Discussing sustainment

Australian companies can help the US to help Australia on its path to nuclear submarines by achieving qualification for the US shipbuilding supply chain, says the head of supply strategy for shipbuilder ASC.

Marius Pretorius, General Manager of supply strategy and oversight for ASC, told the ADM Sustainment Summit in Canberra it was public knowledge that the US build program for Virginia-class nuclear submarines (SSNs) was constrained and behind schedule.

The US was producing around 1.3 Virginias per year and needed to ramp up the rate of production to 2.3 submarines per year.

“That is a hugely complex endeavour, and the US understands they can’t do that by themselves. Therefore, we have partnered with them to find local suppliers,” he said.

The partnership has been struck as part of the AUKUS arrangement.

“Why is that important? If we support them to uplift their capability and capacity to produce Virginia class submarines fasters, it means we assure our own future in terms of acquiring our own Virginia-class submarines in 2033 onwards," Pretorius said.

“We are actually helping the US to help ourselves.”

Under the Optimal Pathway plan, starting in the early 2030s, the US will sell us three Virginia-class SSNs with potential for sale of two more if needed.

That’s subject to Congressional approval. If US industry can’t ramp up production to meet requirements of the US Navy, submarines for Australia may not be forthcoming.

Already, the first Australian company has been officially qualified to supply parts for Virginia-class submarines through the Government-funded Defence Industry Vendor Qualification Program (DIVQ).

Specialist engineering company HIFraser is now qualified to supply a family of components and pipe fittings to the US Virginia Class Submarine program. That required productions of parts for qualification by the In-Country Qualification team, consisting of people from Electric Boat and HII NNS, and ASC, a process that can take 6-18 months in order to ensure suppliers meet the rigorous standards required for a nuclear submarine program.

Pretorius said ASC was building up a supply chain in Australia to support the US and while the DIVQ Program is relatively new, it is picking up momentum and more suppliers will be qualified in early 2026.

In November, ASC signed a MOU with shipbuilder Austal which has established an advanced manufacturing centre outside Washington. ASC is keen to leverage Austal's learnings and capability in Australia.

“Additive manufacturing is something that we are really interested in and exploring. You can imagine a world where you can print on demand components for submarines maintenance,” he said.

“That is happening today in the US. There is a pilot going on to do that. The US are already printing a number of components that go on Virgina submarines.

“We want to really accelerate advanced manufacturing in general but particularly additive manufacturing into the supply chain.”

Dr John Coyne, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) director of National Security Programs, said Australia was in a period of great strategic uncertainty and the government and Defence were all struggling to come up with how to deal with that.

He said everyone from Beijing to Washington saw the importance of northern Australia but there were already votes of no confidence in Australia’s capacity to get this sustainment and logistics right.

“The very fact that the US DOD has gone to the efforts of building its own strategic fuel reserve in Darwin is an indicator of the challenges they have with trusting that we will get that right,” he said.

“We have to accept that there are some very significant supply chain and logistical challenges that present as strategic Achilles heel for Australia. There are multiple single points of failure in Northern Australia.”

Coyne told the Summit some 2-3 weeks of every year, road and rail links from Adelaide to Darwin were cut in multiple locations.

He said the major air power Exercise Pitch Black was conducted every two years, planned well in advance and routinely concluded early on ground that all operational objectives had been achieved.

“Simply put there is not enough fuel in Darwin. There are not enough fuel trucks to move the fuel that is in Darwin from Darwin to Tindal. There is not enough storage in Tindal,” he said.

“We need a more lasting solution to those fuel and energy fragility issues.”

That’s not all. Defence and its supply chain face significant cyber challenges, with Defence conducting major updates across its data systems.

Stuart Althaus, chief executive officer of Infogate Advisory, said five years ago we didn’t even think about that sort of stuff but these days everybody was talking about cyber.

He said the automated supply chain had brought incredible efficiency for logistics but also a whole bunch of risks and supply chain attacks were happening almost every day.

“Integration of IOT sensors, cloud services and automated logistics basically increases the attack surface and that’s what the actors are looking for. We now have a gazillion points where actors can access the systems,” he said.

One particular issue is the shortage of personnel with critical cyber security skills.

“People can go and get a Cert-3 in cyber security and all of a sudden they are experts, people with minimal experience and little exposure to real world problems,” he said.

Another is vulnerability of outside companies large and small with access to defence systems.

“It is a problem that has not gone away. That third party risk management is absolutely essential. Rigorous assessment of all vendors, regardless of size is key,” he said.

Edited 12/12, 1359: The article previously stated that "That’s specialist engineering company HIFraser which is now qualified to supply three valve types and pipe fittings to US submarine programs" and has been changed to "Specialist engineering company HIFraser is now qualified to supply a family of components and pipe fittings to the US Virginia Class Submarine program."