Page 105 - Australian Defence Magazine Dec-Jan 2023

DECEMBER 2022-JANUARY 2023 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
FUTURE ACQUISITIONS 105
for several more months at significant cost and possibly de- lay any further investment in people and infrastructure – it could be catastrophic for some of Australia’s small to me- dium enterprises (SMEs).
Paving the way for this nuclear-powered future is the Nucle- ar-Powered Submarine Task Force led by Vice Admiral Jona- than Mead, which is coming to the end of an 18-month body of work begun in September 2021. The task force is charged with,
In the defence world the SMEs depend heav- ily on the supply chains of the primes for their survival and, to put it bluntly, if the supply chain stops, then so do they. Even if the compa- nies affected by the wait for the DSR can sur- vive with other work, the wait has a big impact on future planning and possibly even growth.
NUCLEAR-POWERED SUBMARINES
“IN THE DEFENCE WORLD THE SMES DEPEND HEAVILY ON THE SUPPLY CHAINS OF THE PRIMES FOR THEIR SURVIVAL”
“identifying the optimal pathway to acquire a conventionally armed nuclear powered subma- rine capability for the Royal Australian Navy”.
Since the Morrison government announced the desire to acquire nuclear-powered subma- rines as part of the AUKUS announcement on September 16 2021, there has been a lot of “in- formed” comment. This includes opinion piec- es by retired senior US Navy personnel warning that the submarines cannot be built to Austra- lia’s desired timeline – either here or in the US.
The elephant in everyone’s room of course
is Navy’s quest to replace its elderly Col-
lins-class submarines with at least eight nuclear-powered boats of either US or UK design.
While the submarine program lies outside the terms of reference for the new DSR, an announcement on which design will be chosen (the UK Astute-class, or US Virginia- class SSN) and – hopefully – where and how they will be built will be made at a similar time.
Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but Aus- tralia certainly has a long way to go to develop the expertise and safeguards required of nuclear stewardship. Speaking at the Defence People congress in Brisbane in July, VADM Mead noted that Australia will be the first non-nuclear weapons state in the world to embark upon a nuclear pro- pulsion program.
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