A Dutchman called Drebbel designed and actually built the first submarine. It was 1620 and in England of all places for James 1st, and given the technical challenges, was a pretty good effort. Despite the concept of ballast being applied and pumped air, there was little understanding of things like decompression sickness, the bends, so no significant improvements appeared until the modern industrial era. Even constructing the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, resulted in workers suffering serious consequences like paralysis from the bends working in the 45 foot deep caissons.
In Spain with Monturiol’s Ictinei II in 1864 came the advent of submarines as weapons of war. Russia, France, Germany, everyone jumped on board, particularly those with significant coastal boarders; Greece, Sweden, Japan. Steam power, diesel, electric, hand paddles, oars. Models and remains of many of these examples exist. Eventually all designs settled on batteries for underwater and combustion engines to recharge the batteries when on the surface.
Australia’s entry to this technology followed the Royal Navy’s, which began by buying secret designs and technology from John Philip Holland. I know a roboticist called John Holland in America, but this one was the Irish founder of the Holland Torpedo Boat Company where he built his USS Holland SS-1 in 1893, which went to the US Navy as their first submarine. The RN bought a later version named HMS Holland 1, constructed in the USA in 1901 as their very first submarine.
The Royal Navy submarine ventures unimaginatively went through the alphabet. Holland used petrol engines to recharge the batteries, but diesel electric became the propulsion method of choice with the RN’s C-class being the last petrol design. Continuing with the D and E-class in 1907, then dramatically changed to become the new L-class submarines, all models serving through WWI. After the war a prototype submarine called Oberon introduced the Odin-class submarines around 1920. Some were sold to Chile, and others became Australia’s first submarines. (Colin has since pointed out to me that Australia’s first submarines were the AE1 and AE2 launched in 1913. See his comments below.)
So we were off and running with O-class submarines, but we gave them back because we could not afford them in 1931. Height of the Great Depression remember? They were designed for the endurance needed in the Pacific and could dive to 500 feet. No one tested them beyond 300 feet though, I wonder why? Maybe the fact that their external fuel tanks leaked is a giveaway. Australia had no submarines of its own throughout WWII. An inauspicious start to our underwater shenanigans.
It wasn’t until 1964 with influence from then senator John Gordon that eight more Oberon-class submarines were ordered, although only 6 were delivered, built in Scotland. Why is it so hard to build submarines on time and on spec? The Oberons served well, although one called the Otama was caught out in 1992 when it got entangled in fishing nets while conducting surveillance of communist nations in the South China Sea and had to surface in plain view.
During the 1990’s the Oberon-class were replaced by the Collins-class. They were the first to be build by Australia. Operational tests in 1996 showed the Collins-class had too much hull noise and ineffective combat systems. After rectification, the Collins-class have apparently performed well.
France has a history of building good submarines. In 1800 the French Navy built a submarine designed by American Robert Fulton of steamboat fame, called of all things the Nautilus. It was man-powered. Dupuy de Lôme and Gustave Zédé built electric powered submarines from a Polish design in 1881. At the beginning of WWI France had 62 commissioned submarines. It was the French Attack-class submarine that was contracted from the French to replace the Collins-class.
Starting in 2007, when Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister, the Future Submarine Program was initiated, originally for construction to be in South Australia and delivery starting in 2025 with a cost of AUD50 billion. Typical delays meant that it was not until 2016 that the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the Shortfin Barracuda, a conventionally-powered variant of the Barracuda-class nuclear submarine by experienced French firm DCNS, as the winner. Delivery would be around 2030. By 2020 with all the government and defence department delays the cost had been estimated at AUD90 billion. This was Australia’s largest ever defence procurement contact and it has been reported that delays were due in part to no one wanting to take responsibility for it.
Then in 2021 the new Prime Minister Scott Morrison just up and cancelled the contract, attempting to contact Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, only hours before making the public announcement. In its place was a three-way deal between Australia, the USA and the UK. It was called Aukus and had been negotiated in secret even as the French project was underway. In contract law, the party breaking a contract for no cause would be responsible for the quantum of the contract plus damages. France was paid a half billion euros as compensation. So at that point Australia had nothing and had paid out years of planning and development costs estimated at AUD2.4 billion plus a penalty for breach of contract. Albanese, Sunak and Biden below.
So in 2021 Australia changed its mind to buy five SSN-AUKUS Submarines from the UK and three Virginia-Class Submarines from the USA, all for up to $368 billion. Delivery now after 2040. Two of the USA ones would be used ones, second hand. But then, on 1 June 2026 the Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said that Australia would now accept three used submarines!
The Australian Labor Party’s Ed Husic stated that it is, “Not the deal promised.” Would that be an understatement? “Australia needs a backup plan for the Aukus submarine agreement,” he added. I think doing any deal with the USA these days needs a backup plan given the waffle and piffle coming from there.
As a corporate CEO, it I had conducted business like this, I’d be sued by shareholders and other affected third parties. They say that those who can, do, and those who can’t teach. But it is clear to me that those who can’t become politicians.
Australia’s first submarines were AE1 and AE2, both lost early in World War 1. See https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/ww1_navy/ae1_ae2
The best choice would have been Jap subs in 2013. But Malcolm Turncoat got in the way.
When it was decided to go nuclear we should have renegotiated with the French to convert the existing (bloody stupid very expensive conversion of nuclear subs into diesel powered ones) program into nuclear.
However having decided to go down the current path, the Lie-Bah government should have gone balls out on it. But Lie-Bah doesn’t really want any of this NUCLEAR (the horrors of it, we’re all going to fry, die, etc) program to succeed, so go slow it is…and any excuse…
Yeah. Buying a nuclear submarine and requesting the reactor be replaced with a diesel electric engine is like buying a hybrid electric car and asking to replace the engine with steam power.
I should add that immediately after WW1, Australia was given 6 J Class submarines ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-class_submarine ) which did not last long, all being non-operational by 1924.
Interesting links thank you Colin.
I did a crash course on the history of submarines for the introduction to the Aukus part, and there were other bits and pieces, but I did a quick summary. I did not come across the AE-class not the J-class. Thank you for adding them in. Some of my observations, like submarines not always performing well, and government interference and delays and weak decisions is in those links of yours.
It’s a lot of money. Hopefully, it’s COD, without a deposit down. The defence of Ukraine tells us development in war is now swift, and big subs may well be too vulnerable in tomorrow’s warfare.
Many readers on Blackjay totally agree with you Jacob, including me.
Check out John Reid’s blog on Australia’s Defence posted on September last year and the comments. It has the record number of views for this site.
Almost 20 years into AUKUS, and only a few days ago, they announced a new “Pillar II” to the project. Drones. It’s like the powers that be have the foresight of a gnat. For years now, drones have dominated warfare. Mostly airborne as we know from the Ukraine Russia war, but on water, underwater and on land too.
Foregoing giant, astronomically priced war machines for swift, inexpensive (by comparison), autonomous vehicles, is akin to warriors winning battles through guerilla tactics against giant war machines. Such tactics have quick and decentralised assaults, similar characteristics, like Vietnam did and Afghanistan has forever against every aggressor.
Maybe after political pundits of war learn to get outside their swollen heads, they will eventually learn lesson 3, don’t start wars in the first place.
And back to what is now called Pillar I, the original USA and UK submarines, what in my view was moronic, after building all that knowhow in designing and building the Collins-class submarines at home, is to throw it all away. It beggars belief. COD would be cool, because there is no way that this is going to be the end of this failed project.
Tom McIlroy made these comments today on The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/06/amid-choppy-waters-around-secondhand-subs-and-trump-labors-sensitivity-about-the-aukus-debate-is-growing
In a week of controversy around the Aukus nuclear agreement, Vice Adm Mark Hammond might be forgiven for feeling singed by public scrutiny.
If the first 18 months of his second term are any guide, Trump’s unpopularity and erratic behaviour could badly test social licence for Aukus. While he has offered support for the deal and strongly praised the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, Trump could easily reverse course at any time and pull the rug out from under Labor. His mistreatment of allies like Australia might convince others that sending billions of dollars to the US for submarines is a bad idea.
From The Guardian: Tom McIlroy Political editor and Ben Doherty, Thu 11 Jun 2026
Aukus is among Australia’s worst foreign policy decisions and requires ‘heroic’ optimism, Gareth Evans says.
Former Labor foreign affairs minister says belief US would defend Australia in event of an existential attack is a ‘ludicrous delusion’
Aukus will prove to be one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions ever made by an Australian government and is only being permitted by Donald Trump in order to destroy Chinese nuclear threats to the US mainland, former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans has said.
In evidence to an independent public inquiry into the $368bn nuclear agreement with the US and UK on Thursday, Evans, a cabinet minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, warned the transfer and construction of submarines to Australia from the early 2030s was effectively only an extension of the American military fleet.
He said a future US administration would not come to Australia’s aid in the event of an “existential attack” and would only assist in a military conflict if its own assets on Australian soil were threatened.
“The notion that extended nuclear deterrence justifies our prostration – that the US really would be prepared to sacrifice San Francisco for Sydney, let alone Miami for Melbourne – is, and always has been, a ludicrous delusion,” Evans told the inquiry.
Just this once, Evans is indeed on the ball, but one has to wonder why he was so frank about it. Very smart, Evans was never a patriot or one who worried about government mis-spending, that I recall.
Evans does seem to be against nuclear power, given his stance on nuclear proliferation.
Keynote Presentation by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans, Former Australian Foreign Minister,
to PNND/WFM Webinar, Australia and the Doomsday Clock: Preventing Nuclear War, in
Particular through No First Use Policies, 7 April 2026.
“It has long been my belief that being and being seen to be a good international citizen – a decent
country, committed to “purposes beyond ourselves”, as Hedley Bull would put it – is a national
interest in its own right to be pursued, not just as a moral imperative but for its soft power
returns, with the same commitment we show to the traditional duo of national interests in
security and prosperity. There can be no more obvious way of demonstrating our decency than
by making a clear declaration, at the highest political level, of our determination to contribute to
ridding the world once and for all of the horror of these most indiscriminately inhumane weapons
ever invented, and the only ones posing an existential risk to life on this planet as we know it.”
Speaking of submarines. Not sure if you ever read about Admiral Rickover. There are a few videos too. He is a hoot! I adopted some of his job interview techniques. His most famous hire is President Jimmy Carter. So no nuclear subs for Australia?
Fascinating Rick. Thanks for your comment. I know from private correspondence that you had trouble accessing the Blackjay site.
Admiral Rickover eh? I’ve done some quick research, which means I popped his name into Wikipedia, and what a fascinating character, as you suggest. He almost deserves a post on Blackjay himself. Nicknamed the “Father of the Nuclear Navy” it is clear why you introduce him. After gathering more info and thinking on it, I will add another reply to your comment. Rickover, now over to you Rick.
On a different submarine topic, unrelated to Aukus but with some relevance maybe to the ideology behind its political aegis.
OceanGate was the company behind the private submarine Titan, a novel carbon fibre hull developed for tourism and providing pleasure rides for US$250k a pop to the wreckage of the Titanic. On 18 June 2023 it imploded instantly killing everyone on board including one of the company founders.
In the early days of flying, there were plane crashes from seemingly sound aircraft bodies. The mystery was resolved through x-ray analysis, exposing invisible structural weakness of the metal. microscopic cracks. What is now called metal fatigue resulting from repeated stress cycles, with cracks and weaknesses accumulating every time a plane takes off and lands, or is stressed and buffeted in the air.
Canadian safety officials have just released their report on the Titan catastrophe. They point to the company’s disregard for this basic engineering maxim, as the Titan’s under-tested chassis showed significant structural fatigue, leading to its implosion at 9,000 feet. Not even the 12,500 feet it previously reached for visiting the titanic.
That is bad enough but the Canadian report features another factor that they call “groupthink”:
While the physical structure of the craft raised concerns with inspectors, they also found the company culture exhibited “closed-mindedness, pressures toward uniformity and overestimation of the group’s power”– traits that amplified the riskiness of the endeavour.
“Over the course of OceanGate’s operating history … employees with expertise in specific areas left the company or were dismissed after raising safety-related concerns or expressing differing perspectives from the CEO,” the report found, adding that confirmation bias was “affecting OceanGate’s decision making and risk management with respect to the structural integrity and lifespan of the Titan pressure hull.”
To my mind this might apply equally to any clique of politicians who persist with an endeavour against all expert commentary to the contrary.