How Australia was left with only one deployable submarine

The Australian Navy, which is struggling to keep its ageing submarine fleet in the water, had only one battle-ready sub at the start of this year, raising doubts about its ability to run a far more complex nuclear program.

The navy insists its six Collins Class submarines, which this year cost $740 million to run, remain a “lethal capability”, but a Four Corners investigation has found it has failed to meet crucial operational targets over the last two years.

Despite the $368 billion AUKUS plan to build a fleet of nuclear-powered subs, the navy will be relying on the Collins as its frontline fighting force for at least the next decade and possibly longer.

This lack of new submarines comes as a dangerous decade looms for the region, amid fears of Chinese expansionism and worries that Beijing may look to retake Taiwan.

Defence Minister Richard Marles concedes keeping the Collins going until the nuclear subs are operational is “not a great answer”.

“We live in a world that is much more strategically complex and strategically threatening,” Mr Marles says.

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Substandard

Using official navy data, satellite images and news reports, Four Corners has pieced together a recent operating history of the Collins.

It shows a strong performance from 2016 until 2021, when problems began to emerge.

In September 2021, the fleet was reduced to half capacity by a major flood on HMAS Sheehan at the same time as HMAS Waller was under repairs after it experienced two floods and a fire within weeks.

That meant only two of the navy’s six submarines were operational.

If the navy is meeting its targets, the fleet commander should have four boats available for service at any one time while the other two undergo deep maintenance.

The data also shows that at the start of this year the navy had just one battle-ready submarine. That was due to maintenance delays, COVID-19 and the time taken to recover from those floods and fires.

Navy chief Vice Admiral Mark Hammond admits it’s been a difficult two years during which operational targets have not been met.

“It’s no secret there were some maintenance period overruns that are attributed to the pandemic and the supply chain issues, but I’m confident we’re over that hump,” he says.

“At this particular point in time we’re not at full capacity, but the forecast … is that over the next 12 months that will normalise.”

Vice Admiral Hammond says despite the challenges, the submarine corps has been operating at 86 per cent capacity over the past two years.

Former senator Rex Patrick, who was one of the first Australians to serve on the Collins Class, says Defence has not been fully transparent about the performance of the fleet.

“Defence is overly secret about everything it does,” he says.

This includes no longer publishing which submarines are in for maintenance on the navy’s website or the names and biographies of individual submarine commanders.

This partially obscures our heavy reliance on foreign submarine captains. Over the past three years, four captains from foreign navies have been put in charge of Australia’s subs.

Despite winding back public disclosures on its website, citing national security concerns, the navy rarely misses an opportunity to trumpet the return of a submarine to service.

In 2017 it released a slick video to mark its flagship, HMAS Collins, going back into the water. What it didn’t say was that the submarine had spent the previous five and a half years out of service being raided for parts.

Marcus Hellyer, who worked as part of the submarine program at the Defence Department, says the Collins fleet will inevitably have more time out of the water over the next decade.

“Ageing systems have a range of problems. Just getting them to sea is an issue, let alone being your frontline fighting force,” he says.

“We’ve got to find a way to keep Collins going. Otherwise, we don’t have a submarine force. You cannot bring a nuclear submarine fleet into service without a robust number of submariners.”

‘High risk’

The Collins subs should have been heading into retirement from the mid-2020s, but the last boat is now slated to continue in service until 2048. At that point, the Collins Class will be more than 50 years old.

It follows 15 years of delay by successive governments that has left Australia as one of the few navies in the region not to have updated its submarine fleet.

This is despite Australia’s worsening strategic circumstances.

“It is a very, very challenging — and arguably the most complex and challenging  —environment that our nation has faced in the Indo-Pacific in decades,” Vice Admiral Hammond says.

Despite these threats, the navy won’t have its first nuclear submarines until the early 2030s, and getting to that point will require Australia to navigate a complicated process.

“To say that it is not high risk would be misleading. Of course, it’s high risk,” the vice admiral says. 

Mr Patrick says the Virginia Class are a proven quantity but he’s highly critical of the plan’s next stage – building a British-designed submarine with a US nuclear reactor and weapons system.

“The British are consistently late, they’re consistently over budget. And there are some questions as to whether or not the submarine that pops out of their industry will in fact be as good as the Virginia Class submarines that they will purportedly replace,” he says.

Mr Patrick says Australia would be better off scrapping this final step.

“There will be huge pressures to contain the cost of the AUKUS program. It’s unlikely, in my view, that once we’ve established ourselves on the Virginia pathway … that we will then step off that pathway and onto a very risky and costly program,” he says.

It is the cost of Australia’s nuclear ambitions which have attracted much of the attention since the AUKUS deal was announced in March.

The federal government estimates the plan will cost up to $368 billion, or $32 million a day, for the next 32 years.

Retirement delayed

Before Australia can even contemplate its nuclear options it must keep the Collins in the water over the next decade.

Extending the life of the ageing subs involves replacing each vessel’s diesel engines, batteries and electronics — at an estimated cost of $6 billion across the fleet.

The navy says it will only take two years per vessel to complete this work, and it’ll happen at the same time as the subs undergo “deep maintenance”.

That’s despite the fact the navy’s already struggling to complete its standard maintenance within the same time frame.

Former submariner Brent Clarke says the time line is ambitious.

“I think that will be a stretch,” he says. “I think it would be an unrealistic expectation to think that there won’t be some schedule slippage.”

If these targets are not met then the rest of fleet will come under pressure and the navy will have fewer available submarines.

“It means that every other submarine has to work harder. That’s going to be our life, that’s going to be our reality … they’re getting older,” Mr Clarke says.

Watch Four Corners investigation into the serious shortfalls in Australia’s nuclear ambitions tonight on ABC TV and ABC iview.