The Government has just announced a spend of $1.7B on new ‘Ghost Shark’ underwater drones. But there appears to be more stealth in the budget than there is in the capability. Former submariner Rex Patrick reports.
Pete Quinn must be pretty happy.
Quinn was the Head of Navy Capability for five years. His responsibility in that role was to identify the needs and requirements of Navy’s future capabilities and to plan for, develop and deliver them to the fleet.
While he was in that role, Anduril Industries (Anduril) were successful in two limited tenders; one awarded in 2021 for $4.9M and the other awarded in 2022 for $77.5M.
Rear Admiral Pete Quinn AO RAN Rtd (Source: Defence)
Quinn left the Navy in December 2022 and started a new job with Anduril in January 2024 as their Vice President of Strategy.
This week the Defence Minister announced that Anduril would receive a $1.7B contract for a future Navy capability. Boom!
Submarines v drones
Submarines perform a diverse range of useful peace and wartime military roles.
In peace time they can deploy secretly to foreign waters to gather intelligence.
In times of tension, they can work silently conducting surveillance in a forward operating area. When the conflict starts they can covertly lay mines, land special forces, launch land strike missiles, carry out anti-shipping operations and engage in anti-submarine warfare.
Submarines are capable of conducting all of the above functions in a single deployment, because of their size, the range of mission payloads they carry and their crew, which enables them to react to complex and rapidly changing circumstances. Their size also allows them to deploy at long range for long periods.
Their key characteristic is stealth, once they leave port enemy commanders are left wondering where they are, where they’re going and what they will do next.
Underwater drones, even the ‘large’ ones, are much smaller than submarines and, hence, can generally only be configured for one mission at a time. Their endurance is limited by the energy they can carry in their small bodies, though they may be able to sit on the bottom to conserve propulsion energy.
This limitation is a key reason why they have generally been deemed undeployable over long distances, unless they are launched from surface vessels nearer to the target, an activity which can easily be seen.
Because high frequency radio waves can’t penetrate water, underwater drones don’t enjoy the same connectivity with their human operators as aerial drones do. Underwater drones have to be relatively autonomous, or come to the surface on a regular basis to communicate with their controllers.
Underwater drones can and do have role in the underwater battlespace, but they’re not anywhere near as capable as ‘crewed’ submarines.
Stealthy budget
Very little is known about the ‘Ghost Shark’ drone that the Navy is buying. We do know it’s about six metres in length and about two metres high and our government will purchase “dozens” for $1.7 billion.
The US Navy has a large underwater drone capability called ‘Orca’ made by Boeing and Huntington Ingalls Industries (HHI), which is about 16 metres long.
Unlike ‘Ghost Shark’ that will require some sort of parent vessel for forward deployment and recovery, ‘Orca’ has a range of 6,500 miles and can therefore ‘swim out’ of a home or forward port. The US Navy recently paid just over $400 million Australian dollars for five of these, including non-recurring engineering costs.
Whilst MWM is of the view that it’s worthwhile paying a premium for Australian designed and built defence capability, it is hard to reconcile the price difference between ‘Ghost Shark’ and the proven ‘Orca’ drone, particularly given ‘Orca’s significant size and persistence compared to ‘Ghost Shark’.
Dumb Ways to Buy: Defence “shambles” unveiled – former submariner and senator Rex Patrick
Lapdog politics
One can imagine executives at Anduril’s privately owned US parent company would be very happy with Quinn’s work.
So too would President Trump.
The Trump Administration has been publicly and privately advocating for Australia to double its defence spending.
The ‘Ghost Shark’ announcement will be music to Trump’s ears. It’s defence spending, and with a US company to boot.
The announcement has been made in the lead-up to Prime Minster Anthony Albanese’s visit to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Perhaps the unexplainably high price for the ‘Ghost Shark’ will serve as an incentive for Trump to meet with him?
There’s been a lot of ‘will he, or won’t he’ in relation to a meeting. With Australia about to recognise the State of Palestine, it’s probably going to be the latter. But the awarding of a generous ‘Ghost Shark’ contract couldn’t hurt Albanese’s prospects.