The newswire is reporting ‘that Australia is set to purchase five Virginia class nuclear powered submarines over the next decade as part of the AUKUS agreement.’
I don’t see how.
The US production line can’t keep up up with their own demand for Virginia class boats. Unless we just tip a mountain of money into the US shipyards to start up a new production line, we’re not getting five Virginia’s.
Also, why would Rishi Sunak fly all the way to California to stand next to Biden and Albo just to get massively pantsed?
Anyway. I have thoughts. Many many many thoughts about the nukes. I’m not much freaked out by the fact they’ll take decades to get here. China will be in demographic and economic decline, if not outright collapse by the time those subs are launched. There’s a school of thought that argues the CCP regime will be waaaay more dangerous under those circumstances than they are now.
But we live in the now. They’re not gonna help much with that.
Update.
The Smage is reporting that Albo’s putting down the plastic for five Virginia’s, but then Sunak gets to build a whole new class of sub, half kangaroo, half British lion. Sounds even crazier.
Indeed. Part of the problem is the broken culture of defence acquisition. Because the ADF and its parent department are so used to thinking of themselves as providing small batch artisanal high end defence services to the US, they can't break out of the the mini-me mindset that involves. Example. Spending tens of millions of dollars to buy three, count them, three Reaper drones, when what they need are hundreds, if not thousands of cheap disposables like the flat packed cardboard drones we've been sending to the Ukrainians.
The subservience to the US is the bit that's doing my head in. I'm not sure that being Uncle Sam's deputy sheriff is the guaranteed security blanket that the powers that be think it is, especially if Trump or an heir of Trump ends up in charge again.
Buying a handful of subs to wage a cold war against our biggest trading partner seems counterproductive if nothing else. China doesn't have to go to war to hurt us, they just need to stop buying our stuff, and worse yet stop shipping their stuff to us. Our economy would collapse almost overnight.
Yeah, this whole situation makes my head hurt. Also, the US seems to have a strong subgroup of folks who think Wendell Willkie should have won in 1940, and maybe it's not such a bad thing to let murderous freaks destroy the post-1945 world order.
Different power architecture, apparently. The US (and UK? not sure about that) subs are fueled for their working life at the point of construction. Nuclear waste disposal is part of the decommissioning process. In the mean time the sub can be run by a country that doesn't have a domestic nuclear fuel production industry.
The French nuclear subs have a different philosophy, and need periodic refueling, which is OK if you have a domestic nuclear industry like France, but not much use for Australia.
Thats the most positive explanation I have heard for this so far. I had thought this nuclear sub proposal was a way to shoehorn Australia into having to accept a nuclear power industry. Still think this is a massive waste of $$$$ that could be spent on much better ideas.
Also I doubt that the French subs had quite the same level of five-eyes-based subservience to the US command infrastructures as whatever these ones will have. These will be "fully integrated" (with US Pacific fleet operations) apparently.
I asked this as well. Short answer is the French SSNs need to have their reactors refuelled in 25 years, in France. The US (and I assume the UK) SSNs don't need to have this done.
No, no. You misread it John. It said the submarines are going to be made by 7 nude spear-powered virgins in a TAFE class. That’s all the budget can afford.
I've been writing for a while over on Interstellar that our procurement system is hopelessly dysfunctional and needs to be fixed yesterday. Billions are spent either on useless toys or boondoggles designed to bring home the bacon for politicians. We can't afford this bullshit anymore, and it's going to hit us between the eyes like a two-by-four.
I need to read a bit more, but isn't the Brit design still only in the design phase and not yet an actual boat? The Virginia class is the ducks nuts when it comes to nuke boats, and the force projection it brings is superior. Yes, yes concerns about 'integration' into the US systems, but I'm willing to bet London to a brick that the 'source' behind this purchase of 5 boats from the US is someone in Dutton's office stirring up shit. The great potato himself was in the media making claims that he knew the answer to the AUKUS mystery. Bollocks. Connecticut and Virginia can't make them fast enough for their own demand, let alone give us 5.
The best outcome here is the Osborne shipyards resourcing up hard to manufacture these bad boys in SA, and the reactors being shipped as a plug in unit from the states. The bigger challenge however will be recruitment and training of enough sailors to crew these beasts.
Crazier, yes. Trying to do an on-the-fly custom design was why the French option was taking so long and costing so much. You'd have to ask yourself whether the bozos in charge didn't learn anything from the experience, except for the nagging suspicion that they really like it to be that way. It's not their money, or time.
Eh it’s only 15 billion or so. Biden is handing out weapons and our money like candy. Good to be a defense contractor nowadays. Everybody will be arming up for yrs in this new Cold War.
...arming up for years... Yeah, people tend to do that when murderous psychos launch straight-up wars of conquest in the heart of Europe, complete with follow-on missions with secret police, arbitrary detentions, executions and deportations. Do us all a favor and read "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsyn, and then ask yourself if you'd like to live under such a system. Then compare life under the Soviet Union with the US and you'll understand what tyranny actually is. Sorry. Biden, the "deep state," and the Democratic Party ain't it.
Are half a dozen subs going to make that much difference? There's quite a bit of coastline to cover, and I'm pretty sure, economic decline or not, that China has/will have more than that, and not just one or two more, twenty or thirty years more.
And why the fuck does it take so long to build one?
This is all such a frustrating clustfuck of international handjobs that it makes my teeth itch.
Starting from... if we wanted nuke subs so bad why not just.. stop converting the french nuke sub into a diesel one??
Indeed. Part of the problem is the broken culture of defence acquisition. Because the ADF and its parent department are so used to thinking of themselves as providing small batch artisanal high end defence services to the US, they can't break out of the the mini-me mindset that involves. Example. Spending tens of millions of dollars to buy three, count them, three Reaper drones, when what they need are hundreds, if not thousands of cheap disposables like the flat packed cardboard drones we've been sending to the Ukrainians.
The subservience to the US is the bit that's doing my head in. I'm not sure that being Uncle Sam's deputy sheriff is the guaranteed security blanket that the powers that be think it is, especially if Trump or an heir of Trump ends up in charge again.
Buying a handful of subs to wage a cold war against our biggest trading partner seems counterproductive if nothing else. China doesn't have to go to war to hurt us, they just need to stop buying our stuff, and worse yet stop shipping their stuff to us. Our economy would collapse almost overnight.
Yeah, this whole situation makes my head hurt. Also, the US seems to have a strong subgroup of folks who think Wendell Willkie should have won in 1940, and maybe it's not such a bad thing to let murderous freaks destroy the post-1945 world order.
Different power architecture, apparently. The US (and UK? not sure about that) subs are fueled for their working life at the point of construction. Nuclear waste disposal is part of the decommissioning process. In the mean time the sub can be run by a country that doesn't have a domestic nuclear fuel production industry.
The French nuclear subs have a different philosophy, and need periodic refueling, which is OK if you have a domestic nuclear industry like France, but not much use for Australia.
Or so I've read.
Thats the most positive explanation I have heard for this so far. I had thought this nuclear sub proposal was a way to shoehorn Australia into having to accept a nuclear power industry. Still think this is a massive waste of $$$$ that could be spent on much better ideas.
Also I doubt that the French subs had quite the same level of five-eyes-based subservience to the US command infrastructures as whatever these ones will have. These will be "fully integrated" (with US Pacific fleet operations) apparently.
I asked this as well. Short answer is the French SSNs need to have their reactors refuelled in 25 years, in France. The US (and I assume the UK) SSNs don't need to have this done.
No, no. You misread it John. It said the submarines are going to be made by 7 nude spear-powered virgins in a TAFE class. That’s all the budget can afford.
I've been writing for a while over on Interstellar that our procurement system is hopelessly dysfunctional and needs to be fixed yesterday. Billions are spent either on useless toys or boondoggles designed to bring home the bacon for politicians. We can't afford this bullshit anymore, and it's going to hit us between the eyes like a two-by-four.
I need to read a bit more, but isn't the Brit design still only in the design phase and not yet an actual boat? The Virginia class is the ducks nuts when it comes to nuke boats, and the force projection it brings is superior. Yes, yes concerns about 'integration' into the US systems, but I'm willing to bet London to a brick that the 'source' behind this purchase of 5 boats from the US is someone in Dutton's office stirring up shit. The great potato himself was in the media making claims that he knew the answer to the AUKUS mystery. Bollocks. Connecticut and Virginia can't make them fast enough for their own demand, let alone give us 5.
The best outcome here is the Osborne shipyards resourcing up hard to manufacture these bad boys in SA, and the reactors being shipped as a plug in unit from the states. The bigger challenge however will be recruitment and training of enough sailors to crew these beasts.
China will be more dangerous, but soldiers so old they need walkers and wheel-chairs to get around will not be.
Crazier, yes. Trying to do an on-the-fly custom design was why the French option was taking so long and costing so much. You'd have to ask yourself whether the bozos in charge didn't learn anything from the experience, except for the nagging suspicion that they really like it to be that way. It's not their money, or time.
Eh it’s only 15 billion or so. Biden is handing out weapons and our money like candy. Good to be a defense contractor nowadays. Everybody will be arming up for yrs in this new Cold War.
...arming up for years... Yeah, people tend to do that when murderous psychos launch straight-up wars of conquest in the heart of Europe, complete with follow-on missions with secret police, arbitrary detentions, executions and deportations. Do us all a favor and read "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsyn, and then ask yourself if you'd like to live under such a system. Then compare life under the Soviet Union with the US and you'll understand what tyranny actually is. Sorry. Biden, the "deep state," and the Democratic Party ain't it.
I don’t believe I mentioned either the “ deep state “ or the deomocratic party slick.
Probs relying on top notch intel from PDuddy.
Are half a dozen subs going to make that much difference? There's quite a bit of coastline to cover, and I'm pretty sure, economic decline or not, that China has/will have more than that, and not just one or two more, twenty or thirty years more.
And why the fuck does it take so long to build one?