by Peter Yule
be diesel-electric because nuclear propulsion would be too expen-
sive, and he suggested that building all but the first of the new
submarines in Australia should be considered.
The paper was presented to the defence operational require-
ments committee in August 1978 and endorsed as the basis for fur-
ther development. The new submarine project received the num-
ber SEA1114, which has stayed with it ever since.10 Bill Owen,
the commander of the submarine squadron, became a lone voice
arguing that the search for an Oberon replacement was premature
and should be delayed until a suitable tried and tested submarine
was in service with another navy (as the Oberons had been), and
installation of air-independent propulsion became feasible.
T H E S U B M A R I N E W E A P O N S U P D A T E P R O G R A M
27
In one of the earliest indications that the new submarine project
might follow a very different course from the Oberons, in 1979
Vickers Cockatoo Dockyard gained agreement from the Depart-
ment of Defence for ‘undertaking a study into the feasibility
of building modern submarines in Australia’.11 The report was
completed in March 1981.
Based on the British Type 2400, later known as the Upholder
class, as representative of the type of submarine likely to replace
the Oberons, the study also looked at Dutch and German designs.
It assumed that at least the first submarine would be built in the
overseas lead yard and that castings, forgings, dome bulkheads
and all equipment would be bought in or supplied as govern-
ment furnished equipment. The study concluded that building
submarines in Australia was ‘entirely practical’ given these stipu-
lations and assumptions, and emphasised the benefits for future
support and maintenance of the new submarines if they were built
in Australia.12 Significantly, the study did not look at a Swedish
design, an indication that this was not considered a potential
choice in 1980.
The Cockatoo study contemplated traditional construction
methods as still used by Vickers in Britain.13 It also argued that
transport costs precluded making many major components at sites
other than Cockatoo Island, and expressed some scepticism about
the ability of other Australian companies to manufacture to qual-
ity control standards or to deliver on time.14
The failure to embrace modern practices, particularly modular
construction, and the lack of enthusiasm for a wider Australian
industry involvement later were to tell against Cockatoo as these
themes became holy dogma for the leaders of the new submarine
project. Also telling was that the report admitted it would be diffi-
cult to meet the navy’s desire to have the new submarines by 2003
unless two submarines were built overseas.15
During 1980 and 1981 the requirements for a new submarine
were put together in what at first appears to have been a fairly
random manner by various elements of the submarine community.
To some extent the early planning for the new submarines appears
to have become a matter of compiling a submariners’ wish list of
what the ideal submarine would look like.
In 1980 Peter Horobin was posted to the directorate of sub-
marine policy after commanding Otama. He began by putting
28
T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y
together the case for why Australia should have submarines, look-
ing at the role of submarines at that time and 20 years ahead. In
simple terms, intelligence gathering was the most important rea-
son. When he had demonstrated that submarines were necessary,
the question then became, ‘what sort of submarines?’ He con-
cluded there were no suitable designs because none met the range
performance desired by the navy.
In 1980, as the program began to take shape, Lieutenant
Frank Owen was appointed ‘follow-on submarine project officer’
attached to the directorate of submarine policy. His job was to
pull together the key characteristics of the new submarine. Owen
recalls that the first big argument they had to win was for big,
long-range submarines rather than small, short-range submarines
based in the north at Cairns or Darwin. He put together a substan-
tial paper on this issue and by early 1982 had achieved broad sup-
port for both the proposed characteristics of the new submarines
and for investigating their construction in Australia. Gaining the
endorsement of the operational requirements committee was rea-
sonably straightforward, but it proved more difficult to convince
the force structure committee.
One of the roles of this committee was to assess each new
equipment project against defence policy to identify its priority
for the money the government had allocated over the next five
years. Its power lay in recommending the funding for projects in
future budgets. A limited allocation could delay a project by years
or, if other projects were considered more important, a diversion
of funds could force a fundamental change in the nature of the new
submarine force. Service people were suspicious of the committee
because most of its members were civilians (although its decisions
were not made on a vote) and it was chaired by a deputy sec-
retary of the department who was also responsible for the force
development and analysis division.
From May 1982 the chair was Alan Wrigley, recruited to the
Defence Department in 1975 to help establish force development
and analysis. He was to become the staunchest critic of the navy’s
proposals for a new submarine. Wrigley’s major weapon, he says,
was the ambition of the submariners. At each stage of develop-
ment the submarine project would be likely to cost more than
previously thought and, importantly, more than was allocated in
future spending plans. Since future financial allocations were fixed
T H E S U B M A R I N E W E A P O N S U P D A T E P R O G R A M
29
by government, each additional cost increase would again place
the new submarine in competition with other projects and again
subject it to re-evaluation.
While the nature of the submarine project was being debated
at the top levels of the Defence Department, the submariners were
persistent in maintaining their views on what the project should
look like. Frank Owen saw the specifications that were drawn up
for the new submarine as ambitious and challenging, but the navy
wanted a 1998 solution not a 1978 solution. Looking back, he is
surprised that the requirements that he drew up as a junior officer
in 1980 and 1981 remained the basis for planning the submarines
for the life of the project.
C H A P T E R 4
The new submarine project
In February 1982 the new submarine project gathered momen-
tum when a project office was set up, headed by Captain Graham
White, with the original staff consisting of three experienced sub-
marine officers, Commanders
Ian Noble, Rod Fayle and Tony
Carter. Over the next few years the project office was joined by an
assortment of submariners, engineers, naval architects and others,
some of whom – like Greg Stuart, Mark Gairey, John Batten,
David Elliston and Andy Millar – stayed with the project for many
years. As navy personnel came and went on their short rotations
and the contractors’ staff was almost as fluid, the project office
provided essential continuity for the project. The project office
was the largest repository of knowledge about the project and the
technical staff made an enormous contribution to its success.
Graham White had been a flight deck engineer on HMAS
Melbourne and volunteered for the submarine service when he
saw the carrier successfully attacked by a British submarine while
on exercises in the South China Sea. As with others of his gener-
ation, he trained in the United Kingdom and served on British
submarines and as standby engineer during the construction
of Australia’s fourth Oberon. He returned to Australia for the
30
T H E N E W S U B M A R I N E P R O J E C T
31
management of the Fremantle patrol boat project and the last
two Oberons. In late 1981 he was appointed first project director
for the new submarine project.
White recalls that the first tasks were to look at what Aus-
tralia needed in a new submarine, whether it should be nuclear or
diesel-electric, what was available from overseas, and what lessons
could be learnt from the aircraft carrier project, the navy’s previ-
ous attempt at a major purchase. This had ended with no aircraft
carrier and the loss of the navy’s fixed wing aircraft; the failure of
the new submarine project would have similar consequences for
the submarine squadron.
Rod Fayle was the operational requirements manager for the
project, with the responsibility of ensuring that the submarine
could do the job the navy wanted it to. Known as one of the most
adventurous of the Oberon commanders, Fayle was in charge
of guiding the requirements for the new submarines through the
higher defence committees. Although he was frustrated by civil-
ians ‘who did not know how to spell submarine, let alone what
they could do’, he appreciated that the process brought some
intellectual rigour into the case for submarines.1
The final distillation of the arguments developed by the project
office was released in February 1983 and later summarised
in a minute, ‘Justification of capability for the new con-
struction submarine’.2 This centred the strategic arguments for
submarines on the value of their covert intelligence-gathering
operations in peacetime and their deterrent value requiring a dis-
proportionate response from an enemy in wartime. Maintaining
a submarine threat would remain easier than defending against
one, as there was no sign of technical breakthroughs improv-
ing the detection of submarines. Submarines could also counter
hostile submarines and provide training for anti-submarine
warfare.
The project office argued for a long-range design, primarily
because of Australia’s position surrounded by vast oceans. Further,
it cited wartime experience that submarines were more effective
in offensive forward area operations than for coastal defence, and
that in peacetime better intelligence was gained in forward areas
(meaning for Australia the waters from the Bay of Bengal to Vladi-
vostok). Forward operations required an undetected approach
and remaining on station as long as possible. Long range should
32
T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y
therefore be complemented by great submerged endurance, rapid
battery recharging (to limit the time that a submarine was vulner-
able to detection while running its diesels), deep diving depth and
speed. The length of time a submarine could stay on station was
a function of capacity for stores and spares and the endurance of
the crew: 70 days was regarded as a reasonable maximum patrol
length for the new submarines.
A long range demanded a large submarine of at least 2000
tonnes to allow for a large weapon load, crew comfort, and
fitting the sensors, processors, display consoles and communi-
cations hardware of the proposed combat system. Further, the
desire for towed array and flank array sonars also required a
large submarine.3 Only a towed array sonar could provide suffi-
cient confidence to attack a target with over-the-horizon weapons
like Harpoon missiles. Thus Fayle’s debate with the civilians was
joined over the appropriate size and range of the new submarines.
It was held several times, as many defence civilians were not con-
vinced by the big submarines/long range arguments, particularly
as the costs became apparent.
Alan Wrigley led the opposition to large submarines. An aero-
nautical engineer recruited to apply quantitative analysis and a
critical understanding of policy to decisions on the development of
the defence force, he thought that the navy’s submarine proposal
had ‘got a long way without a rigorous examination’. Wrigley saw
a serious contradiction in the navy’s case. The project was suppos-
edly urgent and not to be delayed by extensive analysis because of
the Oberons’ age, yet, he noted: ‘The navy’s approach was depen-
dent on a solution with a large level of risk for the unique design
and proposed Australian construction program that was almost
guaranteed to cause delays.’4
Government policy was that the armed forces should be devel-
oped primarily for the defence of Australia and to deter or counter
threats that might come through the archipelagos to Australia’s
north. This meant being able to cope with possible conflicts or
instability in Indonesia and the approaches to Australia. Well
travelled through the Indonesian archipelago, Wrigley knew that
the sea floor was often visible in these waters and believed large
submarines would be extremely vulnerable.
Some senior Australian politicians were impressed by Ameri-
can praise of the value of intelligence gathered by the Oberons,
but Wrigley suspected the Americans were encouraged by the
T H E N E W S U B M A R I N E P R O J E C T
33
Australian submariners, to help the Australians extract political
benefits from their long-range intelligence missions. However,
spying for the Americans was not central to defence policy and
Wrigley’s job was to recommend the financing of military equip-
ment in keeping with defence policy. As that policy focused on
Indonesian and south-east Asian waters, Wrigley reasoned that a
submarine more like those operated in the Baltic was appropri-
ate. Bases in Darwin or mother ships could be used to overcome
any problems of inadequate range. He considered tendentious the
navy’s argument that the submarines should be based far to the
south for safety. The re
morselessly increasing cost of the sub-
marine project gave Wrigley plenty of opportunities to press his
arguments.
Although most connected with the project argue that con-
ventional submarines can meet Australia’s needs, almost all
submariners agree that nuclear propulsion is best.5 All early
studies assumed the new submarines would have conventional
diesel-electric propulsion, but in 1982 the project team looked
closely at the arguments for nuclear submarines, talking with
the three Western nuclear submarine makers – the United States,
Britain and France.6 The United States would not sell its nuclear
technology to Australia; the British could not sell nuclear tech-
nology to third parties because of their commitments to the
Americans; but the French were interested. They estimated
that their small nuclear attack submarine, the Rubis, was only
about 1.7 times more expensive than French conventional boats,
although these construction costs did not include the infrastruc-
ture required to support nuclear submarines in Australia.
Graham White recalls that the Rubis was an elegant design
that overcame many of the faults with other nuclear submarines.
The French would happily have sold the Rubis, but the arguments
against buying them were strong. They would have to be built in
France and the Australian navy would always be reliant on the
French to support them; the costs of fuelling and refuelling would
be high; and there would have to be a massive investment in sup-
porting infrastructure, as no country without nuclear power sta-
tions has had nuclear submarines. Consequently, the navy would
have resisted nuclear submarines from fear that the massive cost
would mean less money for surface ships.
Conversations with the French continued until after the March
1983 election, when the Labor Party’s victory made improbable
34
T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y
the purchase of nuclear submarines. Not only was the ALP
strongly anti-nuclear, but it strongly opposed the French nuclear
testing program in the Pacific.
Graham White always appreciated the high quality of the train-
ing he received from the Royal Navy, but found the British logisti-
cal support for the Oberons was expensive and frequently delayed
repairs and maintenance. This led him to consider the possibili-
