On Friday 13 May, five representatives from the Australian Ministry of Defence and 11 German representatives from TKMS, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Federal Foreign Office met in Kiel for a debriefing on the outcome of the Australian submarine deal.
At the debriefing, the Australian delegation wanted to explain the Australians' decision-making process to the representatives of the German bid. In April, it was announced that the French state-owned shipyard DCNS would be awarded the contract worth around 35 billion euros. The Japanese bid had already been eliminated at the beginning of the year.
The daily newspaper The Australian reports, citing sources, that the meeting was rather frosty and that the Australian delegation was not particularly convincing in its reasoning:
- The Germans were told that the "critical issue'' was that their submarine was too noisy. Specifically they were told, with deliberate vagueness, that the boat would be too noisy at a particular frequency that was very important to the Royal Australian Navy - an apparent reference to the submarine's ability to collect close-to-shore intelligence without detection. The Germans countered by asking what the frequency was and why it was not emphasised in the bidding process. The Australians responded that this information was classified, but that they were not convinced TKMS understood the significance of this issue for Australia. They said the problems with stealth meant that the German proposal could never have delivered a regionally superior submarine for Australia. The Germans persisted, asking where the excess noise was coming from - internal machinery, the propellers, the hull? Again the Australian officials declined to comment.
- The successful French bidder, DCNS, worked hard behind the scenes last year to cast doubt in the minds of Australian officials about the noise level of the TKMS submarine. DCNS modelled its estimate of the noise projection of the proposed German boat using the noise signature of its own, smaller, Scorpene-class submarine. It then compared this estimate with the noise signature for the quieter new French Barracuda submarines upon which the French-Australian submarine will be substantially based. The French also loudly touted their revolutionary pump jet propulsion system, which will replace propellers on the Australian boat, the Shortfin Barracuda. Paris claimed this would give its submarine a higher tactical silent speed than the German Type 216 submarine and Japan's evolved Soryu-class submarine, both of which would have propellers. Australian officials were said to have been highly impressed by the fact that when the Barracuda submarine accelerated, the French design was significantly quieter than either the German or the Japanese alternatives.
- They said they had reservations about the safety of the proposed lithium ion batteries that were to be installed on both the German and the Japanese submarines. Both those nations maintain that lithium ion batteries, which are four times more efficient than traditional lead acid batteries, are safe, despite small fires that have occurred in those batteries in hobby equipment, cars and airlines. In March, France publicly warned about the dangers lithium ion batteries might pose in a submarine. The Australian delegation made it clear in Kiel that it too had reservations.
- The Australians also expressed scepticism about the ability of TKMS to upscale the size of both its Siemens motors and its submarine hulls to build a 4000-plus tonne submarine - almost double the size of previous submarines built by the company.
- In addition, the Germans were told that their cost projections were overly optimistic, including their claim that there would be only a negligible premium for building all of the submarines in Australia. Germany's bid claimed that the price of building eight submarines (not including the combat system) would be just less than $12bn, while 12 submarines including the combat system would cost $20bn.
Let's hold on:
The Australians had a specific technical requirement (noise reduction in a certain area) but did not want to specify this to the supplier. Australian concerns about TKMS's ability to utilise the existing designs of the 212/214 Classes to the proposed 4,000 tonnes design type 216 The accusation that the Germans were not capable of scaling up to a high level could not be dispelled either. The criticism was not merely of a technical nature, as the Germans were not believed to have a Submarine for strategic tasks.
France plays the lobby flute much more virtuously than Germany - nothing new, but always "nice" to observe. In addition to hiring the former Chief of Staff of the Australian Ministry of Defence, Sean Costello, as a strategic advisor and CEO of DCNS Australia, this also includes public criticism of nuclear technologies such as those used in German and Japanese nuclear power plants. Submarines lithium-ion batteries.
The fact that the TKMS Submarine The argument that the boat type is fundamentally too loud is not convincing: On the one hand, because the boat type does not yet exist and therefore no values are available and the criticism was based on the existing 212/214 types - although specific technical concerns could have been taken into account during production. On the other hand, because Singapore, a notoriously demanding user in the region, had already decided in favour of a variant (218SG) from TKMS in 2013.
The Australian decision should be taken seriously in any case - it could and should be an occasion for a critical review on the German side. Is our underwater technology really as good as we think? Have others (e.g. the French pump jet propulsion system) overtaken us? And how does Berlin deal with French behaviour in the context of a possible consolidation of the European maritime industry?
English 
German
A note to a friend in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN):
Greeting from Germany where my former comrades in Kiel still seem baffled as to why they have lost the submarine contest against the French. They do not accept my - in their eyes too simplistic - reasoning, i.e. you guys have failed not because of technical incompetence, not because your boat has a perceived higher signature at a certain speed, and not because the unproven Barracuda jet-pump is perceived to be more efficient, and certainly not because the RAN wishes to proceed to the real Barracuda with its 150 MW power-plant; no, tkMS, you have missed to boat because you did not listen nor understand your prospective client, the RAN and the key players in the Australian Defence Material Organisation.
Once the Japanese were no longer in play, you only had to get off your high horse and stop berating everybody in earshot that you are the world's most prolific exporter of naval submarines, and not to tell the RAN that you could improve on Kiel's performance to the extent that building tkMS submarines in Australia could be done at a fixed lump sum price cheaper - or at least no more expensive - and quicker than in Germany. Sad; a little more understanding of the Australian psyche and more finesse would have brought you home the first price.
Wait a minute - you are the Mr Ohff who reported on the Australia project in the May issue of MF. According to the author's description, you are a German-Australian who built the Collins class for the Aussies as a shipyard manager. I therefore assume that you understand German.
If my meagre English can get it right, then you say: noise argument and other shortcomings with which the tkMSlers were "debriefed" - all pretence, none of it really true? The deal was lost because the Teutons and their local people sat on too high a horse, bragged to the Australians about their great export successes, a cheap fixed price and a fabulous build rate and, incidentally, didn't understand how the Aussies in general and the RAN in particular tick? Since you don't post under a pseudonym anyway, but "with an open visor", I'm sure you won't mind getting rid of a few lines here in German for confirmation...
Right, the Ohff is me, the one who was responsible for the COLLINS build, and who watched in horror as the Australian TKMS sales team sang the 08/15 TKMS mantra of international success to the Australian Navy. The Australians didn't want an off-the-shelf boat - which the Type 216 probably wasn't either. But unfortunately TKMS had not succeeded in making it clear to the Australian government that the T216 class would be a boat designed specifically for them. Instead, this boat class was also advertised as a future export hit on the Internet and elsewhere. KzS (Ret'd) Raimund Wallner analysed the Australian tragedy (from a German perspective) in great detail and correctly in the trade journal AUFTAUCHEN No. 263 "Niederlage in Australien", abridged in the last issue of MarineForum. Whether the Japanese, French or Germans ultimately offered a more effective boat is not for me to judge. None of the suppliers has a boat of this class under construction. Only one thing is clear: a diesel-electric submarine with an underwater displacement of around 5100 tonnes, as offered by the French, is neither fish nor fowl.
HJO
You're always smarter with hindsight...but the "lessons learnt" should include how wrong it was of German industry to boast to Australia about its own export successes (160 boats to 20 countries) instead of emphasising the quality of the submarine for its own navy: U212!
Especially in the acoustic signature range - and especially in comparison with French nuclear submarines:
A few years ago, the commander of Uxx reported on his participation in a hunting exercise with a French nuclear submarine as part of an international manoeuvre, how he was able to maintain contact with this boat for several hours ("tracking") and simulated attacking it several times without being located himself.
From this one could have deduced, cheekily deductively, as the "frogs" did with U216 vs Shortfin, a similar acoustic dominance of German technology vs French:
Would have, would have - yes I know...
The above article states:
"The fact that the TKMS submarine is fundamentally too loud can be used as an argument.
not convincing: On the one hand, because the boat type is not yet
does not exist and therefore no values are available and the criticism of
was based on the existing types 212/214"
This is wrong insofar as the French did not base the noise comparison on "212/214", but modelled it on their own SCORPENE boat. They have discredited their own boat - and not type 212/214 - as being too loud! The "The Australian" article literally states:
"DCNS modelled its estimate of the noise projection of the proposed
German boat using the noise signature of its own,
smaller, Scorpene-class submarine. It then compared this estimate
with the noise signature for the quieter new French
Barracuda submarines upon which the French-Australian
submarine will be substantially based."
In other words, in the absence of data from the German competitor design (U216), DCNS simply took its own propeller-driven 1,700 tonne export submarine SCORPENE, extrapolated its noise profile and used it as the basis for the U216/ SHORTFIN BARRACUDA noise comparison. The scandal here is that the Australian evaluation team adopted this nasty trick and had the cheek to tell the Kiel team "that their submarine was too noisy" to their faces during the debriefing on 13 May. You could also put it like this: The decision in favour of the French was made for multiple and possibly never fully public reasons (possibly also "nuclear hiden agenda"). Any propeller-driven boat, including the French SCORPENE (previously only exported to third world countries), was the right choice to simply equate it with the German U216, thus "proving" the superiority of the pump-jet propulsion and selling it as the decisive reason for the contract award to DCNS.
Thank you for pointing this out. This makes the decision even clearer in its previously hidden agenda. Reminds me a little of the decision against Airbus for the future tanker aircraft for the US Air Force.
In the spirit of our maritime blog, the previous comments set the scene: Let's be honest with ourselves about technological capabilities. Have the French caught up and possibly already overtaken? What pressure will Paris exert on Berlin to consolidate naval shipbuilding - only underwater? - to consolidate naval shipbuilding? What value does the Chancellery attach to this technology sector in view of the necessary German-French axis (euro, refugees, Brexit)?
Fleet wonders
I can follow meer verstehen's reasoning very well. In fact, the question arises as to how convincing our German submarine technology really is. However, political and possibly nuclear considerations are likely to have been decisive. The latter do not exist in Norway, but a more decisive political stance will have to be taken here if German submarine construction is to be preserved.
Of course you can try to agree a division of labour with France, France big and Germany small. The only question is where the border lies today and tomorrow and how reliable France is, thinks
the sailor
The leap to nuclear-powered submarines is certainly a realistic idea. However, if the Australians get the French conventional boats, they will certainly not get a quiet boat - in this respect, the Australian navy is to be pitied. Perhaps France has also offered compensation deals; in the case of entrepreneurs, one would have to speak of compliance ... In any case, the overall calculation seems to work out for France: DCNS will next receive the Norwegian submarine construction contract. Due to the resulting serious economic difficulties for HDW/TKMS, DCNS will take over this division. Expertise in the field of conventional submarine construction (and jobs) in Germany is dwindling. Just as with the merger of KMW and Nexter, unwelcome competitors with the same or a similar product portfolio will be "integrated". French trade unions will then do the rest - but that would be another topic.
There are also rumours that the Australian navy is considering the possibility of nuclear propulsion, which would of course be feasible via FRA. Considering the distance to the South China Sea, this seems quite conceivable.