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The Forum > Article Comments > Questions about submarines > Comments

Questions about submarines : Comments

By Syd Hickman, published 14/9/2016

Is the plan to dump this sub design in a few years time and go nuclear, or to dump the French completely and get back to the Japanese who by then will have something to sell?

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Hi Tom

All your points have validity.

However UUVs-AUVs as a weapons system for Australia (to use instead of submarines) suffer from:

1. even the US and Russia haven't fully developed AUVs as weapon system. Will Australia be the first using $Billions in taxpayer money?

2(a) being underdeveloped technically eg:

: if comms from Australia via satellite to AUVs are jammed by enemies or be oceanic conditions can AUVs make autonomous decisions in new situations?

: if AUVs are armed how could Australia disprove (say) Chinese accusations that One of our "out of control" AUVs destroyed a Chinese ferry? This is akin to the bad press the US gets when Reaper UAVs blow up "wedding parties" in Pakistan.

2(b) The US is building ever better submarines AND developing UUVs to work from these submarines, not instead of.

3. AUVs have delivery problems. How would Aus deploy one in the middle of the South China Sea DISCRETELY?

4. How could AUVs be ordered (from Australia) and then communicate together to sink a taskforce of 10 Chinese warships quickly?

5. perhaps the central problem (related to point 1.) how could the Federal Government (for VOTES) spend $10s Billions in Adelaide merely developing an untried weapon system? It is important to spend (plausibly) alot on jobs/growth/VOTES before Elections - saving is political suicide.

See some of my research on US and Russian UUVs/AUVs here http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/the-echo-voyager-lduuv-great-for.html

Regards

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 22 September 2016 1:06:29 PM
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Pete:

1. Australia has world class robotics researchers who could develop AUVs. Some of this technology is used by CSIRO for oceanographic research. It is a lot easier to test an AUV than a full-size submarine, doable as an undergraduate university student project. I once visited a UAV factory in an old house in Melbourne, where they built an aircraft which one person could easily pick up (I did), but was capable of flying 3,200 kilometers across the North Atlantic Ocean (it did): http://www.tomw.net.au/travel/ara/

2(a) Australian AUVs would only need to transmit short radio bursts, making jamming difficult. They could communicate to aircraft if satellites are unavailable.

There is the risk of claims of civilian casualties with any weapons system. The same allegations could be made about a submarine: the fact that it had a crew would not make any difference as their denials could be dismissed as propaganda.

2(b) The US is still building submarines, but they can afford to more readily than Australia can. The USA also kept building battleships after they ceased to be a good idea.

3. AUVs could be launched from ships or aircraft.

4. AUVs would need to come up to the surface periodically for instructions. However, submarines have the same limitation.

5. Politically it would be handy for the government to be able to give small research, development and construction grants to universities and companies around the country for AUV work.

Tom W.
Posted by tomw, Thursday, 22 September 2016 2:42:10 PM
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Hi Tom

Along the lines of point 5, the US DoD/Navy is a good example of sponsorship-cordination for universities to develop AUVs.

"The Seahorse Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) was developed by the Applied Research Laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University (ARL/Penn State) beginnning in April 1999 in support of the Naval Oceanographic Office of the United States Navy (NAVOCEANO)." http://www.navaldrones.com/Seahorse.html

I think that when US AUV advocate, Bryan Clark, visited Australia in 2015 he was involved in talking to Australian companies and universties about AUV research and development http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-22/australia-next-submarine-fleet-obsolete-due-to-drone-warfare/6488618 .

Regards

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Friday, 23 September 2016 12:29:18 PM
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Tomw, your point 5 is what started up Silicon Valley.
There was a doco on sbs recently about that.
Posted by Bazz, Friday, 23 September 2016 3:56:04 PM
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Bazz, good point on how Silicon Valley was started by defense R&D funding. There is a bit of that happening in Canberra right now. There is a building with what looks like the mast of a warship of its roof. This is CEA Technologies, who test their phased array radar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEA_Technologies/

The area between the ANU and the Canberra CBD is turning into a Silicon Valley type innovation precinct, or more accurately a Cambridge Triangle: http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2015/04/designing-innovation-course-part-3.html#cbb

Tom W.
Posted by tomw, Sunday, 25 September 2016 1:07:08 PM
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Certainly the public would be interested in Bryan Clark inspired Austonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) research and devlopment, CSIRO funded, at:

Flinders University (at Adelaide, Australia's main submarine research city) http://www.flinders.edu.au/science_engineering/csem/research/programs/auv.cfm "for...and surveillance"

Collaborators:

- Prof. Neil Bose, AMC - National Centre for Maritime Engineering and Hydrodynamics

- Assoc. Prof. Colin Kestell, Mechanical Engineering, The University of Adelaide

- Dr. Stephen Grainger, Mechanical Engineering, The University of Adelaide

- under "research group leader A/Prof Karl Sammut."

This AUV activity seems surprisingly flying under the radar compared to more open US reseach on AUVs.
Posted by plantagenet, Sunday, 25 September 2016 1:53:34 PM
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