expansion. Instead, it is reacting to the fact that it is surrounded by US military bases and those of its allies, as well being beset by constant military patrols along its borders. US has more than 700 overseas military bases, including many on Pacific Islands countries and on others such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines. China doesn’t have the capability to patrol off the American coastline which is over 15,000 km away as the crow flies. Nor does it have any bases close enough to operate from. China’s sole overseas base is at Djibouti on the Horn of Africa.
A recent three-part series in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age claimed China would attack Australia within the next three years, well before any nuclear submarines are delivered well over $200 billion. The series said the government would have to reintroduce compulsory conscription and invite the US to base nuclear armed missiles on Australian territory. Anthony Albanese has not rejected these proposals.
The series made the bizarre claim that “recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs, but an aberration.” The reality is that tranquillity did not exist for Australian military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor for civilians caught up in these events.
As a result of US-led sanctions before the invasion of Iraq, UN agencies calculated that 500,000 Iraqi children had starved to death. When the then US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright was asked on America’s 60 Minutes program if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children was a price worth paying, she said: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” Most seem to have forgotten that governments killed these children.
In Australia, most also seem to have forgotten that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on shonky intelligence, easily exposed as such. Perversely, many Australia journalists, who now rely on anonymous intelligence reports, take it for granted the intelligence is accurate.
They also swallow propaganda claiming that China is “aggressive” and a “threat” to Australia and that Taiwan is independent country, which China now claims. Taiwan is not formally independent. Almost every country on earth, including Australia and the US recognise it as part of China. After the losing the Civil War, the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) party Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, where he not only claimed Taiwan was part of China, but insisted that it ruled the whole of China from its capital Taipei. To its great credit, Taiwan became a healthy democracy in 1996, but its Constitution still states it is part of China.
When he was China’s leader in Beijing in 1947, Chiang Kai-shek announced that country would control its territorial waters within a U-shaped “Eleven dash line”. The subsequent Communist government adopted a “Nine dash line”, while Taiwan has retained eleven. Given it already has de facto independence, the pragmatic position in Taiwan now seems to be that it’s not worth rocking the boat by declaring formal independence.
Australian military looks to build crucial space capabilities that will support Aukus nuclear subs
Don’t the military boys love these games? war in space and undersea.
Defence department puts out call for satellites that can talk to each other and to the ground, are ‘scalable, rapidly deployable and reconstitutable’
Tory Shepherd, Thu 23 Mar 2023
Defence is looking for a mesh of military space satellites that can talk to each other as well as to the ground, and is “scalable, rapidly deployable and reconstitutable”.
The system, in other words, would need to be able to be made bigger, to be quickly put into action and to be repaired in case of attack or accident.
The military network could include the ability to track high-velocity projectiles and the use of infrared, would need to be “resilient to cyber and electronic warfare attacks”, and would need to transmit and receive data from assets “at any global position”…………………..
The Aukus submarines have been dominating defence-related conversations recently, because of the enormous $368bn price tag and concerns that the first Australia-made nuclear submarine will not be ready until the 2040s.
Meanwhile, Guardian Australia has spoken to people in the space industry who feel the other parts of Aukus – the so-called “pillar two” – are being overlooked. Pillar two includes artificial intelligence, drones, cyber capabilities and other technologies, all of which use space-based assets and many of which are likely to be realities years before the submarines.
Satellites, and therefore space, are critical for surveillance, navigation, weapons guidance and communication already, and will become more so in the future.
Defence projects already under way include Def799 for space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, and JP9102 for satellite communications systems.
A senior defence strategy and capability analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Malcolm Davis, said while space was critical for Aukus’s pillar two, it would also be crucial for pillar one, in terms of communicating with submarines…………………………. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/22/australian-military-looks-to-build-crucial-space-capabilities-that-will-support-aukus-nuclear-subs
Some Labor and Independent members of parliament not happy with AUKUS nuclear submarine deal
Above – Labor MP Josh Wilson not happy about the nuclear submarine deal
Labor’s old guard follow Keating into the trenches over $368b submarine deal The Age, 22 Mar 23
KEY POINTS
- Kim Carr has called AUKUS a “huge leap into the dark”, joining other high-profile Labor members in criticising the deal.
- Labor MP Josh Wilson told Parliament that Australia is yet to solve the problem of dealing with radioactive waste.
- Teal independents have raised concerns over nuclear proliferation and how AUKUS will be funded.
Former federal cabinet minister Kim Carr has joined Labor colleagues in raising deep concerns about the AUKUS pact after federal MPs questioned the deal in parliament and some party members sought to mobilise against the decades-long commitment.
Carr voiced doubts about the $368 billion cost of the agreement on nuclear-powered submarines as well as the strategic risk of a “forward defence” policy that he compared to the approach that drew Australia into the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
The comments intensify the row over the sweeping defence plan after former prime minister Paul Keating, former foreign minister Bob Carr and former foreign minister Gareth Evans challenged it with opinions ranging from ferocious criticism to cautious doubt.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese backed the defence policy in the regular Labor caucus meeting in Parliament House on Tuesday after three MPs raised questions about its cost, the concerns from voters about Australian sovereignty and the need for 20,000 workers to complete the task.
But Kim Carr, who held portfolios such as industry and defence materiel during the Rudd and Gillard governments and left parliament at the last election, said AUKUS was a “huge leap into the dark” that depended heavily on the United States.
“The fundamental question is whether this is the best use of $368 billion of public money in defence of Australia,” he said.
“I don’t believe the question has been answered. And I am deeply concerned about a revival of a forward defence policy, given our performance in Vietnam, so there are several levels on which we should question this plan more closely.
“Given it’s 20 years since Iraq, you can hardly say our security agencies should not be questioned when they provide their assessments.”
The growing public debate highlights the unrest within the party membership and the test for Albanese in shoring up support from Labor voters who may shift support to the Greens after the smaller party came out strongly against AUKUS.
Bob Carr, who was premier of NSW for a decade before serving as foreign minister in the Gillard government, also expressed concern about the way the AUKUS agreement could take Australia into a conflict alongside the United States.
“I want upheld the notion that even under ANZUS, there should be no assumption of Australian engagement,” he said.
Last Friday, former Gillard government environment minister Peter Garrett voiced his own objections to the deal, saying in a social media post that “AUKUS stinks”……..
Western Australian Labor MP Josh Wilson aired his concerns on the floor of Parliament on Monday night by saying Australia was yet to solve the problem of low-level radioactive waste, let alone the waste from a future fleet with nuclear reactors
…………………………….. members of the crossbench expressed concerns about the implications.
“I’m concerned about the cost/benefit analysis of AUKUS and the risk of losing sovereignty over Australian defence resources,” said Zali Steggall, the member for Warringah.
Zoe Daniel, the member for Goldstein, said constituents had been in touch about the major shift in Australia’s strategic approach.
“On their behalf, I will be seeking to understand whether such an unequivocal and long-term alignment with the United States is in Australia’s best interest,” she said.
Kylea Tink, the member for North Sydney, said she was worried about nuclear proliferation and Sophie Scamps, the member for Mackellar, said she wanted more information about funding.
“The Albanese government needs to explain to the Australian people how it intends to pay for this program,” she said. “The vulnerable should not be sacrificed to pay for this additional budgetary spending.” https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/labor-s-old-guard-follow-keating-into-the-trenches-over-368b-submarine-deal-20230321-p5cu1h.html
PM flags nuclear prohibition treaty still on agenda despite AUKUS subs deal
Anthony Albanese has signalled Labor still plans to sign an international treaty on nuclear weapons amid concerns about the AUKUS deal.
Catie McLeod, news.com.au 23 Mar 23
Anthony Albanese has signalled Labor still plans to sign a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons amid concerns the AUKUS submarine deal will breach Australia’s international obligations on the issue.
Under the trilateral security agreement with the United States and the UK, Australia will become the first non-nuclear weapon state to acquire nuclear-powered submarines by seeking an exemption from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The government has said the submarines will only use nuclear propulsion and would not have nuclear weapons.
Despite this iron-clad assurance, some countries in the Indo-Pacific have raised concerns the submarine deal is a breach of Australia’s existing nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations, and that it might stop it from ratifying an additional treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.
Australia made a binding commitment to never acquire nuclear weapons when it ratified the international treaty on non-proliferation 50 years ago but it is yet to sign or ratify a newer treaty created in 2017 that binds member countries to outlawing nuclear weapons all together.
Labor first committed to signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at its National Conference in 2018 and reaffirmed that commitment in 2022.
Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, the Prime Minister said Labor would stick with the commitment and said Australia’s clear position was that a world without nuclear weapons “would be a very good thing”.
“We don’t acquire them ourselves, we wish that they weren’t there,” Mr Albanese said after independent Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel asked him if Labor would sign the nuclear prohibition treaty.
“We will do is we will work systematically and methodically through the issues and in accordance with the commitments that were made in the national platform.”…………………. https://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/pm-flags-nuclear-prohibition-treaty-still-on-agenda-despite-aukus-subs-deal/news-story/f73813339997b2ca7efaaa8323813f0d
Productivity Commission casts doubt on the federal government’s decision to build nuclear-powered submarines
The Productivity Commission noted that for many years, the defence sector had received effective subsidy rates for domestic production of up to 300 per cent, compared to zero for most other parts of the economy.
It said that given the large sums of money involved in defence, more scrutiny from outside the sector was needed.
Australia should reconsider building its own defence equipment, review finds https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/australia-should-reconsider-building-its-own-defence-equipment-review-finds-20230319-p5ctbc.html By Shane Wright, March 19, 2023,
The Productivity Commission has cast doubt over the federal government’s decision to build nuclear-powered submarines in Australia, using its major report into the nation’s economy to argue for a complete re-appraisal of how the country meets its defence needs.
In the same week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed off on the AUKUS submarine project with the United States and Britain, at a cost of between $268 billion and $368 billion, the commission’s five-year review of productivity found that in most cases Australia was better off not developing its own defence production capability.
The commission’s report, Advancing Prosperity, made 71 recommendations across more than 1000 pages of analysis. It follows a long-term decline in Australia’s productivity growth rate, which over the past decade has slipped to its lowest level since the 1950s.
Part of the report focused on government infrastructure spending and procurement, particularly around defence, which it noted had for years suffered from “imperfect processes” and huge cost overruns.
It found there were problems in defence spending due to the complexity of much of the equipment, the need for a high-skilled workforce and the costs associated with integrating new technologies with old. This meant in almost all cases, Australia should avoid building its own defence equipment.
“Depending on the context, buying an already proven technology from overseas and not quickly, if ever, developing a domestic production capability is likely to be optimal in many contexts,” it found.
“A sophisticated domestic capability to use, store and maintain equipment would still be required regardless of where it was sourced from but would involve lower costs than domestic production and assembly.”
Under the AUKUS deal, Australia will obtain three Virginia-class submarines from the United States – to arrive in 2033, 2036 and 2039.
In the 2040s, Australia will build a new type of submarine, the SSN AUKUS, based on an updated version of the current British Astute-class submarine and featuring American parts.
The Productivity Commission noted that for many years, the defence sector had received effective subsidy rates for domestic production of up to 300 per cent, compared to zero for most other parts of the economy.
There was also less transparency around projects as governments cited national security grounds. But the commission said these reasons did not justify “the present level of opacity”.
On Sunday, Defence Minister Richard Marles refused to be drawn on the individual cost of the submarines to be supplied under the AUKUS agreement.
Since announcing the project, the government has been at pains to talk up its benefits to the Australian economy, particularly in South Australia and Western Australia.
Last Friday, Albanese said the submarines would create 20,000 jobs directly in Australia and “many tens of thousands” more through the broader economic impact of the project.
“What this will do is highly sophisticated manufacturing will lead to a renaissance of high-value manufacturing in Australia. That money, that economic activity stays right here,” he told ABC radio.
The Productivity Commission said the focus on local industry needs had added to the cost problems around many defence projects. It said that given the large sums of money involved in defence, more scrutiny from outside the sector was needed.
“Defence procurement is ripe for deep and disinterested scrutiny of its processes. There are strong grounds for re-thinking defence procurement, drawing on advice from those outside Defence,” it found.
“The productivity and efficiency benefits of better practices are large given the $270 billion of anticipated defence spending over the next decade.”
Apart from an outside examination of defence spending, the commission also argued all government spending needed closer inspection. It backed the public release of cost-benefit analyses of public projects.
The Grattan Institute’s transport and cities program director, Marion Terrill, said the growth in the number of “mega-projects” demanded more scrutiny.
She said two-thirds of the current major infrastructure projects under way across Australia are worth more than $5 billion, which meant the potential for cost blow-outs was increasing.
The $100 billion cost range for the submarine project meant it faced the same problems as a major infrastructure project.
“The larger the projects, the bigger the contracts, the greater the chance of a cost overrun and the size of that cost overrun being larger. We’ve got to the point where a $100 million project is little more than a rounding error,” she said.
Terrill said she backed the commission’s call for more transparency around public projects.
“We need to look at these projects in terms of taxpayers being shareholders, so it’s only fair that they understand why a decision has been made on their behalf but also the underlying assumptions around the costs and benefits.”
Marles on Sunday rejected suggestions that Australia had given the United States a commitment to assist in a war over Taiwan in return for the purchase of its Virginia-class submarines.
“The answer to that is, of course not. Of course not. And nor was one sought. I’ve listened to that conjecture from a number of commentators. It is plain wrong,” he said.
“What Australia would do or not in respect of any future conflict will be a matter to be considered at that time by the government of the day.”
Aukus nuclear submarine deal will be ‘too big to fail’, Richard Marles says
Australia’s defence minister plays down concerns multi-decade plan could be vulnerable to political changes in the US and UK
Daniel Hurst, Guardian, 17 Mar 23
Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine deal with the US and the UK will rapidly become “too big to fail”, the deputy prime minister has said.
Richard Marles made the comment in an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics podcast, pushing back at the idea the multidecade Aukus plan could be vulnerable to political changes in both the US and the UK.
He also predicted that broader diplomatic efforts to stabilise the relationship between Australia and China would “continue largely unaffected by what has been announced during the course of this week”.
As the minister for defence, Marles has been at the centre of the Aukus planning. He said he had felt the “gravity” and “responsibility” of this week’s announcement of sweeping, staged plans that involve Australian spending of up to $368bn by the mid-2050s.
One point of contention has been the Australian promise to provide $3bn in funding over the next four years to subsidise the submarine production base in the other two countries, mostly the US, and what guarantees there were that the US would actually proceed with selling three to five Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s.
Asked what contracts or agreements sat underneath the high-level political commitment announced in San Diego this week, Marles said the project was “a shared endeavour of the three countries”.
“There is going to be a legal underpinning to this … and there is going to need to be a treaty-level document between our three countries, so there is a whole lot of legality which will be worked through,” Marles said.
“But in so many ways this transcends that [given] the sheer size of the decision to share this capability with Australia. And having taken the step of doing that, which we’ve done, puts all three countries in a position where it’s too big for it to fail on the part of any of those countries.”
Marles said all three countries were “deeply committed to each other’s success in this project” and that was what gave him “a sense of assurance that this is going to play out in the way that we want it to play out”.
“This must work for the US, this must work for the UK, as much as it must work for Australia,” he said……………….
Marles also addressed questions about whether the submarines could become obsolete, given that an Australian National University report, Transparent Oceans?, found that scientific and technological advancements predicted oceans were “likely” or “very likely” to become transparent by the 2050s.
“Just as there is a lot of effort going into illuminating the seas, there is a lot of effort going into creating more stealth around a submarine,” Marles said……………………..
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said this week that the best way for Australia to reassure the region about the submarine plan would be to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
It is Labor party policy to do so, but only “after taking account” of several factors, including the need for an effective verification and enforcement architecture and work to achieve universal support from other nations. The nuclear weapons states including the US have opposed the treaty, arguing it is out of step with the current security environment.
Marles said Australia wanted “a world where there are no nuclear weapons”, and had sent observers to the first meeting in Vienna last year………… https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/17/aukus-nuclear-submarine-deal-will-be-too-big-to-fail-richard-marles-says?CMP=share_btn_tw
Uncle Sam, can you target my Tomahawk, please?
“Will Australian air warfare destroyers serve simply as a transport means and launch platform for the United States, receiving targeting data only with their agreement? Or will we have full targeting control over our Tomahawks?
by Rex Patrick | Mar 18, 2023 https://michaelwest.com.au/uncle-sam-can-you-target-my-tomahawk-please/
Who will control the Tomahawk Missiles? News that Australia will purchase up to 220 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles might seem like just another Defence purchase, but there’s a hidden sovereignty issue that needs to be examined. And that’s what Rex Patrick is here to do.
The United States Congress has just approved the sale of as many as 20 Block IV Tomahawks and 200 Block V Tomahawks for $1.3 billion dollars. The US will provide support consisting of unscheduled missile maintenance, spares; procurement, training, in-service support, software, hardware, communication equipment, operational flight test, engineering, and technical expertise.
Tomahawk missiles are a long range, all weather, subsonic cruise missile used to attack land targets. The intention is for these proven and highly effective missiles to be fitted to our navy’s three Air Warfare Destroyers. But while these missiles will be fitted to our ships and be under Australian command, the ability to target them properly may be constrained by the US.
The purchase raises a sovereignty issue which must be bought out in the open and discussed.
We’re going to war tomorrow
I was in the United States in October 2001, just after 9/11. America was in shock. On the evening of October 5th, I was in a US Defence establishment working back late, hoping to be able to complete the task I was there to do so that I could return home to Australia.
My American host, sitting in front of his classified computer system, looked up at me and said, “America’s going to attack someone this weekend.”
I looked back at him and asked, ”You’ve got a classified email message telling you that?”
“No,” he replied, pointing out the window, “See that building over there. That’s where they program the Tomahawk missiles. It’s 6pm on a Friday night, and the car park’s full.”
Less than 48 hours later, the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom with a series of, amongst other things, Tomahawk missile strikes.
Guidance required
Tomahawks are used to attack land targets to incapacitate enemy command & control facilities, strategic air defences, intelligence systems, infrastructure, key production facilities and military forces.
They are normally fired as part of a joint operation with targeting information provided by strategic commanders onshore and coordinated in time and space to produce a synergistic attack.
The missiles use GPS and terrain contour matching to navigate to the target, and a ‘Digital Scene Matching Area Correlation’ to improve navigation in the terminal stages leading to accuracies of the order of ten metres.
Two stages of planning are conducted for the Tomahawk. Planning for the maritime cruise (overwater) phase is normally carried out by the launch platform, our air warfare destroyers’ crew, cognisant of the current surface and air picture.
Programming of the land cruise (overland) phase and target selection is normally carried out by a ‘Theatre Mission Planning Centre’ (TMPC) ashore (like the one my US colleague and I were looking through the window at) or a shipboard Tactical Tomahawk Weapon Control System (TTWCS). Australia is receiving both from the US.
The onshore centre and shipboard TTWCS also provide for post launch control of the weapons.
The US TMPC has a worldwide geospatial database that allows for them to plan strikes. Whether Australia has unfettered and unblockable access to this, or an indigenous alternative, is not known.
Whether we do or don’t is the answer to whether we will have full sovereign control over targeting.
“Will Australian air warfare destroyers serve simply as a transport means and launch platform for the United States, receiving targeting data only with their agreement? Or will we have full targeting control over our Tomahawks?
Sovereign capability
The first priority of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is defence of Australia. Every capability we acquire should come with the keys to allow ADF commanders to use capabilities in their possession as they see fit.
Questions of sovereignty are swirling around the entire AUKUS program; submarines, and now missiles. I hope my former colleagues in the Senate will ask the right questions.
What the nuclear-powered submarine deal really means
Australia has made a very poor deal with its great power ally and has once again demonstrated that the framing of its Defence policy has little to do with national security and everything to do with burnishing Australia’s faithfulness to the US and the ANZUS alliance.
In this instance, the US has schooled Australia in the conduct of foreign policy – states advance their own interests, even at the expense of their friends. Well done, President Biden!
Australia has made a very poor deal with its great power ally and has once again demonstrated that the framing of its Defence policy has little to do with national security and everything to do with burnishing Australia’s faithfulness to the US and the ANZUS alliance.
The Saturday Paper, Albert Palazzo Adjunct professor at UNSW Canberra. He was a former director of war studies for the Australian Army. 18 Mar 23,
The deal is done. On Monday morning in San Diego, the leaders of the United States, Australia and Britain jointly revealed the key details of Australia’s road to becoming a nuclear power – of sorts. President Joe Biden announced that the US will sell Australia three to five used Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines sometime in the 2030s. The three countries will also design a future boat, the tri-flavour SSN-AUKUS class, which will enter service from some time in the 2040s and extend into the 2050s. Australia will receive about five AUKUS boats by about 2055.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese thanked President Biden for his administration’s willingness to share its nuclear propulsion technology, before – perhaps inevitably – spruiking the jobs that the program will create across the nation. Both leaders stressed that Australia’s submarines will be nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed. The cost is an estimated $368 billion for an uncertain number of warships whose final arrival may be as long as four decades away.
What Albanese neglected to mention is that the deal effectively makes a massive shift to the foundation of Australia’s long-established Defence policy. …………………………
in this instance the submarine pact creates risks that, when combined, will actually make Australia less safe.
The government has been very clear that the target of the submarine acquisition is an increasingly assertive China. However, China is also Australia’s largest economic partner and responsible for much of the nation’s present wealth. In acquiring these weapons, Australia has sent an unmistakable message to its biggest customer. One risk Australia has accepted is that the submarine deal creates enough jobs in the shipbuilding sector to offset possible losses in mining, agriculture, education and tourism if China decides to spend elsewhere.
“Monday’s announcement brings an end to 70 years of a highly effective Defence policy, without any discussion with the Australian public or seemingly any awareness within the government … The submarine pact creates risks that, when combined, will actually make Australia less safe.”
Further, the pact is unlikely to result in greater physical security for Australia. Several more Australian communities, in addition to those in Pine Gap, Exmouth and Darwin, will find themselves on a Chinese target list. The government is yet to announce the home of these submarines, but wherever that is will become a legitimate target, as will support facilities.
Of greater significance to Australia’s security is the false claim that these submarines will enable us to deter China from taking actions that are not in our interest. Unfortunately, capability does not equate to deterrence. Rather it is perception of deterrence by the adversary that matters most. If at some point in the early 2040s Australia has all five of its Virginia-class boats within striking distance of Chinese targets, combined they will be able to launch – at most – 60 Tomahawk missiles. Australia may succeed in blowing up some Chinese missile launchers, cratering a runway or two, or even collapsing a few bridges or power plants, but this is a country with thousands of targets and plenty of physical redundancy. Psychologically, the Chinese people are strong: they endured the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution without cracking. For China, 60 missiles will barely be felt. These submarines may awe Australia’s leaders and national security commentators but they are not a credible deterrent against a power as large as China.
And though the missiles may not be felt, they will unfortunately be noticed. China will respond to Australia’s piffling attempt at deterrence with a larger number of missiles against our much smaller number of critical targets. We’ll feel it, alright.
In their glee to get these weapons, commentators seem to skate over the immensity of the nuclear submarine project’s cost. Admittedly, they are highly capable and powerful weapons, but $368 billion, even spread over decades, will reverberate through the Defence budget and beyond. The government will either have to massively increase expenditure from the present $48 billion (in this financial year), reduce expenditure on other projects or eliminate them entirely. The result will be that the ADF will remain a boutique force, but one now dominated by the nuclear-powered submarine niche, while the land and air forces will see reductions.
The acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines poses a risk to Australia’s sovereignty, too. ………………..
To succeed, Australia will need to rely on the US and Britain to assist in developing a usable and safe capability. Instead of increasing self-reliance, these ships will actually magnify dependence on Australia’s allies. ….
If this decision were to result in a larger allied submarine fleet, then the change in Defence policy and the taking of so many risks might be worthwhile. But it won’t. When Australia buys its three to five Virginias, it will simply reduce the US inventory. There is no fleet increase. It is simply a change-of-flag deal in which a highly experienced operator of nuclear submarines sells a part of its fleet to an L-plater. ………..
…….. Australia will also contribute $3 billion to improvements at US shipyards – again, increasing its commitment to the alliance.
……….Australia has made a very poor deal with its great power ally and has once again demonstrated that the framing of its Defence policy has little to do with national security and everything to do with burnishing Australia’s faithfulness to the US and the ANZUS alliance.
The submarine deal is more than just a function of Australia’s need to be seen to support the alliance, however. It is also because the US visualises security challenges only in military terms. Both the US and Australia are bypassing other levers of government power, such as trade and diplomacy, in the rush to solve a problem by force of arms alone. Until both governments broaden their definitions of national security strategy to include more than military affairs, this will no doubt continue.
Australia’s journey to nuclear-powered submarines will take a risk-filled route that will reshape our traditional Defence policy into one that increases alliance commitments yet offers less security. In this instance, the US has schooled Australia in the conduct of foreign policy – states advance their own interests, even at the expense of their friends. Well done, President Biden! https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2023/03/18/what-the-nuclear-powered-subs-deal-really-means
Transparent oceans? Technologies for detection of nuclear submarines will still be all too successful by 2050
Transparent Oceans? The Coming SSBN Counter-Detection Task May Be Insuperable
ANU National Security College https://nsc.crawford.anu.edu.au/publication/16666/transparent-oceans-coming-ssbn-counter-detection-task-may-be-insuperable
Abstract:
A first principles analysis of new technologies and the detection of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).
Authors: Roger Bradbury, Scott Bainbridge, Katherine Daniell, Anne-Marie Grisogono, Ehsan Nabavi, Andrew Stuchbery, Thomas Vacca, Scott Vella and Elizabeth Williams.
This report considers the problem of disruptive changes in the technologies for detection of SSBNs and how they intersect with the growing or continued reliance on submarines for retaliatory nuclear capability. In simple terms, this report answers the question: Will future science and technology make the oceans transparent? It takes a scientific perspective and considers the science and technology issues bearing on ocean sensing and the detection of submarines as anomalies in the water column. This report utilises a time horizon spanning to the 2050s, as the next generation of nuclear-armed submarines will be deployed through the 2030s and beyond. Its analysis identified broad areas of future science and technology – rather than specific ‘hot’ areas of the moment – that might have an impact on submarine detection as well as on counter-detection.
This report makes two strong findings:
- Favourable geographies that the West took advantage of in the Atlantic during the Cold War, and more recently in the Pacific in its strategic rivalry with China, will not have the same salience in the 2050s as during the Cold War.
- The evolution of counter-detection technologies will not have the same salience in the 2050s as it did in earlier times. As a result, by the 2050s, this assessment shows, progress in counter-detection will only reduce the probability of detection from very likely to likely.
Publication file:
Transparent Oceans? The Coming SSBN Counter-Detection Task May Be Insuperable
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 