Page 53 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2022

MAY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
SEAPOWER SUBMARINES 53
In September last year, the Australian government made a bombshell decision to abandon the French-built Attack-class diesel- electric submarines in favour of a nuclear- powered alternative, to be developed under the umbrella of a new security arrangement with the UK and the US known as AUKUS.
IN MAY 2022, we are little closer to understanding how exactly the government came to make such a monumental decision. This article intends to shed some light on that process. In do- ing so it will ask significant questions about who exactly makes defence capability decisions in Australia and to what end.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Planning for the move to allow Australia access to one of Washington’s most treasured military secrets – nuclear propulsion – began 18 months before the public announce- ment, just as the pandemic was beginning.
At first, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was seemingly un- willing to begin high-level discussions with then-US President Donald Trump. At this point the only Australian ministers with any knowledge of the plan are believed to be then-De- fence Minister Linda Reynolds and Morrison himself.
Following the US election, Morrison set up a cabinet subcommittee called the Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise Governance Committee, chaired by himself and includ- ing Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne, Minister for Defence Peter Dutton, Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price, and three other senior ministers.
The purpose of the committee is to “ensure the naval shipbuilding enterprise and each component of it is on track to deliver against Commonwealth agreed outcomes.”
Morrison also appointed Don Winter, a former US Navy Secretary, as his special advisor on naval shipbuilding and told the National Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise team in the Department of Defence that he was ‘concerned’ about the Attack-class.
He also personally appointed Chief of Joint Capability Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead and Director-General of Sub- marine Capability Commodore Timothy Brown to secretly review the ADF’s ‘undersea force structure requirements’ and look for alternative options, including Saab Kockum’s long-range conventional submarine offer to the Dutch Navy.
The media began reporting on sensitive details of the At- tack class and two key issues began to surface: a purported $40 billion cost blow-out – since revealed to be inaccurate – and whether Naval Group would sign up to 60 per cent Australian Industry Content (AIC) target. Exactly how those sensitive details made it onto the front pages remains unclear.
ADM understands that Naval Group actually raised the 60 per cent target in response to a question in Senate Esti- mates. The original Strategic Partnering Agreement (SPA) only required the company to ‘maximise Australian con- tent’ and the Commonwealth initially did not want to set an exact target until after the design phase was complete.
Yet around this time, then-Defence Minister Linda Reynolds made public complaints about the state of nego- tiations with Naval Group just as CEO Pierre Eric Pom- mellet landed in Australia to conduct those negotiations. ADM understands that senior leadership in the ADF at this time shared Reynolds’ public frustration.
LEFT: The Royal Navy’s Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarine is one of two designs under consideration for Australia’s next submarine program