Aukus had a less than immaculate conception. It was conceived in secrecy and born in haste, a tribute to political opportunism and a travesty of disciplined planning. The enthusiasm of theatrical announcements notwithstanding, it was in trouble from the beginning. The US Navy had serious doubts about both the ability of US shipbuilders to deliver submarines in any workable timeframe and the ability of the Royal Australian Navy to integrate and operate them. That was not a question of trust but of capacity – on both sides.
And, of course, experienced and well-informed Australian defence planners rang the warning bells from the beginning.
Isn’t that the subs that France would have already delivered years ago for a fraction of the price, had Australia not cancelled the contract to order American subs that everyone told them would be late and over budget ?
Yeah it’s a real shame the French tried to fuck us over and change the original deal or else we’d still be doing business with them.
All I can find is that the costs followed inflation as expected. And, yeah there were some delays but getting full sovereignty over the construction of your military submarines at the end of the contract is kind of a fucking amazing deal (because that was the end goal there, the transfer of technologies, including state of the art, silent non-nuclear propulsion and various other top secret shit, so Australia could ultimately build their own subs “with total sovereignty”, according to the deal). I see zero mention of the terms of the contract changing after its signing apart from that.
And if you think that’s bad I’ve got some news for you about the delays and costs of that AUKUS thing…
Edit : Also I doubt the next prime minister would have paid us $555 millions for breaking the contract if we were in the wrong here ?
Edit 2 : while researching the edit above, I found out that the AUKUS subs are nuclear powered ?? When a big part of the original deal was that Australia wanted non nuclear subs (All the ones we have in France are nuclear powered, so surely it would have been a lot easier to make one). Nah I’m sorry, you played yourselves and now you’re mad at us somehow ?
Yep, those are the subs in question. A poor substitution at the time when it would have cost less just to swap to the French nuclear subs they initially offered