‘Alarming’ but ‘not surprising’: Australia reportedly left with one operational submarine amid repairs and upgrades

A Collins Class submarine at Henderson Marine Complex, Western Australia. Credit Australian DoD

SYDNEY – Five of Australia’s six aging Collins-class submarines are being repaired or awaiting upgrades, according to a new report here, leaving just one fully operational boat to explore the Pacific. It’s a development that could hamper Canberra’s ability to project power in the region and which analysts say would be “alarming”, if not predictable.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation broke the story today, citing “defense sources” as saying two of the Collins boats are currently at the Osborne shipyard in Adelaide. Workers there are on strike, which is also reportedly causing delays to ongoing deep maintenance work. Unexpected levels of corrosion are also reportedly slowing down work. The three other boats are at HMAS Stirling’s Garden Island naval base in Western Australia

The Ministry of Defense issued a statement to the ABC saying it has ‘more than one boat available’ for operations ‘if required’. The statement said the Collins boats “meet government-mandated levels of operational availability.” The ministry did not immediately respond to Breaking Defense’s request for comment.

Analysts expressed concern about the news, noting that successive Australian governments have delayed and postponed making decisions on what to replace the Collins class and how to maintain and upgrade them.

The Collins-class submarines are being upgraded to extend their expected service life. The “Life-of-Type Extension” (LOTE) was announced in June. Australia had already scaled back previously planned optronic upgrades for the Collins. Optronics refers to a visual sensor technology commonly used on submarines. The boats will also not receive the Tomahawk cruise missile.

The new report is “quite alarming news, especially as these boats are scheduled to operate until 2040 (alongside the Virginia-class SSNs) and many sailed on LOTE, which has now been significantly scaled back. “If our Collins-class SSKs are not operational by 2024, I really doubt they will be a credible force for the rest of this decade, let alone the next,” said Malcolm Davis, a defense expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. said in an email.

The so-called capability gap between the planned service life of the Collins class and the arrival of Australia’s first nuclear-powered Virginia-class attack submarines has long been a topic of concern here. The United States plans to sell three Virginia-class boats to Australia in early 2030. Australia has an option to buy two more.

If the Collins fleet remains as hampered as it is now, that gap may need to be addressed more urgently. One British and up to four American nuclear weapons boats will regularly rotate to HMAS Sterling from 2027 in what is called Submarine Rotational Force – West (SRF-West). That power can be used to bridge the capacity gap.

“My guess is that the government will try to explain that SRF-West will bear the burden if the Collins class boats cannot be deployed, but that argument is quite unconvincing given that the SRF-W boats being in the United States Navy and occasionally in the Royal Navy. Davis said.

The AUKUS Optimal Pathway, the government’s plan for acquiring next-generation submarines, should have included an option to purchase Japanese or South Korean conventionally powered submarines to immediately replace Collins instead of the LOTE upgrades after to strive for, Davis argued. He said the Royal Australian Navy was against such an option because they feared the nuclear option would be cancelled.

The condition of the Collins fleet was “not surprising,” said Jennifer Parker, a former Royal Australian Navy officer now at the Australian National University’s National Security College.

“If the reporting is accurate, it is not surprising given the condition of the aging boats that Defense has outlined in estimates and the plan to extend their service life,” Parker said in an email. “The lesson here is that successive governments have delayed decision-making on naval recapitalization. Now the problems cannot be solved immediately. We must learn to start planning for replacement capabilities when ship classes first enter service and make timely decisions.”

In late May, Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) officials told a parliamentary hearing that half of the Collins fleet would be unavailable for the rest of the year as they were upgraded and treated for unexpected corrosion problems discovered on two of the boats .