By Michael Willis
The first operational outcome of the Pillar 2 AUKUS arrangement between the US, UK and Australia has just been announced.
The three countries will share data from their submarine-hunting PA-8 Poseidon aircraft, manufactured by the troubled Boeing Corporation.
This was announced on May 29 in an “exclusive interview” given to US online website Breaking Defense by Michael Horowitz, whose office serves as the Pentagon’s day-to-day lead on AUKUS issues.
(In a deliciously ironic slip, the website referred to the United Kingdom as the “Untied Kingdom”, true of the political cohesion of both the UK and the US at this time.)
All three AUKUS nations:
“… operate the Boeing-made maritime surveillance aircraft; the US operates 120, Australia 12, and the United Kingdom nine. A key part of the P-8 is its collection of sonobuoys, which are dropped into the water to hunt down submarines. (“Sonobuoys” is the preferred US-spelling of the English language “sonar buoys”.)
According to Horowitz, the Pentagon’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities, a new “trilateral algorithm” will allow them to share information from P-8 sonar buoys between each other.
According to Breaking Defense, the trilateral algorithm requires a high level of trust between the three countries.
“Even among Five Eyes partners,” it says, “sonobuoy information is highly sensitive, as sharing that data not only makes clear what each country has the ability to gather and where those buoys are deployed, but because it clearly reveals what and where each country is tracking.”
Pillar 2 arrangements build on those of Pillar 1 which are solely concerned with Australia’s acquisition of the hugely expensive nuclear-powered submarines.
At a cost averaged out at $A33 million a day over 35 years, we are promised a fleet of 8 submarines with the apparent advantages of extended range and endurance, higher speed, increased payload capacity, and reduced refuelling needs.
But given our own use of sonar buoys and knowing that our own all-but-at-war with “enemy”, China, has the same or superior detection technologies, it is the claim that SSNs (nuclear-powered submarines) have greater stealth and reduced detectability that is the major sales pitch justifying our $368 billion spend.
SSNs are claimed to have reduced noise and to be able to operate at greater depths, thus making them harder to detect.
Reduced noise will affect passive sonar buoys which listen for sounds generated by submarines. These sounds can include engine noise, propeller cavitation, or other mechanical noises.
Greater depth will affect active sonar buoys, those that send out a sound wave which then bounces off the submarine, allowing the buoy to detect the “ping” that travels back to the buoy. That ping is weaker the greater distance it has to travel.
Former Senator and submariner Rex Patrick was critical of the AUKUS decision for Australia to begin its SSN acquisition with the purchase of three second-hand Virginia Class SSNs from the US.
“The first highly noticeable issue with the Virginia class is a problem that has surfaced with the submarine’s acoustic coating that’s designed to reduce the ‘target strength’ of the submarine (how much sound energy from an enemy active sonar bounces off the submarine, back to the enemy),” he said.
“The coating is prone to peeling off at high-speed leaving loose cladding that slaps against the hull, making dangerous noise, and causes turbulent water flow, which also causes dangerous hull resonance (where the hull sings at its resonant frequency, like a tuning fork) and extra propulsion noise. I know a bit about this as a former underwater acoustics specialist.”
Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) is another method of detection. MAD detects disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by the metal hull of a submarine. MAD sensors are typically deployed on aircraft and can detect submarines at relatively close ranges. The signals weaken with distance.
However, the Chinese are developing the ability to detect extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic signal produced by speeding subs.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter found an ultra-sensitive magnetic detector could pick up traces of the most advanced submarine from long distances away.
The researchers calculated that the extremely low frequency (ELF) signal produced by a submarine’s bubbles could be stronger than the sensitivities of advanced magnetic anomaly detectors by three to six orders of magnitude.
The bubbles are an inevitable consequence of the submarine’s cruising speed, which causes the water flowing around the hull to move faster as its kinetic energy increases and its potential energy – expressed as pressure – decreases. When the pressure decreases sufficiently, small bubbles form on the surface of the hull as some of the water vaporises. This process causes turbulence and can produce an electromagnetic signature, in a phenomenon known as the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effect.
Though faint, ELF signals can travel great distances, thanks to their ability to penetrate the water and reach the ionosphere, where they are reflected back to the Earth’s surface.
Detection by ELF turns the advantage of an SSNs higher speed into its opposite, namely the disadvantage of higher detectability.
This ability of science to increase the detection of SSNs led even the pro-US Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) to publish a warning that “the oceans of tomorrow may become ‘transparent’. The submarine era could follow the battleship era and fade into history.”
It titled its article on a study of submarine detection by Australian scientists and academics “Advances in detection technology could render AUKUS submarines useless by 2050.”
According to the authors:
“The results should ring alarm bells for the AUKUS program to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Our assessment suggests that there will only be a brief window of time between the deployment of the first SSN AUKUS boats and the onset of transparent oceans.”
However, it is the expanding frontier of quantum computing that may be the ultimate nail in the AUKUS submarines coffin.
Quantum computing is the sexy new kid on the block – witness the Australian government’s investment of almost a billion dollars in a bid to build the world’s first commercially useful quantum computer in Brisbane. It’s bound to make the shareholders of US company PsiQuantum very happy, including notorious corporate investors such as Black Rock.
In July 2016, the Australia government awarded a contract to local company Q-CTRL to develop a quantum navigation system can use the motions of a single atom to precisely determine the course and position of a submarine and maintain accuracy to a remarkable degree. This overcomes two disadvantages of navigation by GPS: GPS is vulnerable to jamming by an adversary, and its signals cannot penetrate sea water to any appreciable depth.
That’s the good news story.
The bad news is that China has already funded its multi-billion-dollar National Quantum Laboratories to develop quantum-based technology applications for “immediate use to the Chinese armed forces”, possibly including targeting stealthy submarines.
According to Zhu Jin in The Conversation:
“New quantum sensing systems offer more sensitive detection and measurement of the physical environment. Existing stealth systems, including the latest generation of warplanes and ultra-quiet nuclear submarines, may no longer be so hard to spot.”
Using devices that measure and analyse the gravitational pull exercised by the mass of a submarine on the movement of sub-atomic particles in a sensor would overcome the disadvantages of sonar buoys and magnetometers, rendering any otherwise undetectable object with mass detectable.
The other area in which China is more advanced than its competitors is the use of quantum computing for encryption and decryption of communications.
In a 2022 paper on Quantum Computing and Cryptography, the authors that:
“China has set the pace for creating secure quantum communications that cannot be intercepted or manipulated. Further advances in Chinese quantum communication networks, especially networks designed for military use, will put the Navy at increased risk when deployed to the Indo-Pacific. If Chinese communications are virtually unbreakable and U.S. Navy communications can be exploited by Chinese quantum code-breaking technology, it will quickly lose its ability to safely operate among PLAN forces.”
All of this leaves one wondering about just what due diligence was done before Morrison, and the 24-hour copycat decision-maker Albanese, committed us to the folly of paying $A368 billion to purchase a subservient position embedded within the US war machine by means of a soon-to-be fully detectable and therefore likely to be destroyed fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
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Michael Williss is a member of the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) and the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN).
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Very relevant, seemingly accurate, to be stored and revisited and ultimately enlightening to what was “known”, i e., that subs are future targets, vulnerable, on the obsolete list. We can’t even understand the basics, the essentials, the real needs.
“At a cost averaged out at $A33 million a day over 35 years”
We really are becoming as paranoid and untrustworthy of other nations as our puppet masters, the Divided States of Aggression. Are we going to waste more and more money each year in ever increasing amounts on “defence” like them knowing in reality it is mostly for “offense” not defence? The Yanks spend more on military each year than the rest of the nations of the world combined. I just keep looking at that figure of $33 million dollars per day over 35 years and think how much good that could do for many of Australia’s domestic issues and problems rather than waste it on outdated secondhand America machines of aggression just to stay on the ‘friendly’ side of the wannabe world police. We are a good place to dump rubbish they no longer want and rather than fill more of their deserts with thousands more ex-military equipment let’s find some suckers (AKA allies) to make some money back instead.
Stop believing the Seppos are our friends and allies. They are just using and abusing us like they do with anyone who is gullible enough to let them walk all over their country and economy. DO NOT TRUST THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT!
The one thing that I have noticed is that the “5 Eyes” nations have in common is how they are chasing to keep up with technology advances from China.
And as time goes by the advances tend to favour China even more so. I am not convinced of a turn around.
So living in a democratic country where whistleblowing is verboten, and revealing what is really going on is crushed with silence, then I get anxious when what I hear does not tally with my gut feel.
In many respects I would be content to watch delusional pondering s about how wonderful we are because it has a feel good property.
But when our wealth is being stolen in this monstrous way by nations that cough up the likes of Genocide Joe, and the Trump, with the sheer stupidity, and criminal tendencies, while we face housing shortages, compromising education and health.
The 5 eyes seem blind when it comes to climate change which will be of far more concern in the years to come, than obsolete underwater machines.
Unlike the dumb-downed and brainwashed Americans, for whom joining one of the military arms is almost an obligatory rite of passage and enabler of that uniquely American pathological state of ‘Yeh,Merika, don’t f^ck with us or we’ll turn ya into cinders’, or the Chinese, for whom joining up is a source of pride and a function of their wish to fight on behalf of their motherland in the face of the never-ending demonisation of their people & country, Australia seems to be in decline in terms of people wanting to commit themselves to a lifestyle of being subjected to discipline and others barking orders at underlings.
One wonders whether the politicians responsible for this massive fiscal commitment asked themselves whether there’ll be anyone available & willing to spend months at a time stuck in a claustrophobic tube below the ocean’s surface, particularly so given the lead time for these monstrous pieces of technology to actually arrive onshore, as it were.
As always, the elephant in the bathroom, global warming… in 25 or 30 years time? The mind boggles. Doomsday fiction in literature gives us a hint, via writers such as Robert J. Sawyer, or cinema; a few examples – Snowpiercer (2013), Contagion (2011), The Road (2009), Children of Men (2006), or The Day After Tomorrow (2004) – amidst a rich field of climate-related apocalyptic scenarios.
Thank you Michael.
Your conclusion admirably sums up the cluster-fu*k that is the AUKUS boondoggle.
As a dear mate put it recently:
“Ohhhhhhhhh, those dreadful Chinese!
Quick, quick let’s give the Brits and the Yanks a few billion more and have us some peace of mind”.
Others opine that detection is one thing, but to destroy a submarine threat is far more difficult i.e. planes or surface boats have limited reach and does require underwater craft with ability to stay and stalk underwater e.g. a submarine to destroy others; this does not preclude emergent drone sub technologies etc.
Related, not sure why, unlike the multinational support for F35s and defraying costs, AUKUS has only a limited number of nations carrying the can on costs for subs?
Andrew Smith,cynics might say that the F35s are the current iteration of the Ford Edsel, or the Leyland P76,although on the evidence, the latter two are superior,and none of them can fly.The Military Industrial complex continues to produce obscenely expensive duds,whilst farting through silk.
The permanently ephemeral submarines are just the latest example of dickhead politicians pissing away the wealth of its citizens.Business as usual.
@Andrew Smith
Thanks Andrew.
I’m told by those who apparently know about such matters that owing to mil/tech as yet undisclosed, it’s becoming easier to identify and stalk an underwater opponent – whether by sub, drone or other means. Add to this the emerging field of seawater use of high-power and other lasers, I would not want to be a submariner in the years ahead; and neither I’m guessing would many of our better informed young folk.
The USUKA sub debacle is another example of how unthinking, untalented and unpatriotic the nine (9) years of the last RAbbott Turdball Scummo COALition misgovernment was for Australian voters. Maladministration by design or ignorance, it certainly set the best interests of Australian voters well behind economically.
Thanks for the $33 million a day for 35 years figure. For some time I’ve been trying to figure out for myself what Australia’s tribute as a vassal state to the USA is.
It’s a shame that Australia can’t spend all that much needed money on worthier things, but I guess we are obliged to assume that successive governments all agree that it is a cheaper alternative to regime change if Australia does not abide by the USA’s demands.
“The strong do what they will, while the weak suffer what they must”
When it comes to submarines I think the military have noticed as have we all that international warfare and surveillance has already shifted to drones (both airborne and maritime) and the era of cramming a couple of hundred service personnel into a metal tube and sending them of into the deep ocean is a thing of the past: it’s inefficient, expensive and dangerous.
Morrison committed us to AUKUS and now we have to get out of it but, it seems, only after phase one has been completed – that is the delivery of the three or four Virginia Class subs that we are already committed to.
For ACOSS
Dear Cassandra Goldie,
You have to publicly acknowledge 2 illegal debt schemes administered by Services Australia.
Scheme #1. Fake Review scheme. Instead of a formal review decision, Services Australia sent me an objection decision by an anonymous “delegate or authorised officer”. This is illegal. I provided your office with plenty of documents from different public officials supporting this scheme.
Scheme #2. Family Assistance Office automatically issue debt notices for a whole Rent Assistance, if a parent was ineligible for FTB. This is illegal. Instead of a debt for around 15% of Rent assistance (dependent on FTB), FAO demands the rest 85% of Rent Assistance as well.
ACOSS refused to answer simple questions regarding legality of the schemes or debt notices I received.
Cassandra Goldie, you have to explain inaction of your office regarding the illegal debt schemes.