It is time once again for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want even if it isn't naval/military related.
The big naval news in the last few days is that Australia has torn up the agreement with France to build 12 new conventional submarines, and is instead pursuing SSNs, with aid being provided by the US and Britain. On the whole, this is a good thing, as SSNs are vastly more capable than conventionally-powered submarines, particularly in operations far from base, which is a major concern for the RAN. It's only the second time the US has allowed this kind of tech transfer, with the first being our deal with the British, started in the late 50s and still ongoing today. (Russia and France developed the technology independently, and have exported it to India and Brazil respectively.)
The only fly in the ointment is that the subs are to be built in Australia, because the government there has apparently not learned that treating defense primarily as a jobs program is a great way to run up the budget and delay the schedule. I initially expected them to get Astutes from the UK production line, but that would make too much sense. The announced detail doesn't say where the UK comes into the submarine program, but I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up with an Astute-based sub given how much strain the US nuclear shipbuilding industry is under.
Biden felt the need to clarify that while the submarines will use nuclear power, they won't be nuclear-armed, and I can see why he felt that way and despair about what it says for humanity. It appears that the highly-enriched uranium required for the reactor will come from the US, with appropriate safeguards to keep the Australians from misappropriating it for bombs.
2018 overhauls are the reviews of Salem and Nautilus, SYWTBAMN - Strategy Part 3, Falklands Part 6, the Nimrod Saga and Auxiliaries Part 3. 2019 overhauls are Riverine Warfare in Africa and South America, the 2019 Tinker Airshow, Falklands Part 18, Fire Control Transmission and Naval Ranks - Officers. 2020 overhauls are Operation K, Information, Communication and Naval Warfare Part 5, my first tests of missile defense in Command and Falklands Part 23.
Comments
Carrying on from the previous thread:
Note that the shipyard in Adelaide that would build these new SSNs is the same one marked for building nine copies of the Australian version of the Type 26 frigate. It’s previously built the Collins-class subs, three destroyers, and is currently building a couple of offshore patrol vessels.
Australia doesn’t have the scale required to maintain a full-time submarine yard, but it seems it can just about maintain a single naval yard if it builds everything from OPVs to destroyers. How good/bad an idea is this? How well do the skills and facilities generalise between building different types of ships?
This amused me at first, since I'd assumed that as with most other first-world countries, Australia had the technology an infrastructure to make a nuke in short order if they were so inclined.
Then I looked it up and discovered that Australia has never had a nuclear power plant. Which adds yet another hurdle to building the SSNs domestically: Australia is proposing to build submarine reactors as their first serious foray into building nuclear reactors of any kind.
It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, but I wonder if they end up buying essentially a "canned" propulsion unit from the US or UK, and then send their crews to nuclear school there. That seems like they get most of the shipbuilding and military value, without having to stand up too much additional infrastructure at home. Also, with the shift to "life of the ship" reactors, there is probably concomitantly less work. Which isn't to understate the degree of change that it will bring, or the additional requirements, but there are also ways to make it not quite so onerous and piggyback off US/UK work where feasible.
For those interested in international shipping and supply chain issues, the Economist had a good article as to how shipping rates have increased nearly four-fold in some areas. As the author states, trouble if you are shipping a sofa from China but not so much if it is containers of sneakers.
I say if they want to pay top dollar for what will fit in the belly of a 777 or 787 then we welcome their custom!
Does seem to be a market for getting the empty containers back to where they are needed. Perhaps a nickle deposit per unit as they do in some states for glass bottles? (That's a weak attempt at humor)
Sep 18th 2021 edition
Turbulent waters A perfect storm for container shipping Will prolonged disruptions shift the pattern of trade?
Sep 16th 2021
A giant ship wedged across the Suez canal, record-breaking shipping rates, armadas of vessels waiting outside ports, covid-induced shutdowns: container shipping has rarely been as dramatic as it has in 2021. The average cost of shipping a standard large container (a 40-foot-equivalent unit, or feu) has surpassed $10,000, some four times higher than a year ago (see chart). The spot price for sending such a box from Shanghai to New York, which in 2019 would have been around $2,500, is now nearer $15,000. Securing a late booking on the busiest route, from China to the west coast of America, could cost $20,000.
In response, some companies are resorting to desperate measures. Peloton, a maker of pricey exercise bikes, is switching to air freight. But costs are also sky-high as capacity, half of it usually provided in the holds of passenger jets, is constrained by curbs on international flights. Home Depot and Walmart, two American retailers, have chartered ships directly. Pressing inappropriate vessels into service has proved near-calamitous. An attempt in July to carry containers on a bulk carrier, which generally carts coal or iron ore, was hastily abandoned when the load shifted, forcing a return to port. More containers are traveling across Asia by train. Some are even reportedly being trucked from China to Europe then shipped across the Atlantic to avoid clogged Chinese ports.
Trains, planes and lorries can only do so much, especially when it comes to shifting goods halfway around the planet. Container ships lug around a quarter of the world’s traded goods by volume and three-fifths by value. The choice is often between paying up and suffering delays, or not importing at all. Globally 8m teus (20-foot-equivalent units) are in port or waiting to be unloaded, up by 10% year-on-year. At the end of August over 40 container ships were anchored off Los Angeles and Long Beach. These serve as car parks for containers, says Eleanor Hadland of Drewry, a shipping consultancy, in order to avoid clogging ports that in turn lack trains or lorries to shift goods to warehouses that are already full. The “pinch point”, she adds, “is the entire chain”.
For years container shipping kept supply chains running and globalization humming. Shipping was “so cheap that it was almost immaterial”, says David Kerstens of Jefferies, a bank. But disruption after disruption means that the metal boxes are losing their reputation for low prices and reliability. Few experts think things will get better before early next year. The dislocations could even hasten a reordering of global trade.
Shipping is so strained in part because the industry, which usually steams from short-lived boom to sustained bust, was enjoying a rare period of sanity in the run-up to the pandemic. Stephen Gordon of Clarksons, a shipbroker, notes that by 2019 it was showing self-discipline, with the level of capacity and the order book for new ships under control. Then came covid-19. Shipping firms, expecting a collapse in trade, idled 11% of the global fleet. In fact, trade held up and shipping rates started to climb. And, flush with stimulus cash, Americans started to spend.
In the first seven months of 2021, cargo volumes between Asia and North America were up by 27% compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to bimco, a shipowners’ association. Port throughput in America was 14% higher in the second quarter of 2021 than in 2019. There has been little growth elsewhere: throughput in northern Europe is 1% lower. Yet rates on all routes have rocketed (see map), because ships have set sail to serve lucrative transpacific trade, starving others of capacity.
A system stretched to its limits is subject to a “cascading effect”, says Eytan Buchman of Freightos, a digital-freight marketplace. Rerouting and rescheduling would once have mitigated the closure of part of Yantian, one of China’s biggest ports, in May and then Ningbo, another port, in August after covid-19 outbreaks. But without spare capacity, that is impossible. “All ships that can float are deployed,” remarks Soren Skou, boss of Maersk, the world’s biggest container-shipping firm. Empty containers are in all the wrong places. Port congestion puts ships out of service. The average door-to-door shipping time for ocean freight has gone from 41 days a year ago to 70 days, says Freightos.
Some observers think normality may return after Chinese new year next February. Peter Sand of bimco says disruptions could even take a year to unwind. Lars Jensen of Vespucci Maritime, an advisory firm, notes that a dockers’ strike on America’s west coast in 2015 caused similar disruption, albeit only in the region. It still took six months to unwind the backlog.
On the demand side much depends on whether the American consumer’s appetite for buying stuff continues. Although retail sales fell in July, they are still 18% above pre-pandemic levels, points out Oxford Economics, a consultancy. But even if American consumer demand slackens, firms are set to splurge as they restock inventories depleted by the buying spree and prepare for the holiday season at the end of the year. And there are signs that demand in Europe is picking up.
In a sea of uncertainty, one bedrock remains. The industry, flush with profits, is reacting customarily, setting an annual record for new orders for container-ship capacity in less than eight months of this year, says Mr Sand. But with a two-to-three-year wait, this release valve will not start to operate until 2023. And the race to flood the market may not match torrents of the past. There are far fewer shipyards today: 120 compared with around 300 in 2008, when the previous record was set. And shipping, responsible for 2.7% of global carbon-dioxide emissions, is under pressure to clean up its act. Tougher regulations come into force in 2023.
The upshot is that the industry “will remain cyclical”, but with rates normalizing at a higher level, says Maersk’s Mr Skou. Discipline in both ordering and managing capacity may prove more permanent, aided by consolidation within the industry.
The impact of higher shipping costs depends on the good being transported. Those hoping to import cheap and bulky things like garden furniture might be in for a long wait. Mr Buchman notes that current spot rates might add $1,000 to the price of a sofa travelling from China to America. The effects on product prices so far may have been dampened: around 60% of goods are subject to contractual arrangements with shipping rates agreed in advance and only 40% to soaring spot prices. Boxed in nonetheless, for most products, shipping costs tend to be a small percentage of the overall cost. The boss of a large global manufacturer based in Europe says the extreme costs now are “bearable”. Nor might shipping rates rise much more even if disruptions continue. cma cgm, the third-largest container-shipping firm in the world, stunned industry watchers on September 9th when it said that it would cap spot rates for ocean freight. Hapag-Lloyd, the fifth-largest, rapidly followed suit.
Decarbonisation costs mean rates will eventually settle at higher levels than those before the pandemic. Yet research by Maersk suggests that this may not affect customers much. Even if sustainable fuel cost three times as much as the dirty stuff, increasing per-container fuel costs to $1,200 across the Pacific, for a container loaded with 8,000 pairs of trainers, the impact on each item would be minimal.
Instead it is the problem of reliability that may change the way firms think. “Just in time” may give way to “just in case”, says Mr Sand, as firms guard against supply shortages by building inventories far above pre-pandemic levels. Reliability and efficiency might also be hastened by the use of technology in an industry that has long resisted its implementation. As Fraser Robinson of Beacon, another digital freight forwarder, points out, supply chains can be made sturdier by using data to provide better “visibility” such as over which suppliers and shipping companies do a better or worse job of keeping to timetables and ordering goods earlier.
There is so far little evidence of “nearshoring”, except in the car industry, says Mr Skou. But the combination of trade war, geopolitics and covid-19 may together lead trade patterns to tilt away from China. Some Chinese firms and the companies they supply are relocating production to lower-cost countries to diversify supply chains and circumvent trade barriers. Mr Kerstens of Jefferies notes that after America under President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on China the volume of trade from China to America fell by 7% in 2019, but American imports remained stable overall as places like Vietnam and Malaysia took up the slack. Hedging against covid-19 shutdowns, particularly given China’s zero tolerance for infections, could provide another reason to move away. For their part, shipping firms may be preparing for more regionalised trade. The order book is bulging for ships of 13,000-15,000 teu, smaller than the mega-vessels that can only be handled at the biggest ports. Vietnam opened a new deepwater terminal in January, which can handle all but those largest ships.
Finding new manufacturers is hard, however, especially for complex products. And building buffers into supply chains is costly. But conversations about de-globalising are said to be starting among some makers of low-cost clothing and commodity goods. If high costs and delays persist, some will judge that the benefits of proximity to suppliers outweigh the costs of bringing in goods made far away. With few alternatives to ships, the only choice will be to move the factories that make them.
Correction (September 13th 2021): The figures on port throughput in America and northern Europe have been corrected since publication.
Here's the link if you subscribe or have your email on file: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/a-perfect-storm-for-container-shipping/21804500
I'm not sure how much money you'd really save by having the subs for Australia built in Britain. AIUI British building capacity has been scaled down pretty dramatically to accommodate the needs of maintaining a much smaller fleet than during the Cold War, and scaling it back up would be comparable in expense to building a new yard elsewhere. Why not spend that money at home? Especially if Australia is going to have to fix up their shipyard anyway to maintain the new boats (because sending them all the way to the US or UK any time serious work is needed is understandably unappealing).
Elsewhere I've seen speculation that Australia will not be getting any variety of Astutes but rather some variety of SSN(R) - the planned successor to Astute. Of course one big problem with that is that SSN(R) is still about 20 years out IF everything goes according to schedule.
Most ships are reasonably similar, except submarines, which are very different.
I really doubt it. My guess is that the reactor comes straight from either the US or the UK. Morrison has made it clear that they're not trying to establish a civilian nuclear capability, and given that and Australian politics, buying the reactor abroad is probably a much easier sell than buying the entire submarine abroad.
That's easy. The Australians pay to accelerate the program a few years, and to debug the first units. Win-win. Well, win for the British.
Wow, that's a very stupid thing to try to do. I'm surprised that was even tried. I'm not a naval architect, and I noticed the problem halfway through the sentence.
I am confused. If they are not going to build the reactor, how are they going to work on it if something on it gets broken?
@ike: "I am confused. If they are not going to build the reactor, how are they going to work on it if something on it gets broken?"
Erm... You don't?
So, the plan in case of war is "Don't get hit."?
Pretty much. If you get hit badly enough to damage the reactor, it's probably time to abandon ship/die horribly.
You don't need to be able to build a car to fix it.
But realistically, the more dependent the Aussies are on outsiders for parts for their subs, the bigger a handle they are giving to those outsiders to jerk them around with.
I expect there are parts of the reactor that you can fix in the field, or at least in drydock, but those are probably things like the coolant plumbing and the steam turbine assemblies. The specialized expertise necessary for this sort of thing can probably be picked up by sending the engineering crews to American or British nuclear schools for training, as @redRover suggested Australia would be likely to do.
As for the reactor core itself, I think @Alexander has the right of it. "Don't get hit" is also the plan for things like fighter jets getting their wings shot off or warships taking major below-the-waterline hull damage.
@philistine
You save a LOT of money. building a yard like that requires a huge amount of expensive capital that will be largely useless once the ships are built, and building up the experienced workforce isn't cheap either. that's why the attacks were going to be so expensive, most of that money was going to building up local australian industry,
the UK yards are taking something like 7 years to build astutes, while Virginias are built in 3. Accelerating that timeline and building more at the same yard will be a tremendous savings.
Of course the australians want that local industry, especially the politicians. The most logical way for this to work out would be getting the brits to build the subs with some american systems on board, then have the aussies build a base capable of repairing their subs and US subs, then having the US throw some maintenance work their way, since the US maintenance yards are already loaded past capacity. That way, the US gets a new base and doesn't have the pay for iit, the aussies get an industry that's actually sustainable, and the UK gets to make better use of their submarine line. Everyone wins. But this deal is FAR too reasonable to actually happen, and they'll probably try to do something dumber, like Australian final assembly/fitting out.
@bean
I cannot imagine the UK being able to accelerate SSN(R) that much. If the aussies want a next gen sub, SSN(X) is an outside possibility, but they won't hit the water for over 10 years. I don't see how either is in the cards. An improved Astute (probably equipped with some american sensors/weapons/payload modules) makes more sense.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-18/the-nuclear-option-and-australian-submarine-contractors/100471060
The prime contractor (?) for the Barracudas (who was blindsided) claims
""We're building another submarine — and there'll be an extra bit, a very sophisticated, very costly, extra bit called a nuclear reactor — but the rest of the submarine, there's no logical reason why Australia can't be involved in that," he said.
Both AIDN and Project Alpha Plus agree that Australia had all the skills, technology and experience necessary to build key components of the submarine, including the steel hull, parts of the combat system, sonar, propellers, the torpedo handling system and much more."
(
Apparently, the French are having an epic snit and recalled their ambassadors to the US and to Australia.
That's one heck of a flounce
Someone I know floated (haha) the idea that the back-ends of the boats could be built in Britain and the front-ends in Australia, and then a heavy-lift ship could be used to transport the former to the latter for union and finishing.
I don't think that plan holds water.
Presumably the reactor section ships from the US, then?
Recalling an ambassador means something has gone Horribly Wrong, but it's not as severe as withdrawing your ambassador which means you don't want to talk to them anymore.
From here in Australia, my guess is that the French ambassador to Australia is in for some very harsh questioning and criticism in private, maybe in public. The sub project was very important with a lot of money and time invested, and I imagine that the French government wants about how things could go off the rails so badly without the ambassador noticing. Yes, commercial partner not government, but the ambassador is supposed to be looking after French interests in Australia.
Even if the boats were basically Astutes, quite a bit of the kit on the Dreadnoughts could be included. If they had a British reactor, I expect it would be PWR3, for instance.
"Emilio said... @ike: “I am confused. If they are not going to build the reactor, how are they going to work on it if something on it gets broken?”
Erm... You don’t?"
...Follow-up question: where/how will these reactors be refueled? Not sure what the refueling cycle will be on these beasts; to put it in perspective IIRC the latest generation of US reactors is intended to go about 20 years between ROH's. But when they DO need it, it's something like a 36-month evolution, and the number of places it can be done is small - and usually busy. Will we or the UK be able to slide the Aussie boats into the schedule?
@Mike
They've been using life-of-boat reactors since Seawolf. Refueling just isn't an issue.
@Directrix Gazer
The front'll fall off.
It would, however, have been an issue if they'd gone with the nuclear version of the French Barracuda class: their reactors have a usable lifetime of only 10 years (up from 5 years for the preceding Rubis class). The 33-year lifetime of a Virginia reactor core looks much more attractive.
This helps, I think, to explain why the Australians didn't consider requesting a French design when they decided to switch to nuclear propulsion. That is, if the problems they'd been having with the French contractor weren't sufficient on their own.
@cassander: Your proposed solution - with the UK building the RAN submarines, and Australia providing maintenance for both them and USN vessels - sounds sensible to me. I'm slightly optimistic that something like that might actually happen. I guess we'll find out when the 18-month figuring-out-what-we're-actually-doing phase is over.
I believe that's a result of France's attempts to export SSNs. The reactor has to run on low-enriched Uranium, because of non-proliferation treaty concerns. (Modern SSN reactors run on bomb-grade Uranium with burnable poisons.) I'm not sure what will happen with Australia, and it's vaguely possible they'll have to refuel a lot more often for that reason.
I'd be surprised if France had deliberately degraded their SSN fleet in this way to make it easier to develop an export-friendly version. I'd be more surprised if Russia had done the same, but their submarine reactors (e.g. OK-650 variants) seem to run on low-enriched uranium, too.
Perhaps it's just really difficult to get the right mix of burnable poisons, or to solve some related engineering problems? This would explain why the US is so cautious about exporting their reactor technology.
I think that makes a lot of sense when you think about what you are asking the fuel to do. You want the nuclear properties to stay (mostly) constant while you soak it neutrons for 30 years and all sorts of wild chemistry happens. It is easy to imagine being at year 13 and discovering "wow the fuel has accumulated more XYZium than we budgeted for. We aren't going to make our 30 year life target". I don't doupt the USN has learned a lot of lesson the hard way.
I wouldn't. France has usually funded its armament industry by building stuff that will work on the export market and then making its own forces adopt it. The most notable example is the AMX-30, which was very popular with the Third World, but left France without a proper main battle tank for a long time. I specifically know they were looking at low-enriched uranium naval reactors back when Charles De Gaulle was built, which is one of the reasons the island is so far forward.
France has a whole bunch of civilian nuclear reactions. It looks like the older designs burn LEU, while the newer ones can burn either LEU or a mix of natural uranium and reprocessed plutonium. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the design considerations for their submarine reactors was to share fuel (and possibly reactor design elements as well) with their civilian reactors in order to piggyback on the existing fuel industry instead of needing to set up and maintain infrastructure for making HEU for the subs.
The US, on the other hand, had enormous infrastructure for making HEU for bombs back in the 50s when we were designing our first generation of naval reactors. We've since shut it down, but we've still got a pretty big stockpile of HEU left over. While France also has nuclear weapons, their arsenal is much smaller than ours, and AFAIK French nuclear weapon designs were always plutonium-based.
It is also worth pointing out that the French (civilian) nuclear industry is HUGE - ~70% of electricity. I can believe that their naval program is largely made with off the shelf parts.
The type of reactor in the Aus SSNs will be a political decision, not technical.
Australia has opposition to nuclear power, but not enough stop us mining and selling uranium, not enough to close the one small nuclear reactor. But enough to prevent a workable civilian industry and specialists to support nuclear reactors in even small numbers, as our own government carefully explained a couple of months ago when asked about why we didn't just buy the nuclear Barracuda.
"Weapons grade" reactor fuel, that's another matter. We have a lot more opposition to nuclear weapons, even on the conservative side. (Didn't help that the Brits used Australia as a test site.)
Yes, any such fuel in a sub nuke plant will be sealed up, well guarded, won't even come out of the water for maintenance in Australian ports. It isn't rational, but it will make it easier for opposition to buying SSNs, and building a base in Australia.
I forget. Does Australia grow all of her own food, or is she critically dependent on American grain like Japan and Britain?
Australia is a net exporter of food, by a lot: about 70% of Australia's agricultural products are exported, and by value Australia exports about twice as much food products as it imports. The imports seem to be skewed heavily towards processed and manufactured food products, not raw staples like grain.
@EricRall Thanks! I was mostly curious about her ability to avoid famine in the case of blockade. I knew she does a roaring trade in livestock with the near-east, but in many countries such industries are 100% dependent on new-world soy beans.
Eric Rall:
They'd probably need a couple of years but Australia does quite a lot of nuclear physics for a country that doesn't turn any Uranium into electricity.
bean:
No way that it makes sense for Australia to be debugging a new design, there isn't the experience base and they probably won't have the time unless a capability gap is acceptable.
bean:
It's specifically allowed under the NPT on the condition that Australia doesn't use it in a bomb and I don't think anyone actually expects that Australia will violate it (if they decide they need nuclear weapons they're likely to have time to do it from scratch).
Insisting on LEU for export submarine reactors would be if you wanted to export nuclear submarines to someone you don't trust not to turn the fuel into bombs which France might actually want to do.
I should note that arms control people have been complaining about the fact the NPT allows it.
Hugh:
It'll have whatever reactor the submarine bought comes with.
Hugh:
Even in Australia only a minority of the population are actually anti-nuclear (there are a lot of people undecided, but the anti-nuclear are extremely vocal and more likely to be single issue voters) and the lack of nuclear power plants is more to do with having lots of coal and the smaller states not having the spinning reserve for the large reactors that are actually available for purchase.
Also it's the states that decide whether they get nuclear power plants and the big states (with power grids that could handle currently available power reactors) tend to be more anti-nuclear than the federal government.
Hugh:
With the agreement of the Australian government.
Hugh:
The defense needs and additional capability of the submarines should be sufficiently compelling for getting them built to be possible but they need to avoid making any other politically powerful enemies which does require local manufacturing, no matter how bad an idea bean may think it.
@Ike
I think it's a huge mistake to think of a modern blockade in the mode of a new battle of the atlantic. Traditionally, the biggest problem in blockades (for both defenders and attackers) is in finding targets, but aircraft and satellites render this problem fairly trivial. Even a tiny number of aircraft will render any blockade 100% effective in their patrol if they can operate freely, which magnifies the importance of maritime geography.
The US, for example, can easily blockade China with a dozen P-8s and SH-60s based in the indonesian archipelago and Guam. The only way for the chinese to challenge such a blockade would be to send out a fleet that can take out those air bases, but the USN would love nothing more than a blue water fight with the chinese outside the range of chinese land based assets.
For china to do the same to australia, though, they would have to establish bases that could patrol around australia, each of which has to be either outside the range of land based Australian air power or able to stand up as much force as their navy can project.
the chinese could try a submarine blockade, but as the aussies have realized, but you'd need nuclear boats and the chinese don't have very many of those, so you couldn't cover all of australia. Ships would re-route to southern and eastern routes and could be protected by australian aerial ASW assets. They won't be able to find chinese subs as easily as merchant ships, but they will at least be able to make attacking the ships extremely dangerous for them.
Basically, china has the problem the german high seas fleet faced in ww1, only worse. We can cut the off from global trade without exposing ourselves to attack, but they can't do that to us, and they can't challenge the way we're doing that without fighting a massive fleet engagement that they don't have the naval power to win.
@anonymous
This is true, but I am certain that we will see anti-nuclear groups in australia protesting this decision on proliferation grounds. I look forward to seeing Australians argue that Australia can't be trusted to not misuse nuclear materials and make bombs. :P
@Cassander:
A maintenance period at a non-US base is a great time for the American Sailors——my minesweeper had a couple weeks in Singapore while I was aboard. Everyone got some downtime, some of the married guys flew wives and kids in, and I even got to take leave and backpack to K.L.
We were all so excited about this that we just assumed it was part of a mutually beneficial, "everybody wins” arrangement. We should have checked, because it was actually a corruptly suborned, "taxpayers lose" embezzlement.
A decade after my discharge, the Fat Leonard thing changed about a third of my Navy anecdotes. Nothing I said or did has changed, but now one of the details is so obviously fraudulent it's impossible to enjoy any other part of the narrative—my military career was the second viewing of an M Night shyamalan film!
Wait, what were we talking about? Submarines?
@Cassander. Just out of curiosity, wasn't/isn't part of the anti-nuclear movement in Oz based on an opposition to the environmental aspects of uranium mining? I might be wrong about this, but something is rattling around in my memory about this.
I am not sure if they are hanging their hat on that peg this time as it seems the fuel will be part of the purchase package. Just was curious.
@neal
I have no idea, I know nothing about those domestic politics. I just think it very likely that "highly enriched uranium" and "nuclear proliferation" will prove excellent boo words, and they will happily be used as that by the opposition regardless of how little sense it makes to use them that way.
I disagree with @cassander...
It would be easy for China to blockade Australia unless the US helped Australia.
Plan A 1) China sends some submarines to sink ships around Australia. They sink some ships. 2) Every shipping company in the world refuses to sail to Australia, saying they don't want to risk their sailors lives.
Plan B 1) China says any company doing business with Australia is banned from the Chinese markets. 2) Maersk (and every other worldwide shipping company and airline) stops sending ships and airplanes to Australia.
Plan B is only 80% effective (Qantas still flies). Plan A is 90% effective.
This is not WWII, Maersk is just not going to sail to an active war zone.
How do you load a 12" Muzzle Loading Rifled gun?
Basically, I'm asking how you get a 12" shell down a rifled barrel. If the shell is big enough to engage the rifling, I would not think it would slide down the barrel without an explosion behind it. But clearly this was possible, so how?
@Kit: the shell had studs pre-placed to fit into the rifling grooves, instead of the continuous ring used on a breech-loader. More here.
Neal: Like every country the effective part of Australia's anti-nuclear movement is fossil fuel industry astroturf.
Kit:
If they want to keep doing it they'll have to contend with P8s monitoring shipping, sink one ship and a P8 will be dropping sonobuoys nearby, then dropping a homing torpedo.
Wouldn't take long for China to run out of submarines and Australia and some of its allies will have ASW surface ships and their own submarines in the area as well, probably following the same route container ships use (while the actual container ships will deviate their course a bit).
Kit:
If China make countries make that choice they may not like the choice (and it will be countries making the choice), countries worried they'll be next might decide that it's better to stop China now than wait until they are targeted.
Also if AUKUS means anything not doing business with Australia may end up as not doing business with the UK and US.
@kit
what anonymous said. chinese diesel submarines probably lack the range to operate against ships coming to eastern australia, especially if they have to dodge P-8s. their 6 relatively modern nuclear boats can, and are a real threat, but australia can put their whole navy, more or less, into protecting convoys, offer to eat the price of any losses, and even crew the ships with aussie sailors if it comes to it.
@cassander
Does Australia (or really any western nation) actually have the staffing available to crew these ships on a repeatable basis? Especially on short notice? I suppose if you're only crewing them for a few days as they transit the conflict zone it becomes more feasible, but in general it seems like we don't really have a lot of merchant mariners standing by.
@redrover
They don't have huge crews standing by, but maritime diesels are designed to be easy to maintain and operate with few crew. If it was a question of do this or starve, they could work something out. especially if, as you point out, the critical period is one of a few weeks or months where either most ships will get through (after which civilians will do the work for hazard pay) or they won't (in which case they'll mostly give up).
China can inflict a devastating economic blockade on Australia any time it wants to by just not buying our stuff. No military action required.
As a satirical Aus TV program (Utopia) pointed out a few years ago, focus too much on trade and you end up planning a navy to defend our vital sea lines of communication to China against attack by, uh, ... China?
The Chinese, if they want to execute a type A blockade, don't have to execute a close blockade. They can sit 500nm offshore, and sink whatever comes by. The plan is not to sink lots of ships, but just enough ships to scare of Maersk. I bet 2 ships would do it. In fact, I bet just declaring a blockade would do it.
Lets suppose a sub hits a cargo ship 500nm from shore. That's a flaming datum. The P-8 needs to get in the air (if it's not already) and fly 500nm (or more or less, depending one where it is). Meanwhile the sub probably has an hour or 2 to sneak away. This is not an obvious kill for the P-8. And if the P-8 is right overhead .. the sub will notice when it detects P-8 radar emissions and run without attacking.
I completely agree the Chinese would lose some subs in this scenario. But this is not WWII. They just need to scare away shipping companies, who's insurance probably requires them to avoid any war zone anyway.
Australia is not going to run out of food. It might get short on gasoline. It will definitely get short on cheap consumer goods (which come from China anyway). And when the economy goes down 30% ... the voters will vote.
Though if it only takes a couple of ships being sunk to shut down shipping, Australia could blockade China.
Hugh:
Australia has enough other trading partners that it wouldn't be existential and quite a few other countries would increase their trade (not to mention that the CCP has a lot of people who hate it, some of who would start to specifically look for made in X if China does that to X).
Kit:
If a Type 26 happened to come by that becomes very risky, if a whole heap of them showed up accompanied by submarines and with P-8s overhead then it becomes downright suicidal.
Meanwhile the actual containerships have adjusted their course to stay well clear of the usual courses they'd follow and will have P-8s watching over them.
Another possibility is to buy some old obsolete but still usable merchant ships, refit them to be remote controlled, then send them on the usual routes and just wait for them to be sunk while monitoring their progress and being ready to pounce on whoever sinks them.
Kit:
At high speed they make a lot of noise, if the P-8 was in the area (which if a threat to do that were credible is likely) they'd have minutes to sneak out, if they try going full power then they will be detected while not themselves being able to detect anything so won't know when sonobuoys or homing torpedoes are dropped.
So their only option is to creep out but are China's submarines quite enough to do sneak past a P-8 that has pinned them down to within a few nautical miles?
Kit:
A submerged submarine is not going to know about a P-8 because the radar won't penetrate the surface, assuming they even have it turned on.
Submarines on the surface may detect it, unless low probability of intercept works as designed but has approximately no anti-air capability while the P-8 will be quite capable of taking it out.
Kit:
Australia only has to sink 6 submarines to make it impossible for China to continue.
Kit:
But not necessarily how you expect, they might vote to hurt China.
Decadence isn't a weakness.
Doctorpat:
China is much easier to blockade than Australia and possibly more dependent on maritime trade.
@kit
A circle 500 miles offshore from australia has a circumference of over 10,000 miles. putting aside the ability of australia to hunt submarines, the chinese don't have enough of them to cover that much territory. they can cover some of it, sure, even the likeliest bits, but not enough to cut them off completely.
That's the point. The Australian P-8s cannot patrol the 10,000 miles. I guess Australia could try and do convoys, buy do you really think Maersk is going to send them ships to a convoy about to be attacked by China? Will they sailors even agree to go?
This is where I don't know enough about submarine warfare. Subs can place a small antenna barely above the surface to detect radar emissions, and only surface/snort when safe to do so. ASW aircraft have radars exactly developed to detect small things just above the surface. At a distance, the antenna can easily detect the radar and the radar cannot detect the antenna (thanks to fundamental physics). I don't know how close one can be and still avoid detection by a P-8.
In a hot war, Australia is likely to have allies. Said allies would almost certainly include at least one navy with the capability to put a tail on each PLAN SSN as it comes out of port, with little chance of being counter-detected. (And the Australians themselves will be able to contribute to that effort when/if the RAN get their own SSNs.)
A lot of discussion on here on the ability of China to enact a blockade seems to focus on having to have enough force to shut down all of Australia's port. My dudes, it's not WW2 anymore; you don't have to cut off the vast majority of ships from getting through anymore. You have to shutdown 8 ports. Honestly, you can probably cut that down to 3 on the East Coast (Port Botany, Brisbane, Melbourne) and Australia is Going to Have A Bad Time. Sure, you can truck goods over from Perth to the other coast...that's a 4000 mile drive. Gonna take a lot of trucks to keep that going, more than I suspect are in Australia has. Related: the US is currently starting to have a Not Good Time due to a shipping crisis, as Neal discussed above. And there's no requirement-it's probably not even desired, if we're honest-to shut them down kinetically. There are a lot of ways I can think of that you can shut down a container port that don't require any getting hurt. I just finished reading a book called Dark Invasion about German sabotage efforts in New York in WW1. Some of their most effective work didn't involve blowing things up. I can assume that the PRC is smarter than Imperial Germany here.
Likewise, when discussing submarines making attacks, there's a pretty big assumption that they'll be using torpedoes (mostly by noting how risky it will be for the sub). Do remember that basically all their subs (or at least all the ones they'd use for this hypothetical mission) can use ASCMs. And you don't need HWTs against merchies (I mean, they would work, to be sure). Also, while MPA (especially P-8s) are a pretty powerful assets...but them being up isn't a guarantee of protection. And a single warship versus a single submarine is a win for the submarine 90% of the time.
Australia has a pretty stacked deck against them if they have to deal with the PRC on their own; SSNs will help them a lot, but they are a long way from IOC. The good news is I don't think the Aussies aren't planning on fighting on their own; the bad news is they are still a long way from help, and that might take too much time.
Speaking of blockade, is the Chinese rail network up to the challenge of running the whole economy from Hanoi and Vladivostok?
cassander:
How did you calculate that?
Kit:
Australia will have a much better idea where the ships are than China will.
Kit:
If low probability of intercept mode works as it is meant to that could be very close.
Philistine:
The allies close to China will be operating slow submersible surface vessels so it'd have to be USN, RN or RAN once they get real submarines and it also depends on how good the submarines of each side are.
Blackshoe:
True, you couldn't take a train from Perth to Sydney in WWII but now you can (or could if it weren't for the pandemic).
Blackshoe:
But they only have 2 submarines per port and will have a lot of very sophisticated equipment against them anywhere that a ship can't avoid.
Blackshoe:
Yes, but there's also a train line that goes to almost everything big below the Brisbane line.
Blackshoe:
Yes, but so can those defending the container ports, those methods are also unlikely to work again.
Blackshoe:
Launching missiles is a great way to be detected and it's not very clear if China can effectively target them (the Soviets relied on airborne platforms to target their's).
Blackshoe:
But you are going to need some type of torpedo, unless they want to surface and fire a deck gun.
The only other thing a submarine could carry that would be useful would be mines and in this scenario they'd probably be more useful if Australia wanted to retaliate by blockading China which has bottlenecks.
Blackshoe:
I'm not sure if we even know what the ratios would be with modern equipment.
Whilst the submarine has obvious stealth advantages surface ships and aircraft are much better at coordination and they will be operating together.
Blackshoe:
The advantage Australia has is that China is a long way away so won't be able to bring all their military might with them and so in any fight near Australia would be hopelessly outmatched.
For now.
It's possible that part of the reason China is picking fights with Australia is because they are too far from each other to actually end as a war.
ike:
Vietnam would probably prefer not to help China out or if they do will make it expensive while Russia has a different gauge.
Going by the numbers I saw a few years ago, China couldn't keep its domestic economy afloat without coastal traffic between the big rivers, let alone imports and exports.
An awful lot of coal barges need to get moved around just to keep the lights on.
@anonymous
australia is roughly 2400 miles across and pretty round. It fills about 2/3s of of a circle with a radius of 1200 miles. add 500 miles to that and you get 1700, and a circle with a radius of 1700 is 10,000. granted, the actual number is a little bit smaller, because it's only 2/3s of a circle, but it's a reasonable approximation.
Put it another way, australia has the 3rd largest EEZ (ocean area 200 miles offshore not limited by another country's eez) after the US and france. the area is actually slightly bigger than australia itself.
@blackshoe
You aren't giving sufficient weight to the tyranny of distance. Australia is a long way from china, and the chinese are not used to projecting power that far. 6 SSNs isn't nothing, it's serious threat that needs to be treated seriously, but it's not enough to shut down 8 australian ports. not even enough for 3.
Does the PLAN have effective CAPTOR mines, in large enough numbers to matter, and is there a deep enough continental shelf outside of Australian harbors to make it hard to sweep them?
Re SSN numbers - I am sure the planners are thinking about this, but with such small fleets (all the way around) it seems like there is a lot of potential for "for want of a nail, the war was lost" type scenarios because of higher variance in fleet readiness and locations. Like, if you have one sub down for planned maintenance, and another has a bolt in its main reduction gear, you're down 33% before you even start.
Obviously they've settled on "fewer high capacity platforms" as the right strategy, but it does seem like this leads to a lot more variance, as the US seems to be the only operator with a significant number of operational assets. (Russia being strong numerically, but also with a lot of their "fleet" being paper tigers that can't reliably leave the pier without a tug nearby)
@Blackshoe
Are you referring to a 1 vs 1 duel, where 9 times out of 10 the ship sinks and the sub survives, or in the sense that the ship fails to spot and sink the sub as it sinks its targets (ie freighters in this context)?
Isn't basically any sub weapon employed near a warship, a likely death warrant for the sub, due to asroc, helos, etc?
The Chinese have 8 SSN and 46 SS.
Anyone with a satellite network will know where they are.
In summary, it's important to remember that the Chinese have smart people too. They will not do dumb things, and will not fall for obvious ploys.
Dang thing would not let me edit my mistake. I meant ...
If you mean the US, that would change everything. If you mean Ecuador, I’m not sure they matter. And if you mean Japan but not the US, I don’t believe you
Kit:
That brings it to 2⅔ per port (assuming only 3 ports), still not enough (diesel-electrics lack the range and speed for the mission) but even then it'll probably be 2 or less because some of them will be unavailable for maintenance.
Kit:
Under normal circumstances, yes (the ships broadcast that information), but not if they are trying to hide.
Australia probably knows where every Chinese spy satellite is and if they don't they can ask the US who certainly do. Australia can also get weather satellite photographs and send the ships through cloudy regions.
Kit:
At the moment having smart people in charge means they wouldn't even try. It's also surprising just how often people fall for obvious ploys.
@Kit,
The allies I had in mind are the other members of AUKUS and "the Quad." So yes, mostly the US. But also the UK, which is too far away to send help quickly but has now (apparently) committed to do what they can; and also quite possibly Japan and India, which could at least make the Chinese watch their flanks even without actively participating in hostilities.
Checks google maps
Both the East China Sea and the South China Sea look eminently blockadable, and the Japanese have both capability and reason to do so if the CCP starts getting frisky.
Do they have the will? Well, they built the capability recently.
And, while it would take the UK some time to get assets into position, with Australian bases, they can do the same.
The constriction of China's access to the open sea really limits their options until they can take Taiwan to use for basing.
@Ian
I take your point about routes into the East China Sea being almost completely shut down by Okinawa. However, what bases were you planning on closing the South China Sea from? Diego Garcia?
Japan has ~700 aircraft. China has over 3,000. Even though the Japanese F-15s are good, there are only 155 of them. Hard for Japan to blockade China while Toyko is getting bombed. Also, just about every Japanese port is in range. Finally, hard to imagine Japan going to war with a nation of 10x the population.
The Royal Navy cannot get three destroyers sailing at the same time. China has 39 destroyers, and ~300 other ships too.
To be fair, this is Japan we're talking about and it's not the first time....or even the second that they've declared war on 10x the population....but to be serious, it's hard to imagine a limited war across a naval border in East Asia - it's either the US vs. China w/ everyone else trying to stay out of the way, or everyone realizing that they have one chance to prevent themselves from being the next Hong Kong. Indochina is a somewhat different story.
Just because right now the diplomatic story being painted is that the US is in retreat against an ascendant China while everyone else sits on their hands doesn't mean that diplomatic picture is static - and I'd challenge that the reality of this narrative was true even 5 years ago, let alone today.
How many of China's ~2000 combat aircraft are capable of even reaching Japan on a round trip, let alone of doing anything worthwhile at that range from their own bases? Remember that China has very few tankers for aerial refueling.
How many of China’s ~2000 combat aircraft are capable of even reaching Japan on a round trip, let alone of doing anything worthwhile at that range from their own bases?
Back of napkin, open source, PLAAF looks to have a bit over 800 fighter-bombers and 120 heavy bombers that have enough combat radius to participate in an air campaign against Japan. Some of the former are a bit marginal, and of course in reality the vast majority would likely be tied down elsewhere in a large-scale war, even leaving out the infrastructure issues that would be caused by concentrating that much of your air force at a small proportion of your bases.
Sorry, that first category isn't just fighter bombers, but inclusive of air-superiority aircraft as well.
Saw someone comment (I don't think here) that if China was serious about "breaking out" of the China Seas, they'd be planning to invade Luzon.
The ability to break out of the South China Sea depends very much on neutralizing Taiwan and/or the PI as bases of operations.
Saw someone comment (I don't think here) that if China was serious about "breaking out" of the China Seas, they'd be planning to invade Luzon.
The ability to break out of the South China Sea depends very much on neutralizing Taiwan and/or the PI as bases of operations.
And as for USN bases, isn't that why we have CVBGs?
Hmm. I think that's probably more of an "and" than an "or." Certainly in 1944 the Allies concluded that taking either of Formosa or the PI would let them close the China Seas to hostile shipping, and we're considerably better at that sort of thing now.