From Submarine AE1 (1913) to AUKUS (now!)

Australia, an island nation, is partnering with the USA and the UK to buy the nuclear powered submarines –AUKUS. Former submariner, Garry Coombe takes us back to the 1913 AE1 and AE2 submarines through to the present. Along the way there are insights into what it takes to be a submariner.

the motto of Submarine Services worldwide we come unseen and because of the nature of their work little is common knowledge of their operations of their service and of the people that man them unfortunately submarines are only in the news when something untoward happens and then everyone who’s never been on one is an instant expert many years ago I was training on a newspaper and an old fellow said to me do you want to be a reporter or a journalist and I said what’s the difference he said a reporter reports facts a journalist tells stories and uh I would remind you that if you don’t get the news you’re uninformed if you do get the news you’re really informed the Australian submarine service has been around for quite some time I’m sure a lot of you are aware that we have submarines down at Garden Island here they started from the Inception of the Australian Navy in 1911 among the inventory of Australian ships in the First Fleet if you’d like to call it that were two submarines called ae1 and ae2 Australian E-class submarines ae1 disappeared on the 14th of September 1914 off rebal the submarines had been sent to uh north of New Guinea to report on German interest in the area on the 30th of April 1915 ae2 was sunk in the sea of mura in Turkey she had been attacked by a Turkish gunboat called the Sultan hazah and the captain a fellow named Henry Dak stoker ordered that the submarine be abandoned and the crew were ined as prisoners of war the submarine is still there to this day on the bottom of the ocean in uh 2017 the wreck of ae1 was found off reel its Position will never be revealed because they don’t want people to go and pull bits off it and disturb the grave I’m going to tell you a little interesting story about ae1 and me the captain of ae1 was a a British officer by the name of Thomas bent he uh transferred to the Australian Navy upon the Inception of the Navy and came to Australia with ae1 and he lived in a uh suburb he lived in Suburban Sydney for a few years in uh 1971 I went to the UK for my initial submarine training and when I returned about a year later my wife and I settled into a house in a Sydney suburb called Cen uh Cen is a very old suburb houses built in the 1880s to 1890s and we lived in a lovely old house there for several years some years later I was doing some research on A1 and to my absolute amazement I found I’d been living in Tommy B’s house for two years so I have a connection after World War I Australia was again without submarines and purchased six jclass submarines from the British the jclass submarines were in very poor mechanical condition and spent most of their time birthed at jalong where they served as uh training vessels for engineering apprentices the j class served until 1922 when they were all decommissioned and several were used as Waters at various yacht clubs around Port Philip Bay and can still be seen there to this day Australia then went on to buy two o class submarines from the British these were the at that time the best the latest submarines very very efficient but by 1930 with the Great Depression ripping into Australia they found they couldn’t afford to keep the Navy that we had something had to go so the two oass submarines oy and nway were returned to the United Kingdom Oxley in 1941 was unfortunately sunk by another British submarine during the war however submarines remained in Australia the US Navy used sub used freem manle as their submarine base for their Southwest Pacific operations it’s a little known fact that during World War III freemantle was the second largest allly submarine base in the world between 1942 and 1945 there were 122 American 31 British and nine Dutch submarines based in freem manle they accounted for 340,000 tons of shipping during the war the American submarine Fleet sank more Japanese shipping in actual fact they sank 16 times the amount of shipping by all other methods combined are very devastating very uh powerful vessels of course at the end of the war they went everything was taken everything left but the British remained the British had a submarine tender called HMS adamant it was birthed in freem manle there was another submarine tender called the Maidstone that was birthed at Alexandria in Egypt but the British decided let’s use our submarine tenders to travel out to sea and service the submarines where they’re operating unfortunately mstone was torpedoed and sunk they not only lost a submarine tender they lost over 300 qualified submarine engineers and electrical Personnel they lost hundreds of spare Torpedoes they lost all the stock they had in the Mediterranean of periscopes this was a devastating setback the Americans birthed their submarine t ERS at a port and had the submarines come into them so the British started to do that the submarines would be running out of trinki and salon now Sri Lanka they would Patrol along the Malay barrier and then come down to freemantle where they’d birth alongside after the war when all the submarines left soed two big passenger ships full of War Brides the British remained they kept several submarines in Australia known as the fourth submarine flotilla and the four submarine flotilla served in Australian Waters from 1949 until 1969 there were four of the old t-class submarines tabard Trump taciturn and tiptoe the Australian Navy in the early 60s was looking to reestablish their submarine service and had Australian submarine had Australian sailers serve on British submarines running out of Sydney in 1967 Minister responsible by the name of John Gorton some of you may have heard of him he authorized the purchase of four submarines for the Navy the first four submarines we bought the Oberon class submarines cost $6 million which included spare parts in 1970s we bought two more that cost us $30 million in the 1990s we built six columns class submarines that cost us $5.8 billion so the price goes up I’ve always said submarines are like cars the first motorc car had four wheels and an engine and the car of today has four wheels and an engine the only thing that’s different is the shape and what goes in them the Oberon class submarines were very successful in fact they were without doubt the most effective conventional submarine in the world the Australians upgraded the submarines in the late ’70s they were fitted with new sonars what a lot of people don’t realize is submarines are passive they’re not active that is they do not transmit or ping on their sonar they listen you ever see a movie with the submarines pinging away on its soar even if John Wayne’s in it it’s a load of rubbish they don’t do it they listen and to do that we had an extremely sis iated sonar Suite on board sewn into the tanks and either side were a number of transducers looking out around the submarine for Broadband noise the noise of the ship moving through the water once you detected that noise you needed to identify the ship by classifying the narrow band noise that is the frequency of individual Machinery with inside the hull the propeller shafts turning the number of blades on the screws and so on and to do that we used a sonar called the CSU which was in the dome up on top of the bow of the submarine a submarine sonor operator could tell you everything you know needed to know about a ship other than the captain’s name within about 30 seconds they were very very good we had another main sonar we had three panels on either side was called the micr Puffs that looked at each side in three loobs and as a ship come with in the sphere of influence of those loes because it approached each one at a different rate it would use a Doppler method to calcul range we had more sonars on the top of the submarine and in the fin the large structure in the center of the submarine is called the fin by the way it is not the conning Tower the conning Tower is actually a hatch to ledge from inside the submarine up into the fin and no sonar I did you not are that sensitive if you get close enough to a ship we could hear people talking on board in the uh late 1980s it was decided that the submarines the over on class submarines would needed replacing and so the hunt was on to get a replacement submarine and we settled for the Collins class A type 471 design Swedish design the reason this design was selected is simply because no one else had one the Australian Navy is the only Navy in the world that operates the Collins class submarines and despite what the journalists tell you they are again amongst the most effective conventional submarines in the world they are incredible people don’t understand the range of a submarine they’re diesel electric you have diesel generators power the generated is stored in two batteries and the batteries provide for all your electrical needs on board each submarine has two batteries each battery is 224 lead acid cells and each cell weighs over half a ton we 230 tons of battery on board a conventional submarine as you probably know that is the same weight as an A380 Airbus jumbo jet when that batter is fully charged we have enough electrical capacity to provide for the needs of the average Suburban home for about 2 years running a Main Motors flight out we got a matter of hours the 3,000 horsepower motors just chew the juice out of the box so we cons serve power submarines carry 380 ,000 L of dieseline and it gives us a range in excess of 20,000 km halfway around the world I took one of these to San Diego and back on a single tank do that with your electric car the sphere of operation of Australian submarines is vast from the Antarctic to the Arctic from Africa to the Far Eastern Pacific our operational main operational area is around the South China Sea the Bay of benal and up in the Gulf of om man submarines are data collectors intelligence gatherers they’re not out overnight they’re on patrol for about 3 months at a time they’re listening they’re listening to radio and radar they’re listening to ships going in and out of ports they’re listening to all the air traffic control and missile Radars and they build up a very very good intelligence picture of the world and they’re in great demand to do so uh people don’t realize this but the submarines are basically I I hesitate to use the word hide out but um they are deployed uh in the service of other countries at their request to do intelligence gathering missions we have to have a long range to get around so the Navy decided we now need a new submarine and in July 2007 planning for the next generation of Australian submarines began December that year project c1000 was announced the defense department uh when they put out a project it will be prefix C air or land it doesn’t matter what service it is air is for aircraft if the Navy want helicopters it’s an air contract if the Army want water boats it’s a sea contract if the Navy wants Motorcars it’s a land contract simple as that in 2008 c1000 was established within the department of material or the defense material organization these are the people who start ordering the spare parts bits and pieces and so on in 2015 a selection process was announced put out a u what’s called an rft request for tender and we would select expressions of interest from various countries they could tell us yes we can build this submarine we can do this and that and the other the options given to the government by a military off the shelf design a Ms we’ve done that we did that with the oons it’s a military upth shelf design there were 27 oons built 13 for the UK six for Australia three for Canada two for Brazil and two for chile the one sitting on the slipway down at freemantle is the only submarine in the world where you’re going to get a personalized guided tour the second choice was to develop a modified MZ design to better suit Australian conditions this is a bit difficult to do you can’t just say Okay this looks good to us but we want to be three times as big it doesn’t work that way they could design an evolution of the Collins class which was a viable option or design an entirely new class of submarine and they hit upon the last option design an entirely new class of Submarine so they called for expressions of Interest a number of countries um submitted designs the Japanese with the soru class the Germans with the type 214 the French with what they call the short fin Barracuda and the Swedish with the blacking now the blacking was rejected straight away because the only other submarine the swedes had designed in the last 30 years was the Collins class the German type 214 was rejected as being too small far too small as you can see here it’s U it’s only 1,800 tons the soru class the Japanese version was very much in favor but the Japanese have great restrictions upon what they can manufacture and sell in the way of Defense equipment this is a hold over from World War II believe it or not they have to get permission from America to sell us anything of theirs so the short fin Barracuda the French design was the one that was selected there were a few problems with the short fin Barracuda however it was a nuclear class submarine nuclear design called a suen that the French were currently building there are three major builds with submarines going on around the world at the moment the Western world that is the French are building the sren class and from cutting the steel to putting the submarine into service is taking 15 years the British are building a class of Submarine called an astute and again from cutting the steel to putting the submarine in service is taking around 10 years but the reason for that is that the British have a deliberately slow build program so that they can retain the skill in the shipyards the third class is the American Virginia the 774 class submarine they’re being built at two locations Huntington Engles Industries at Newport News in Virginia an electric boat at rot in Connecticut and their build time is 44 months because they’re building the bow in Groton and the stern in Newport News and then they marry it up very effective with the Barracuda type again the French said just take out the reactor and put in a diesel so we were looking at that that was given quite a bit of consideration despite the fact that the defense department said no we don’t really want the French design for a number of reasons the French wanted it built in France we wanted it built here the French wanted us to use their electronic systems we have our own electronic systems the French wanted us to use their weapons we have our own weapons the submarines of today in the Western World well the three of the Western World Canada the United States in Australia utilize a torpedo called a Mark 48 Modine Seabass and they’re built down at Garden Island here we export them to the US and Canada people don’t know that we don’t want to use the America the um French Su 90s so while they were good heavyweight torpedo they were not what we wanted they also wanted us to use their reaet missiles we currently use Harpoon missiles and the new submarines were also launched at tomahawks we didn’t want that so an impass developed and in uh 2015 the Abbott government decided we’ve had enough of this let’s look elsewhere we are now going to look at nuclear submarines and an agreement was hit in uh 2021 forming orcus Australia UK US Alliance orcus has two pillars pillar one nuclear powered submarines pillar two is technology the US and UK will share nuclear propulsion technology with Australia for the construction of nuclear powered submarines in Australia the Royal Australian Navy will acquire at least eight nuclear powered submarines armed with Conventional Weapons are stress conventional we do not we are not a nuclear power we don’t have nuclear weapons the technology pillar was aimed at improving joint capabilities and interoperability focusing as you see on Cyber capabilities artificial intelligence artificial intelligence is something the submarines have been using for a long long time number of quantum Technologies our undersea capabilities are uh less well known less well defined U and a couple of countries Japan South Korea India Canada and New Zealand applied to become part of pillar two of the orcus agreement the only country that looks like getting the nod will be Japan I don’t know if you’re aware of this but the Americans and the new zealanders don’t talk to each other they have a very big uh Rift between their defense departments they do not Share technology at all the only countries in the world that operate nuclear submarines are the five permanent members of the UN um defense committee the US has 70 Russia has 45 perhaps China has 14 perhaps United Kingdom have 11 and France have 10 the only non um member of the alliance that has nuclear submarines is India with two they have two uh locally built nuclear submarines called arahants the Indians were very smart they uh went to Russia and said we wanted nuclear submarines so the Russians Le leased them an old submarine called a um compo which was a u NATO code name was a Charlie class they were very noisy very clunking machines but the Indians didn’t want it for that they wanted to get the nuclear technology and they basically reverse engineered their own reactors and are now building their own submarines as I say the um the countries that have nuclear powered submarines are limited basically to the um the main uh Security Council of the United Nations plus India now when I say Russia has 45 nuclear submarines they probably have about 20 that are seaworthy two years ago they had a submarine called the B which means bear was in the shipyard undergoing an overhaul and was repossessed by the local city because the shipyard hadn’t paid their power bill this happens constantly in the in the USS or in in Russia I should say with China operating 14 nuclear submarines a lot of them are um very old they’ve been reverse engineered that is they’ve got Russian submarines from the ‘ 50s and 60s and built them to their specifications not to say that they’re not um worthwhile opponents they probably are but people like to pump themselves up and having said that one of the controversies surrounding the purchase of nuclear submarines is the absolute lack of knowledge that people have about nuclear power this is the diagram of a uh nuclear reactor what’s called a pwr pressurized water reactor for uh the US Navy it Powers their aircraft carriers it Powers their submarines between those two solid black lines to the left of the picture you’ll see the reactor the control rod motors the pressurizer and the steam generator that is the nuclear reactor all the nuclear reactor is is a heat source to boil the water for the kettle as you can see there’s an enclosed water cycle within that reactor the pumps run it through the reactor where the isoto will heat the water the pressurizer will put an absolute pressure around about 380 bar 4,000 PSI onto that water to make the heat hotter if you can understand that that hot water will then pass up through the steam generator on the other side you’ll see the motor condenser there’s a pump sucking water in from the ocean that will then be uh distributed around through into the steam generator where that super hot water from the reactor will convert that water into steam that steam will then go down to the main turbine through the reduction gear in the clutch the propulsion motor and the thrust block to drive the propulsor submarines don’t have propellers they have a pump jet propulsor a rotor and a stator and a shroud like a jet ski second secondary is the turbo generator that steam or that hot water will come off there the or the hot steam will come off there into the turbo generator and that’ll run to provide Power submarines have two Electrical Power Systems and uh one is called Hotel power the other is called military power military power is the power needed to uh provide for your sonar your weapon systems your navigation equipment Communications gear basically stuff you can’t buy at hary Norman the hotel power is used for such things as your Galley to cook your meals your um air conditioning units your fridges your freezers stuff you can buy hary normal so they’re the two power supplies that are going to come off through there through the motor generators there’s also a battery the batter is not overly large but is an emergency power supply if something happens they can do what’s called a scram shut the reactor go onto the battery get the submarine up simple as that the whole context of orcus is that the only part that will not be built in Australia is the reactor itself the nuclear reactors will be built by Rolls-Royce out of the UK they will come out here as an absolute sealed unit and it’s literally a plug and play build the submarine put in the reactor plug into the power supplies and the way you go that’s all there is to it it’s very simple it’s very cost effective and is very very very powerful when uh Australia announced the orcus project we’re going to get nuclear submarines up pop the French again woohoo here’s our sing class that we offered you before nuclear powered submarine why don’t you take our submarine and the Australian Navy said no and there’s a reason for that the French submarines use a different propulsion to what we would consider to be a standardized nuclear reactor uranium when you dig it out of the ground has three Isotopes U 234 u235 and u238 99% of the uranium or is u238 7% is u235 u235 is What’s called the active component that is the component that causes the radioactivity that causes the heat that makes everything work uranium is enriched that is you strip away the 238 and the 234 to leave the 235 now as you can imagine that is a reasonably complex and expensive procedure we do not have that facility in Australia to do it that’s why the reactors will be built overseas the other component is this the French submarines used lru low Richmond uranium that is it’s enriched to only about 5 to 7% which means the submarine has to refuel every 7 to 10 years the British and the American reactors use high yield uranium that is enriched to 93% which means over the 35 plus years life of that submarine it will never have to be refueled it’s a bit of an no-brainer really isn’t it so it comes down to what are we going to get the Americans are currently building the Virginia class as you can see 115 M 7900 tons I’ve been on these things and they’re they’re incredible they’re incredible we actually refer to American submarine a Sherwood Forest because it’s all wood paneling throughout and the overheads are green it’s like you’re walking through the woods here we are Sherwood Forest as you see with the astute class very similar 7,800 tons 97 M however you can see the asut is a lot bulkier than the U Virginia the difference being the Americans look for the comfort of the crew they will work out how much crew we’re going to need build their accommodation space and then we’ll build the vessel around it the British will build the vessel and stuff the crew into every spare space they can get and that’s why American ships are a lot bigger than the the British ships because they’re looking at crew Comfort similarly the um ashes well both submarines will carry 38 weapons total they have six tubes in the bow the Virginia only have four tubes in the bow but they have what’s called a vpm a Virginia payload module which is vertical launch tubes and the American submarines they can fire every missile they have in their inventory out of these launchers Tomahawk Harpoon subro azrock you name it they can fire it out of their submarines we would only look to have things like Tomahawk and Harpoon which we currently can fire out of our torpedo tubes but with a vertical launch it leaves the tubes just for Torpedoes the Torpedoes are 533 mm 21 in um as I’ve said to a couple of you this afternoon anything below 21 in is Small Arms the Americans run the virginas they have currently 28 of them in service they’ve been in service since 2004 phenomenal submarine very capable submarine indeed they uh they had a build rate of what they called a 121 that is we’ll build one this year to next next year one the year after the uh Biden Administration has told the Navy to up it to 232 program so they’ll have two this year three next year two the following year and so on until they get the number that they want they don’t know how many they want just at the moment but they’ll keep building them the other thing the Americans have done is build them in what they call blocks they’re currently up to block five that is what um most people would call um a software stop point so all the block one boats have the same uh capability if you like the block twos are a little bit more capable block 3 is a little bit more and so on but as a submarine goes in for an overhaul it will be upgraded so the current block one submarines have been upgraded to block fives so in 10 years time they’ll all be up around block nine they’re a very very potent weapon as you see from the Cutaway spherical sonar in the bow torpedo tube set back from the bow on a slight angle out to the sides the vpm behind the forward intense bulkhead where they’ve got the uh vertical launchers you’ll see that the reactor is only a small compartment but the turbines take up nearly a third of the size of the submarine they have uh crew accommodation officers accommodation All American Naval vessels have a Fast Food Outlet on board believe it or not I served on an American submaranian 1983 84 and we had a McDonald’s on Board now it’s not what you think um yes you can go there and you can buy a Big Mac you can go to the cafeteria and have a a free Navy Mill but you can go to McDonald and buy a Big Mac but the money that you pay from that Big Mac goes into a fund for the widows and Orphans of Naval Personnel worthwhile project they make hundreds of millions of dollars a year out of it they’re very capable submarine someone spoke to me about raising a periscope um periscopes you just put up every now and then you don’t really need them modern submarines have what’s called optronics it’s a nonhle penetr in Mas just poke out of the water rotate a camera take a video pull it back down you can play it on multiple screens you can stop the picture you can break it up you can zoom in on it I’m sure you all watch CSI or something like that on TV and they can do all these wonderful things with computers and electronics not in reality it takes a fair bit to do it but they can do it on the on the submarines as I say they’re built at um Huntington Engles in um in Newport News the Americans have told us they will not build submarines for us for one very good reason as I say they have two yards hunting to Engles here at Newport News is currently building the virginas but they also build the American aircraft carriers there so that takes up a lot of their time there’s currently two under construction there at the moment the um second yard is electric boat at Rotton in Connecticut they’re not only building the Virginia they’re also building the Columbia class new ballistic missile submarine for the US Navy so their yards are full they will not slow down their production of submarines to accommodate us and we have to accept that the British submarine is the aute class I’ve been on a couple of these submarines I’ve been on one that I consider has the best name a submarine has ever been given that is HMS Bodacious I me what a name what a name to give to a submarine you know the British have this um pent for anaco tiling they put these rubber tiles on their submarines to reduce the impact of active sonars on a ship as I say a ship transmits Ping On The sonar it’ll strike an object reverberate back to the ship they know the speed of sound through water 1100 ft per second per second and they can calculate a range but if they transmit and it strikes an object the submarine and starts to head back to the ship but it doesn’t have the power to get back and that ship transmits again before that pulse returns they don’t have contact but the submarine has picked it up it has heard the Ping and that’s what we do we’re going to sit out of the range let them ping away we can listen to them very good with the anaco tiles it absorbs some of the pulse so when the pulse hits let’s say it hits at about 70% power and it’ll come back at 65% power it’s now going to come back at about 35% power so it reduces the range again the Cutaway of the the asut carries the tomahawks and the Spearfish Torpedoes which are the British equivalent to our 48s the Brits like to give you analogies in here um it’s equivalent to 65 blue Wales longer than 10 double decker buses you all this sort of thing but they’ve got a comment here that says the crew will eat 16,000 sausages and 12200 weeder for breakfast on a 10-e patrol I can assure you submarine saers do not eat weat bics there’s no milk on a submarine on the submarines we have a saying if you want milk it’s in the cow tied to the banana tree in the tube space you ain’t going to get it simple as that the steel hull here as it says it’s 7 in thick in places and it is the submarine’s pressure Hull on the old oons was 27 1.2 mm thick except for the engine room where it was 100 mm thick because it acted as a giant heat of noise sink and the same with these modern submarines that will increase the thickness of the hull around noisy Machinery to act as a a noise sink they you get an idea of the size of that submarine you can see that line under the top of the casing that’s about the water line so they’re like an iceberg most of it is below the water when it’s on the surface which is very rare they’re built at um barow in Furness in Cumbria and if anyone’s ever been there it’s a very unattractive place all their British nuclear submarines are based at HMS Neptune at fazlan in Scotland I can tell you I’ve been to Scotland I have been to the North Pole Scotland is colder you got to admire the jocks they all wear kilts and the thistles are this High having been told that the Brit won’t build the boat either because the yard at Barrow is not only building the asut they also building the new British dreadnut class ballistic submarines so the submarines will be built in Australia they will be built to what’s called an orcus Design This is basically as they say in the trade an artist’s impression of what it should look like teardrop Hull single screw um you’ll see the planes in the stern are on an angle rather than vertical they’re called a cruciform and it enables you to drive the Submarine by using a joystick they’re very very easy to drive they should be built in Osburn in South Australia they have been moves by civmec to have them built here at Henderson and by another company called for Jacks to build them in Newcastle given and DRS my personal choice is they should build them at all three yards why put all your eggs in one basket build them in three different yards this is the Osborne Naval Shipyard used to be known as ASC the Australian submarine Corporation you’ll see above the blue crane to the left of the blue crane there’s a small Pier leading up into a small shed that’s where the Collins class submarines were built this was originally a company called Eglo engineering they built feries for the Kangaroo Island run and uh the South Australian government and the federal government both clubbed together to give them money to build What’s called the Synchro lift which is that little pier you see submarines are built in the shed they’re rolled out on a railway track onto the Synchro lift which lowers down into the water and the submarine sales clear to the right of that you see a bigger Synchro lift and that’s where they built the air Warfare Destroyer is in that big shed that says Osborne Naval Shipyard the Alvaro de bazan the F100 class frigs the holes were built in the in Spain at Al roll in Spain put on a heavy LIF ship and bought out to here put into the shed and all the components were built by companies all around Australia and now truck to Adelaide fit it into the ships and off they went this is the way of modern ship building now if you look to the right you can see a building with 20 written on it that is a fabrication shed where they take all the bits and pieces I’ll tell you now the first time I went there that was a bikey headquarters they had all that land and they had um about a 20t high fence big wooden fence built around it like Railway sleepers and you couldn’t get in there so the government just moved in with a couple of bulldozers and just pushed it all out we’ve taken this way you go um I don’t know where they are now but um this is quite a capable Shipyard they not only Built the avaro de bazan they also built the two big helicopter carriers the Australian Navy currently runs the biggest ships the Navy’s ever operated now the submarines themselves okay what is the submarine do we have a we have a saying in submarines you didn’t see us we weren’t there they’re excellent for surveillance operations I think one operation I can tell you about happened in the um early ’70s uh the British with their forces east of Aiden and when they withdrew from Aiden the Russians moved in and they built an air defense network I was on one of the two Australian submarines that went up there for 93 days we sailed backwards and forwards backwards and forwards about 5k off the coast with the electronic intercept masks up the Americans are flying aircraft around the place this place lit up like a Christmas tree at the end of our uh time there we had a chart of Yemen with the entire Russian air defense network mapped on it that’s what intelligence is about and people don’t realize that they don’t how did you know that that was there don’t worry we know it’s there now submarines cannot be employed to convey heads of State on official visits they cannot be utilized to host official functions for visiting dignitaries they of limited use in humanitarian relief missions submarines are solely a weapon of War that’s what we do when you first join submarines you are told we are in the business of being dangerous if you don’t like it go you all got to accept it in the submarine world today it is a very unique um a unique branch of the forces if you like we refer to ourselves as the Deep the Elite there are around about 135,000 people in the Australian Navy today of whom there would be less than 500 fully qualified submarine Sailors you know when you go on a submarine you are literally handpicked you’re not there because you’re making up numbers you’re there because you’ve been trained to do a particular job you’re going to do a particular job if you can’t do it they’ll boot you out simple as that submarine sailers get paid twice as much as surface sailors because when you’re out you’re out you’re out for 90 days dived at a time three or four times a year it’s hell on the family but by G it brings the money in and that’s what it’s all about submarine Sailors are unique they don’t panic they don’t stress they don’t fuss they’re the most laid-back people you’ll ever meet they’ve got the wickedest sense of humor you’ll ever find I’ll tell you a little story about this we had a young officer come on board to do training the captain we had was a nice young guy tugboats and fairies have Skippers submarines have captains and his name is Sir and uh this one particular Captain we had he loved Monte Carlo biscuits so every time we got cream biscuits on board I had to sort out the Monty Carlos and put him in a box for him we had this young officer come on board he was doing his uh offat Security checks he walked into the engineers mess where they wrapped him up in duct tape and threw him down the engineer store telephoned the controll room and told them we’re holding this guy hostage The Ransom is 22 monteal biscuits so the captain had to give the monlo biscuits to throw this guy up now everybody took it in the humor it was intended but that’s what they’re like that’s what submarines are like it’s great fun it’s great fun so if anybody has any questions I’m only too happy to answer them we’re passive we don’t transmit on our SAR um surface ships do transmit on their SAR but it is an international agreement that if there Wales in the vicinity they will stop transmitting because it does disorient the Wales we like Wales as soon as we see a pot of Wales we’ll get in with them because we know the surface ships aren’t going to be transmitting on their s well it can be it’s when you’re your most vulnerable um to charge the batteries we have to run the Diesels to run the Diesels we need air but we don’t want to surface we’re going to do a function called snorting we’ll come to Periscope depth we’ll put out of the water an induction Mass that’s a big ball inside the ball is the float head valve that works like a ping pong ball in the snorkel we’ll start up the Diesels it’ll suck air in and charge up the batteries now we have an exhaust M and that’s billowing out black smoke like a niss patrol barreling down the freeway so we keep that under the water to dissipate the fumes into the water and cool the exhaust system but while we’re snorting we have our above waterer sensor it’s called esm electronic support measures it will detect and analyze radar and radio Transmissions we are listening for everything as soon as we hear something down we’ll go we have um gray water and black water tanks on board the gray water is subjected to what’s called reverse osmosis it’s put into a it goes into a tank 4700 L tank there’s a membrane in that tank we put in an absolute pressure it’ll Force the water through the membrane that water can then be used for such things as cooling the Diesels flushing the toilets and so on but the residue that’s left will go into a hopper and when we get back alongside that’ll go off into a bin seage the sewage will go into a 2500 L tank not much and when that Tank’s full we have to blow it out we blow it out with High Press air it goes through a Mercator so what’s coming out into the water is basically a stream of water straight out and uh that’ll just blend into the ocean it’s a fertilizer for sea grass and so on uh our rubbish our food scraps goes into a disposal unit that will be blown over the side it’s compressed and blown over the side officially the food scraps no problem thank you very much folks [Applause] [Music] [Music]