CDR Salamander - First Australia, then South Korea...who Next Wants to be in the SSN Club?

The growing intermeshing of American and South Korea maritime industrial capacity is, rightfully, back in the news.

Last week we discussed South Korea leaning in to help build auxiliaries. That’s solid JV ball, but news came out last week that they’ve managed to negotiate an opportunity to play on the varsity.

Via Philadelphia Today.

President Donald Trump announced last month on social media that the United States will share its nuclear submarine propulsion technology with South Korea, which plans to construct its submarines at the Philadelphia Shipyard, writes Justin Katz for Breaking Defense.

“South Korea will be building its Nuclear Powered Submarine in the Philadelphia Shipyards, right here in the good ol’ U.S.A.,” wrote Trump. “Shipbuilding in our Country will soon be making a BIG COMEBACK.”

Philly Shipyard was acquired by South Korea-based Hanwha last year from a Norwegian investment group in a strategic bid by the Asian country to advance its business with the US Navy.

…

Establishing a shipyard in Philadelphia capable of building nuclear submarines would be a huge undertaking that would take many years, if not decades, to accomplish.

Given that South Korea and the United States have a history of war against the People’s Republic of China on the Korean peninsula, the Chinese reaction is not surprising.

Via Choe Sang-Hun at NYT,

“South Korea has long balanced its security dependence on the United States with its economic interdependence with China,” said Seong-Hyon Lee, a senior fellow at the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.–China Relations. “That equilibrium has effectively ended.”

The submarine deal, if followed through, “marks Seoul’s transition from a balancing actor to a fully embedded partner within the U.S. framework,” he added.

…

The submarine agreement, coupled with South Korea’s massive investment pledge in the U.S., “signals a deep, structural integration of South Korea into America’s security and industrial ecosystem,” said ​Mr. Lee of the George H. W. Bush Foundation​.

China has already expressed its discomfort. On Friday, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said South Korea and the United States should “do what is conducive to regional peace and stability, not otherwise.”

I’m still trying to see how everyone gets there from here, but on balance, it is good news for all.

For those who are familiar with the South Korean K1/K2 tank development, it might give you pause, but this is for South Korea and is worth the risk.

South Korea has been wanting to get in the SSN club for a long time. Good on them for their persistence.

I’m not sure how this will work out. The Philadelphia Shipyard, even at its heyday, never built nuclear powered ships of any kind.

The South Koreans build a solid conventional submarine, the KSS-III that they offered to Canada recently, but nuclear submarines are at another level. Besides the infrastructure issues specific to nuclear shipbuilding at the shipyard that would need to be addressed, there is the fact that the U.S. nuclear workforce and hardware providers are already behind schedule with expected demands. While another yard is great, whoever is going to successfully solve those two structural issues needs superhuman abilities and one heck of a funding line.

Besides bragging rights, should South Korea invest in nuclear submarines? As always, let’s go to the chartroom.

The South Korean landmass is not large. It is roughly the same size as the U.S. state of Indiana but packs in the combined populations of California and New York. She does not have any overseas holdings. She does not have a desire/requirement to have global power projection abilities. She does not have ready access to the open seas. Her historical enemies are all located across coastal seas inside a couple of hundred nautical miles.

She wants nuclear submarines, but a quick review of some fundamentals does not scream out a requirement for an SSN. Just the opposite, she seems to be a natural conventional submarine power, like the Italians. That is a lot of investment for something that may not be in the top-10 military requirement, but she clearly wants to be in the club.

Does she, geography aside, look like a nation that could support a nuclear submarine program?

Let’s do a little benchmarking.

Six countries confirmed to have nuclear submarines; the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and India. Via AUKUS, we know Australia will…soon…sometime.

Let’s call it seven. Throw in South Korea, and you have eight. For conversational reasons, we’ll just look at population, GDP, and military budgets to see if this is a club the South Koreans could play in.

Let’s rack-n-stack-em.

She can clearly make the observation that if Australia can do it, then can’t she?

Our friends have a combination of FOMO and sibling rivalry. Having said that, you know who the 800-pound gorilla in this formula is on who should or should not be in the SSN club?

Of course, it is the 800-pound sumo: Japan.

If South Korea is going to get SSNs, for over a thousand years of reasons, Japan will want to play as well.

How does she rack and stack if she was brought into the club?

Especially with her defense budget increasing up to 2% of GDP in the next few years and her first-tier nuclear and conventional submarine industry…if she wanted to, I have no doubt it would be a competitive bet that Japan could build a domestic SSN faster than U.S.-South Korea would be able to build an SSN in the Philadelphia Shipyard.

This isn’t the nuclear proliferation we usually think of, but AUKUS seems to have kicked it off anyway.

NB: the numbers above are estimates and can slightly vary from source. However, I may have made a typing or transpositional error. If you see one, let me know in comments and I will correct later.

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