What do you expect a budget is from Nuclear Submarine development?
Do you know of a similar program where an incredible amount of money was spent with no results in the 1st gen other than experience is China, but you don't have the money China had to invest in the matter. China spent about $3-5 Billion(I've seen some estimates as high as $15 Billion for the whole project overall in today's money) on the Type 91 development which wasn't viable and was essentially a research project. The the question becomes can Pakistan spend $5-15 billion on essentially research project when its entire Defense Budget was about $8.5. thats a significant commitment.
Let's say it's $15 billion.
It's a very high figure, for sure, but would a rational policymaker look at it in isolation. In other words, is the person making this decision going to look at just the cost of the submarine, or as the cost of an R&D endeavour that can also result in other high-value output, like revolutionizing Pakistan's energy sector with an indigenous solution?
So, the $15 billion cost here involves:
- The direct cost of R&D for the SSN.
- The direct costs of R&D for the miniature reactor technology
- The direct costs of R&D for the industrial infrastructure necessary to support all this
- The direct cost of R&D for all the specific safety, efficiency, acoustic-reduction, etc., know-how that has to get produced.
My point here is that the $15 billion being spent is actually creating
a lot of value in
a lot of areas.
This one project, for example, can grow PAEC into a much bigger player in the SMR space. This can allow Pakistan to indigenously source its very own SMRs as a way of electrifying the whole country. In this endeavour, there can be a savings in foreign currency as now the design, development, IP and production will be handled by PAEC. Depending on the scale of the electrification effort, the total economic savings (from reducing hard currency outflows) can be $20-30 billion USD. Or, if we get out of America's sanction regime, go the next step and export our own SMRs and make $20-30 billion in foreign currency gains.
So, in that context alone, for the policymaker the SSN project would be worth it. The issue is that we wouldn't see the benefit in a few years, but rather, a few decades. Hence, the mentality of anyone in the decision-making chair needs to extend into the very long-term -- i.e.,
nation-building, not a cheap photo-op.
We can go into some other aspects too. Perhaps by learning how to create a capable SSN, the NRDI learns more about non-magnetic steel, acoustic control via thermal management, etc, or perhaps even innovate in new ways across these areas or some others, like power cabling.
Either the PN can leverage all of these insights to develop new generation warships of its own, OR, NRDI people can go off and spawn their own new companies to provide critical industrial goods to the world market. This would turn us into an exporter of high-value goods, like Turkiye.
Now the question is, can Pakistan fund it? I think so, but it'd take trade-offs, especially short-term costs for long and very long-term gains. For one thing, let's cut out all the property schemes and weird business ventures the military's probably involved in, be it directly or via intermediaries.
Next, curb back non-essential civil spending and fund PAEC instead. Why? Because the R&D output of PAEC can, potentially, drive economic benefits (again, long to very long-term) in other ways. So, cut out the fancy buildings (again) or trains or bus lines. If there's a need for any of that, then let the private sector invest and foot the whole bill. Otherwise, get the government out of those areas and laser-focus in on PAEC.
Finally, there are some more fundamental steps one can take to free up funding... E.g., go DOGE on the provincial system (i.e., get rid of it and rework governance with a strong national center with smaller municipally-led districts), raise the tax to GDP ratio by taxing agriculture and real-estate (force people's incentives to shift to new industries), and, if we're really gutsy, stop paying the interest on loans whose principals have all been paid off.
We take these steps, I'm sure we can free up $5-15 billion USD in funding every year.
