Australia has just unveiled its prototype unmanned combat submarine, potentially addressing a longstanding undersea warfare capability gap as tensions rise with China.
The Warzone reported this month that Anduril Australia unveiled its Dive-Large Displacement (Dive-LD) unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) prototype with plans underway to build an armed follow-through model known as Ghost Shark.
The report says that Australia will develop Ghost Shark under a US$100 million partnership with Anduril Australia, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the Defense Science and Technology Group state agency.
The project is under Australia’s Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (XL-AUV) program, which aims to produce an affordable, autonomous UUV that can be deployed for military and non-military missions.
The partnership aims to produce three XL-AUVs to be delivered to the RAN within the next three years, with the first production-representative Ghost Shark unit delivered by 2025.
The Dive-LD prototype has a 3D-printed exterior, weighs 2.8 tons, has a length of 5.6 meters and can conduct missions at a depth of 6,000 meters for as long as 10 days. However, the Ghost Shark will be slightly larger, which may affect these performance characteristics.
According to the Warzone report, Ghost Shark can perform various missions ranging from surveillance to targeting to carrying munitions.
“Due to its modular and multi-role nature, our adversaries will need to assume that their every move in the maritime domain is subject to our surveillance and that every XL-AUV is capable of deploying a wide range of effects — including lethal ones,” RAN Rear Admiral Peter Quinn was quoted saying in The Warzone report.
Ghost Shark will also utilize advances in AI to enhance its autonomy. According to Quinn, Australia’s recently released Robotics, Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence (RAS-AI) strategy includes “the rapid development of combat-ready prototypes to accelerate operational deployment of game-changing capabilities such as Ghost Shark.”
AI will play increasingly important roles in UUV operations, as the underwater realm presents more limited ways of communication compared to aerial environments. At the same time, AI’s increasing autonomy is raising concerns about intelligent killing machines’ ability to operate without human control.
RAN Commodore Darron Kavanagh said that AI’s role in Ghost Shark’s lethal actions will be limited for now, according to the same The Warzone report.
Asia Times has previously reported on Australia’s plans to field UUVs, which Canberra can use as covert reconnaissance platforms for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions in the strategic Lombok, Makassar and Sunda straits. Those waterways could be crucial in any conflict scenario with China, analysts note.
Australia’s UUVs can also serve as force multipliers linked to a manned submarine mothership similar to Sweden’s A26 Blekinge-class boats to extend the latter’s sensor range. In combat roles, these UUVs may perform anti-submarine, anti-surface and electronic warfare in critical locations.
Nigel Pittaway notes in an article for Australian Defense Magazine that Australia’s UUVs may focus on mine-hunting operations. He notes that UUVs can search the seabed for mines and other objects depending on the sensor suite installed, then classify found objects as threats or otherwise.
Pittaway also adds that an advantage of using these UUVs is that the submarine mothership or human divers remain clear of hazardous areas while UUVs perform the mine-hunting missions.
Australia’s acquisition of such capabilities may be urgent given the possible proliferation of sea mines in the Indo-Pacific Region. In a 2020 report from Sea Power Soundings, Alia Huberman mentions that sea mines will be increasingly prevalent in the Indo-Pacific as more regional states implement their own anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities.
Huberman argues that sea mines may become Indo-Pacific states’ weapon of choice due to their cost-effectiveness, the high cost of mine-clearing operations and psychological strategic effects based on their ability to physically separate opposing forces and thus deter the outbreak of a potential conflict.
In the event of a Taiwan blockade, Huberman notes China may use 5,000 to 7,000 of its 50,000 to 80,000 sea mines in a 4-to-6-day span against the latter’s most strategic ports to cut them off within two days. Moreover, she notes that China may also mine Taiwan’s eastern waters, making US intervention exponentially difficult given its lagging mine countermeasure (MCM) capabilities.
Huberman’s views echo those in a well-read June 2009 US Naval War College report that discusses China’s naval mine warfare doctrine. In that report, Andrew Erickson and other writers say that the main advantages of sea mines are that they are easy to lay and challenging to sweep, have great concealment potential, are highly destructive and present a long-lasting threat.
The writers also say that sea mines constitute the main threat for future littoral warfare, especially for enemy submarines and carrier battlegroups. They noted then that US mine warfare capabilities were feeble, making mine warfare especially appealing for China as an asymmetric method to blunt US naval power.
In a Taiwan conflict scenario, Huberman notes that well-placed minefields can channel China’s invasion forces to pre-determined kill zones, allowing Taiwan to better focus its limited defenses.
She notes that Taiwan’s minefields can slow the advance of a Chinese invasion force, thereby increasing the former’s survivability, extending its reaction window and providing opportunities for third-party military intervention.
However, Australia and the US are widely and still perceived as lacking in mine warfare capabilities vis-à-vis China. For example, in a 2021 article in The Strategist, Greg Mapson writes that mine warfare has been neglected in the Australian and US navies, thus creating a considerable capability gap with China.
Moreover, Ben Pedersen writes in an October 2021 article for the US Naval Institute that US mine warfare capabilities are hamstrung by an outdated Cold War mentality, reliance on aging Avenger-class mine warfare ships, the failure of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) to replace the Avenger-class and still-embryonic unmanned surface vessel (USV) technology.
Similarly, Australia’s mine warfare capabilities are built on six Huon-class minesweepers, first built in 1994, with only four active ships and two held in reserve. Since 2018, they have been offered for sale.
Mapson mentions that Australia should bolster its mine warfare capabilities to lessen its reliance on the US. These capabilities may include the delivery of intelligent homing mines into enemy waters and ports by UUVs such as Ghost Shark.
Mapson notes that such capabilities fit Australia’s maritime strategic environment given its extensive sea lanes of communication suitable for mine warfare operations.
Furthermore, Mapson notes that Australia’s indigenous mine warfare capabilities will maintain the country’s defensive posture if the US is unwilling or unable to assist, plug-in capability gaps in the US-Australia alliance and shore up Australia’s domestic defense industry.
Australia’s introduction of the Ghost Shark UUV may thus serve as a step to increase its strategic autonomy by reintroducing mine warfare capabilities that can function independently or complement a US-led combined naval force.