US war on Iran exposes Australia’s frail defence, AUKUS even more
· Michael West
The US war on Iran has exposed Australia’s incompetent defence and procurement. Rex Patrick reports implications for AUKUS submarine program.
A tense moment
USS Charlotte was at periscope depth, but the periscope was down, reducing the chance of it, or the wake it creates, being seen by the enemy. It was a tense moment.
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“Safe/Fire key to Fire”, ordered the captain.
The officer manning the fire control console repeated the order, “Safe/Fire key to Fire” and then advised the captain, “Safe/Fire key is to Fire”.
“Fire 4 tube at Target 1”, the captain stated in a raised and clear voice.
The officer repeated the order and hit the ‘Fire’ button. A low-level thud was both felt and heard throughout the submarine as the pressurise discharge system pushed the Mk 48 Torpedo from the tube. “Weapon running” the officer called.
As the weapon ran towards the Iranian frigate the submarine carried out a further visual set-up through the periscope to update the weapon. The updated targeting solution was transmitted down the very long and thin guidance wire connecting the torpedo to the submarine.
The update was also loaded into the second torpedo’s guidance system. “Fire 1 tube at Target 1”.
The first torpedo did not do its job. The second exploded directly under the target, lifting the hull out of the water and sending a violent shock wave through it. The structural damage was completed as the hull dropped back into the water.
The first the Iranian captain of the frigate would have known about the US submarine would have been when he felt the explosion underfoot.
Sinking of INS Dena (Source: US Department of War)
Queuing
USS Charlote did not just stumble across the INS Dena. Rather, days before, it had been queued to the target by folks back in the US tracking where every surface ship in the world is located.
The submarine travelled at high speed, around 30 knots (55 km/h), for days getting from its routine Indian Ocean patrol area to the waters south of Sri Lanka. That’s one of the key advantages of a nuclear-powered submarine. They can travel long distances fast.
As it arrived in the area the submarine’s crew would have detected (found it) and tracked the contact (worked out its range, course and speed), and then classified (identified) it using a combination of acoustic and electronic emissions, and finally confirmed it was the INS Dena visually through the periscope.
Then ‘bang’.
AUKUS implications
The Iran War has shown that submarines are 21st century war fighting assets with ever relevant capabilities; they can collect intelligence, conduct reconnaissance, launch land attack missiles, covertly land special forces, covertly lay mines, and sink submarines and surface ships.
But the events from 28 February onwards have shown us other things.
AUKUS has been described by many as a program that facilitates close alliance and force integration with the United States.
As Donald Trump broke its written Free Trade Agreement commitments to Australia on ‘Liberation Day”, those in the Canberra bubble were blind to that breach’s relevance to the ANZUS treaty and AUKUS agreement. Surely the US’s defence treaty with Australia would be treated differently.
As the US initiated an AUKUS review, that was to see AUKUS sceptic Elbridge Colby recommend stopping the program until Trump realised the financial benefit in continuing with it and overrode Colby, those in the Canberra bubble breathed a collective sigh of relief and chose not to think it too much.
Ruptured
As Trump, to use the words of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, ‘ruptured’ the international rules-based order – carrying out a military operation in Venezuela, threatening Panama, bringing NATO to the brink by threatening to invade Greenland, attacking Iran and now threatening Cuba – those in the Canberra bubble didn’t seem to recognise the US Administration’s departure from Australian values; or perhaps likely they did but decided not to respond to it.
Only over the past month Prime Minister Albanese has responded properly to the ‘rupture’, not blindly committing Australian forces to follow the US into war, as has so often been the case (as a downpayment for US support for Australia if it needed it).
Albanese has despatched a RAAF early warning aircraft to support the air defence of the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, but we haven’t joined a US-led effort as has been the case in the past.
Sovereign thought
Albanese has it right. The US did not seek to build international support, and/or UN approval, for a strike on Iran. Instead it chose to plan in secret in cahoots with Israel and then launch a surprise attack to kill Iran’s leadership while negotiations with Iran were supposed to be ongoing.
Only when the going got tough did Washington call on allies for assistance, and under the circumstances where they rightly refused.
Trump’s Iran War has caused harm to Australia.
The impact of Trump’s war is causing economic harm right across the globe.
The war has also brought home Australia’s vulnerabilities. For decades distance has kept us relatively isolated from conflict, but this conflict directly affected us as world fuel supplies are disrupted and prices have sky rocketed. And the full extent of this new energy shock still lies ahead.
Perhaps it’s the shock that we needed to have ;
a chance to reflect on our need to take a more independent pathway in a world in which many past assumptions are being overturned.
US submarine shortages
Australia has long relied on the naval might of what Prime Minister Robert Menzies liked to call our “great and powerful friends” – first the British Empire and the Royal Navy; then Pax Americana upheld by the United States Navy. Now times are changing,
and they are changing rapidly.
The US Navy has gone from a Cold War era 1000-ship navy to a 600-ship navy during the Reagan era, to a current fleet of just 300 ships. China now has the world’s largest navy, 350 to 370 vessels, and Chinese shipyards are turning out warships much more rapidly than their counterparts in the US.
The US Navy still has a qualitative edge, but the US Navy is not what it was, and its well understood that quantity has a quality all of its own.
The US has been aiming to increase its number to 381 combat ships. 66 is the desired number for nuclear attack submarines – they have only 49 at the present moment.
Since 2011 the USN has purchased 2 submarines a year (this last year it was only one – because deliveries are so far behind).
The actual Virginia-class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built.
US Naval Shipbuilding Plan (Source: Congressional Budget Office).
They can’t build enough boats to meet their own needs,
let alone ours.
A school of thought in the US had been that submarines transferred to the Royal Australian Navy would be available for US in time of conflict, but the Iran War has speared that assumption.
And Trump noticed this week, first expressing disappointment at the UK’s refusal to become directly involved in the Iran War and then turning his thoughts to Australia, saying “Australia too, Australia was not great. I was a little surprised by Australia”.
Trump is well known to hold a grudge. The one thing that will keep him supportive of AUKUS will be the money flowing from the Australian taxpayers to US shipyards, with no contract in place for delivery and no claw back option for the Australian contribution is the US does not deliver. That’s the sort of deal that Trump likes.
Rudd talking the AUKUS talk in Washington, but is the US walking?
UK submarine shortages
And the United Kingdom are in a worse position than the US. The Royal Navy has one nuclear attack submarine available for operations – a fact made obvious to Australians when that sole submarine cut short a visit to Western Australia to head towards the Iran conflict zone.
Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, in an event at the Canberra Press Club, organised by Malcolm Turnbull, said it all, warning the UK had “dropped below the minimal sustainable force” for submarines and the country would be late in delivering its first SSN-AUKUS boat, a design which Australia is also hoping to start building in Adelaide in the 2030s.
“It is queued up behind the final two (Astute-class boats) and four critically important ballistic missile submarines, the Dreadnoughts, that are being built in the shipyard.”
“You cannot get the first SSN-AUKUS out until the fourth ballistic missile submarine is clear of the yard. That is the UK’s national priority.”
Defence incompetence
At the same conference, our Defence Department’s incompetence was on full display.
A Defence representative laid it out., After decades of submarine procurement failures (including the spending of $4B on French submarines we never got), it’s still “full speed ahead” in the best spirit of Captain Smith on the bridge of the Titanic.
In response to a question from Turnbull as to “what’s the plan B if we end up with no new subs” from the United States, Deputy secretary for strategy and policy, Hugh Jeffrey, answered, “You know, it’s not my job as a public servant, to talk about Plan Bs that’s the prerogative of government”.
He went on to lecture AUKUS sceptics,” If you really want to be in a position where we have no submarines then ‘turn back’. I do think, speaking as an apolitical public servant, we need to get out of this relentless politicisation of defence capabilities.”
AUKUS end
He surely did not realise what he said. He warns we’ll “be left with no submarines if the project is dumped”. The problem is that we’ll also be left with no submarines if AUKUS isn’t dumped. And we will have paid a lot for those no submarines.
After a failure on fuel security, with a failure on procuring submarines, and with the rules-based order ruptured by the very country we’re relying in respect of the program, maybe Albanese will finally cut this foolish program and move towards a more realistic, self-reliant and sustainable strategic policy.
If we don’t, we may well find our sovereignty to be hollow and that others will decide our nation’s future.
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