Phiip S.

Missiles are not much good for surveillence of hostile coastlines.

Submarines are essential for an island surrounded by water. A larger surface fleet than we will ever have, intent on landing on Australian soil would wipe out our fleet very quickly. Submarines relying on stealth are a different proposition. In one naval exercise with America, a Collins Class snuck into a harbour a 'sunk' an American warship. Nobody had a clue that they were there.

I think this inability to crew submarines is much exaggerated by the media.

The best missile platform is one you can move at will yet have remain virtually invisible and undetectable! And that is a nuclear sub able to sit on the bottom for months at a time!

Even then, with a full flight of mini subs on board also powered by a few grams of thorium?

Able to undertake a distant mission virtually anywhere as flights or single submarines. And given their size, construction and motive power able to fall in undetected behind the largest aircraft or troop carrier or hostile submarine, to launch underwater capable missiles powerful enough to destroy almost any target long before they knew they're under attack!

And seriously limit the lives put in harms way for this form of target acquisition,

We invented a steam venturi (underwater jet) driven stronger than steel deep diving acrylic mini sub that literally flies through the water, and only needing something like a laser activated miniature thorium reactor, to add unimaginable range to the sheer torpedo outrunning speed of these machines; that are both fast enough and maneuverable enough to bring any torpedo smart enough to track them right back to the very hostile that launched them!

And where crystal clear acrylics would allow the operators to eyeball the target acquired. Or essential range locator landmarks, if a military inland installation was the mission?

If rogue nation picked a fight? We could, under the foregoing scenario, respond from hundreds of synchronized locations simultaneously, leaving a dozen silent mothers to fire their full complement of cruise missiles at predetermined targets; (nuclear silos, communication centres, power plants etc) leaving a rogue nation reeling and all but beaten, well before they knew who was attacking them, or from where!

By all means develop missile technology, just make sure they can be launched from a submersible platforms still active even where the country were temporarily overrun!

If we built submarines that were the safest place to fight a war from and put far fewer lives in harms way while fighting it, we'd have far less trouble getting enough recruits to man them?
Alan B.

Pete, both you and I know only too well that Australia into the 21st century without a US Big Brother is not going to happen. Sure the Gillard government may have "signed off" on an agreement with Obama's administration to build a fleet base in Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, one rivalling the closed down facility at Subic Bay and already completed some of the civil works in readiness for the 25,000 - 35,000 Marines to be stationed across the harbour at Mandorah (adjacent to the Belyuen Community).

But what of the current sabre rattling by China ? Do you think Australia would really be able to sustain any sort of "defence of Australian assets" if the PLA and its navy decided to get serious ?

As I've posted previously, the RAN cannot train and man enough personnel to send out adequate patrols in the Collins class boats (noisy bloody things anyway), so how in hell would they man the proposed 12 boats - yet to be built ?

The current weapons systems maintenance and repair are an altogether entirely different farce of Monty Python proportions.

See:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOw

ttbn...BTW in 1986 during the Kangaroo Exercises off the Qld coast, an Army LCM8 crew "officially sank" the USS John F Kennedy, having closed up on it from 8 miles in broad daylight. No one on board this huge aircraft carrier knew we were there either...a 74' lump of steel FFS !

Just for giggles we stuck a lump of rolled up Denso tape with a little Aussie flag in it onto the hull to verify our visit. So if I told you that the media isn't actually beating up the fact our boats don't have enough crew to man patrols and that the torpedo maintenance issues with DMO (since 2014 they have been 'outsourced')...all of which meaning that our submarine deterrence value is pretty well stuffed at present, do you think that would be a fair comment ?

Like so many posts here, I have to suppress my guffaws when I read "facts" (or are they as this forum suggests, just "opinions" ) about the ADF, terminologies etc. MSM, Google and Wikipedia are such a gold mine for disinformation they should be given an 'Order of Heroic Exemplar' from Xi Jinping himself.

Alan B...what about a fleet of underwater drone submarines, small, armed with something like a torpedo or missile system (or both) sitting in a network of locations on the sea bed around our coastline...let's call it a "Smart Mine - with a twist " that responds to an acoustic signature or by command ? Cheap comparatively, to a capital vessel like the proposed submarines...and very difficult to detect once placed in position.

TTBN let me assure the lack of sub crew is no fallacy. Half the problem is that the navy has so few stokers, [engineering ratings who run the machinery], that you would let loose to service your diesel land cruiser, that they just can't run the stuff they have.

My son was harassed for over a year to try to get him to transfer to subs. The pay rate is huge, but the fact they are based in Perth makes them most unattractive to most sailors, & a definite no no to most of their wives. Could this ridiculous basing of the subs be as political as the building of them in Adelaide?

He was one of the last stokers who could run the Amphibians Manoora & Kanimbla. These ships were scrapped not because they were past their use by date, but because all but one of the last few stokers capable of running them have resigned from the navy. One said "if they want the engine rooms full of girls, go for it, but I won't be there to do their job".

When Kanimbla tried to ram Sydney heads it was because no crew knew how to run the ship. They shut down the engines, & all abandoned the engine rooms because of a small exhaust lagging fire. This was a normal result of running the engines at low power output for extended periods, & totally manageable if the ship was handled properly.

The standard of crewing of the subs is even worse. I doubt any new subs, based in the west will be any more successful than this lot.

While we have the stupid attempt to make the defence force a jobs for the girls employer, things will not improve. The type of bloke who joins the services is not the "sensitive new age guy" type. While we have SNAGs in defence leadership, the rot will continue. The subs will rarely get passed Broom, before being towed home.

Defeat is glorious. Admiralty dudded the Gallipoli navigation and woke up the Turks with broadsides. The Sydney battleship sat 1 mile off the German Kormoran until they sank. Singapore's guns faced somewhere and they lost 2 battleships at the cost of a month's wardroom gin in Jap bombs . The navy stands ready to defend our ports for 2 1/2 weeks except the Chinese Colonial Stores Depot of Darwin .