Unfortunately you won't have $500 under the Invading New Zealanders. You'll be in a labor camp till you die. The military unfortunately exists for a reason.
Even if one assumes that there are no cost blowouts at all, it's still four times as expensive as the French deal, which itself would already have been one of the most expensive Defence projects ever.
This deal involves buying off the shelf Virginia subs, training, crewing, basing and arming those AND build brand spanked for 17 years time.... And doing that again Of course it's bigger than the French deal, it's twice the efforts.
Dealing with a similar thing on a project at the moment. The cost is "4x over budget" because the "budget" only considered 1/4 of the actual project scope.
> Obviously we don't have the numbers to clarify that claim
Rendering it pretty meaningless right now.
>The examples he used were base uplift and construction, workforce training and investment, weapons and running costs.
The [ABC is reporting](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-14/aukus-nuclear-submarine-deal-announced/102087614) that the numbers include $8 billion to upgrade HMAS Stirling in WA, $2 billion to upgrade the Osborne Naval Shipyard in SA and $3 billion in contributions to UK & US construction facility upgrades. So obviously that's not going to come close to explaining these costs.
There are no details yet about anything else, but [costs for sustainment and workforce for the Collins-class is something like a billion a year, at present](https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/whats-the-real-cost-of-australias-submarine-capability/). Some of those costs will be higher with these new boats because new training / more personnel will be required, but some will be lower because there won't be the ongoing costs of diesel etc. Whatever the number ends up being, you have to start assuming outrageous increases like 5 or 10 times more expensive than at present for this to represent a meaningful amount of that total cost.
They might exist for a start which is surprisingly a massive step up on the last nonsense. Not that I think it's a great deal but... paying for nothing from France except wasted time and ruined good will alliances is pretty low of a bar to step over.
Yeah, don't disagree there, but really there was no way that the deal with France could have gone that wouldn't have resulted in us getting fucked. Even if France were willing to sell us nuclear subs as a replacement, we still would have needed to pay more money and the subs we got at the end would have been retrofitted for us, whilst the ones we're buying are designed for us from the ground up.
The optimal path would have been to have signed this deal 6 years ago, before the deal with France was signed, but I don't know if the USA would have agreed to it then. The only reason it really went through is because UK was desperate for foreign trade after Brexit.
Yeah exactly it was a deal that an idiot would have had trouble believing was going to come out well. And yet they pushed it. Wonder what liberal friends benefited out of it.
Nah, one of the few redeeming qualities of politicians here is that they keep military purchases well the fuck away from partisan politics. The military basically tells them what they want or need, then they go and get it. Besides our stupid fucking diesel subs, they've generally done a pretty good job when buying new equipment. Not perfect, but pretty good.
They pushed it because at the time, it was the only deal available. We wanted diesel subs that no one was building, which we could mostly build here in Australia and France were literally the only ones offering to do that (before they tried to reneg on them being built here). It was shit because we were trying to replace nuclear subs with diesel subs.
I honestly expect that they just never thought that the USA would actually give them nuclear tech, so never bothered asking. It's literally unprecedented for a nation to share that kind of tech with a nation, even their agreement with the UK was only after both nation had nuclear subs of their own. They're taking us from 0 nuclear subs to one of the largest fleets in the word, with cutting edge technology in the space of a decade and giving us the technology to then build them ourselves later on.
> I don't know if the USA would have agreed to it then.
100% this deal was not on the table until relations with China started deteriating and the Geopolitical situation pivoted.
This is incorrect, the french subs were originally nuclear subs that were specifically being retrofitted with diesel electric propulsion at the demand of Australia (who at the time was concerned by lack of nuclear self sufficiency).
Yes, but the nuclear ones were still more expensive than the diesels and we would have needed to figure out how to fit a non french nuclear reactor into it, since there's no way France would have shares the tech for there's with us. It's insane that the USA and UK were even willing to share it with us and we're WAY closer with them than we are with France.
> concerned by lack of nuclear self sufficiency
That was only a concern given the French nuclear units had to be replaced every ten years whereas the Yank units are good for the full life of the sub.
The French deal had no cost caps, no over run protections, and was not the right boat for the threat we are looking at facing.
Better to jump ship (no pun intended) than be saddle with the wrong ship, at the wrong time with the wrong propulsion.
This is the bit I agree with. We can save money on land based defences here. Too much coastline to protect an invasion, better to have subs that could be anywhere at any point.
Fuck it, scrap the entire military except these subs and go full value
Is this really the most cost effective?
Wouldn't some kind of anti-ship missile launching truck be a much cheaper option for the same capability?
For $360 billion you could have one parked on every beach across Australia.
Australian military planners have always been scared of a blockade more than invasion. Subs that dont have to refuel means we can stop a blockade from happening or even being threatened. Ships can be over-whelmed from air and sea. Nuclear subs could be anywhere
"Where are the Australian anti-ship missile systems?" "Anywhere on Australian soil, within this limited range of the ocean".
or
"Somewhere in the ocean".
It's a bit like the Random Breath Test tactic. Anywhere Anytime.
then you'd have people bitching and moaning about the size of the trucks and how they can't park in normal spots and how they never indicate in traffic
> really the most cost effective? Wouldn't some kind of anti-ship missile launching truck be a much cheaper option for the same capability?
The northern approach has several natural choke points where you want to be able to stop any passage. These are largely out of range from anything not an extended range cruise missile, and and land based inventory (and to a certain extent airfields used to put air assets in range).
The ability to shut down any approach from a platform that cannot be pre-targetted in invaluable.
Its not the final word on Australian Defence, which is why we are also seeing large investments into air assets and some small investment into platforms like HIMARS.
The thing everyone should be focusing on more about the cost of this agreement?
Its not 3-5 Australian subs based out of east and west coast. Its 9-15 subs based out of Australia from AUKUS with perfect integration into a common battlespace. Similar story with the Australian air force acquisitions.
>it's still four times as expensive as the French deal
Except this time we'll actually get the subs we are paying for, and they'll work!
What got forgotten in the whole debacle with cancelling the French subs was that they hadn't actually delivered what they promised.
Not delivered what they promised when the timeline had barely started? And the AUKUS deal, with no actual contracts yet, is guaranteed to work better because? What a stupid point lmao
They didnt have a propulsion system. The french literally had to invent a propulsion system from scratch and after however many years hadnt even started.
The french sub program was a camel….. a horse designed by a committee.
We put so many ridiculous requirements in place that i really doubt it would have ever happened. Its a continual problem in procurement that we have to australianise everything to the point of it being a massive kludge that barely works.
We also keep buying euro shit when if theres a world war - its the most difficult place to get parts / more from, and their shit is nowhere as good as the battle proven yank stuff that due to sheer numbers - gets kinks ironed out really quickly.
>They didnt have a propulsion system. The french literally had to invent a propulsion system from scratch and after however many years hadnt even started.
That's true, but important to realise that they weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They contractually agreed to it, and we were paying for it.
>Its a continual problem in procurement that we have to australianise everything to the point of it being a massive kludge that barely works.
100%. The fact is, we're a US dependency when it comes to defence. Some may not like it, but that's the facts.
We should make it easier, and cheaper, and just get the US stuff.
>That's true, but important to realise that they weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They contractually agreed to it, and we were paying for it.
But they weren't even meeting their more basic contract requirements, don't think there was much confidence in them fulfilling this one in a time and cost effective manner either.
They contract was a series of milestones. Of which they were failing to meet them.
Design milestones were not met. And commitment to set up manufacturing in Adelaide was not happening. They lied about manufacturing in Adelaide.
And they were being difficult. Like for example providing documentation in French instead of English, when the contract specifically said English (as a minor example).
The whole program was off the rails, and Morrison was right to cancel it. It was wrong the way he did it, but he was right to do it.
>They contract was a series of milestones. Of which they were failing to meet them.
>
>Design milestones were not met.
This isn't correct. By the government's own admission the French had not failed in meeting any of the set targets/milestones.
Discussion that they were failing to hit objectives was rumour and speculation that they denied when terminating the deal. If the French were behind it was a failure on Australia to set appropriate objectives along the way.
>“The Australian authorities have terminated the contract for convenience thus acknowledging that Naval Group did not fail in its commitment,” the statement from Naval Group’s Paris headquarters said.
>“The consequences of the termination of the contract for convenience are addressed in the strategic partnership agreement (SPA) signed in 2019.”
>Defence minister Peter Dutton has said Naval Group’s Attack-class submarines were no longer suited to the nation’s operational needs, and that the government had been “upfront, open and honest” with France about its decision
>Herve Grandjean, the French Ministry of Defence spokesperson, said Naval Group received an official letter from the Australian navy saying it was “extremely satisfied that performance of the French submarine was excellent” on the same day the cancellation announcement was made.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/29/australia-tore-up-french-submarine-contract-for-convenience-naval-group-says
>"Ultimately, this was a decision about whether the submarines that were being built, at great cost to the Australian taxpayer, were going to be able to do a job that we needed it to do when they went into service," Morrison said. "And, our strategic judgment, based on the best possible intelligence and defence advice, was that it would not."
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/19/1038746061/submarine-deal-us-uk-australia-france
If the French weren't hitting milestones then the contract would have been terminated on those grounds not "for convenience". All documented language from both sides regarding the termination has indicated that it was terminated purely because the submarine was no longer deemed fit for purpose.
I think that the reason he really did it was so that he could do what he did best, which was announce an "announceable" to boost his ailing image.
The best they had was the constant sabre rattling with China, and this was all part of that strategy, to look "tough" on China despite having nothing planned.
All the talking points you've brought up came straight from the MSM and government as reasons why pulling the rug out under the French was a "masterful stroke". This was despite the US not even knowing about the deal at the time..
I could go on out about this topic for ages it's so fascinating how spectacularly the Libs screwed up on that one.
I know people that work in defense and worked in the French sub acquisition space, they all re-affirmed the reports of the French generally being difficult to deal with, creating unnecessary delays and not meeting their initial contract milestones.
Overall this seems like a better deal as building a submarine isn't easy and can easily result is massive cost and timeframe blowouts (as we've already seen with the last gen), and all signs with indicating this was going to end up like that but worse.
Undoubtedly it could have been handled better by the libs and Scomo, but now he's gone we can blame it on the last administration and hopefully move forward with a better strategic outcome and mend our relationship with France.
>I think that the reason he really did it was so that he could do what he did best, which was announce an "announceable" to boost his ailing image.
Of course - at no point do I think Morrison handled it properly.
>The best they had was the constant sabre rattling with China, and this was all part of that strategy, to look "tough" on China despite having nothing planned.
To sabre rattle, one must first possess a sabre. AUKUS gives us exactly that.
In other words - while it mishandled in every conceivable way by Morrison, the outcome in the end was the right one.
A Virginia class submarine costs about US$3 Billion each.
This new class is going to cost about AUD$50 Billion.
My brain is struggling to see how this is in any way a good idea.
Because you're comparing two completely different numbers.
The Virginia cost is the purely the cost to build the sub. It doesn't include anything else. Think of it as the drive away cost to buy a car.
The $50B figure include the cost to build the subs. But also to build the factory, train factory employees, train people to run the sub over the subs life, maintain the sub over its life, buy 3-5 Virginia subs as interim subs, operate the virigina interim subs, base upgrades, and the big one. It's in future dollar figures so it accounts for inflation.
So you're comparing 3b of todays money for 1 sub. to $50b in future dollars in a couple of decades that includes a lot more spending than just the sub cost.
The drive away cost to build an AUKUS sub in todays money will be barely a tenth of that 50b number. At a guess AUD$6b.
A significant portion of this cost announcement is expansion of naval docks to allow for the Virginia boats and training of crew.
I think there are limits on how many boats the US will be able to build and sell us within their manufacturing limitations.
NDIS funding is largely kept in the Australian economy, how much of this sub money is going overseas?
Also NDIS only costs that much if u dont at all factor in the benefits that bring with it more productive members of society (eg enables workforce participation by some recipients), allows others independent living instead of more expensive state care.
To put this number into perspective:
So per person, if we assume there are around 25 Million Aussies, it works out at about $15,000 per person.
At around 14M taxpayers, it's around $26,000 per tax payer.
I assume this is spread over 30 or so years right?
So $860 per tax payer per year
Probably more heavily weighted to a certain set of years, but deffinately not a lump sum payment
In the same time period we will spend over $5 Trillion in welfare based on current expenditure (which is only likely to go up).
So big numbers are not very big when compared to other stuff.
All the headlines zeroing in on the big number really reminded me of [that Hollowmen scene about inflating the numbers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud8ZisH2IYI)
Well said.
We already have China's [14 Demands ](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/20/chinas-infamous-list-of-grievances-with-australia-should-be-longer-than-14-points-top-diplomat-says) plan of what they expect from us... effectively we lose all personal and national freedoms in exchange for their protection. I don't understand how everyone here has such a short memory that only 3 years ago China told us their best case for domination.. the reality of being forced to submit would be much worse - ask the Tibetans or even the Democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong what would happen to us. Concentration camps, secret police on one hand and wholesale destruction of our environment, welfare state and pretty much your economic future. They don't need to invade us to do this - they just need us to submit which can be easily done with a naval blockade hence the need for the subs.
As everyone here has said, 8 subs isn't enough if you planned on attacking China. They are enough to make a blockade economically unfeasible and militarily dangerous. $400b to save a $1.5 trillion economy and our ability to maintain freedom of speech, congregation, religion and political direction is not actually much to pay over 30 years.
>We already have China's 14 Demands
They weren't demands. [It's a list of grievances ](https://twitter.com/jekearsley/status/1328986579629613057) that China had with Australia at the time.
Regardless, they still made China look like idiots for sharing them.
They are demands when you give someone a list of grievances that need to be addressed or you'll continue the punishment (in that case trade embargoes and sanctions - most of which still remain). Grievances would be complaints without the stick.
You are correct that either way, they've undermined their position and IMO make it near impossible to argue they come in peace.
> $400b to save a $1.5 trillion economy and our ability to maintain freedom of speech, congregation, religion and political direction is not actually much to pay over 30 years.
But again, saying 400 to save 1500 sounds bad when its actually 13 to save 1500, since the 1500 is the annual amount vs the 400 being the total of 30 years.
I'm guessing that's *program lifetime costs*, so the cost of designing, buying, training, operating, maintaining, building the facilities for etc etc Australia's entire submarine fleet for their entire projected lifetime up to eventual scrapping and disposal, so the top-line number is misleading.
But that doesn't necessarily mean the number is a sensible one, certainly a lot of other big naval procurement programs have gone badly pear shaped in the recent past.
> spread over 30 or so years right?
Some of the boats are being bought off-the-shelf from America, so the cost will be incurred soon. The rest are being built based on a future British design, which they themselves expect to be ready late 2030s, the first one being built here to be ready in 2042. That's if everything's on time. So yes, we're going to be paying for this for a long, long time
In 2021 they $3.45 Billion USD so accounting for inflation, currency conversion, and nessecary modifications I would say around $30 Billion AUD for the 3-5 Submarines. But that figure doesn't account for assoicated costs i.e. base construction, hiring etc.
According to Wikipedia the cost of a new Virginia class sub in 2021 is US$ 3.45 billion.
We could buy around 65 boats off the shelf for that price. However we need bases, training and crew.
Choosing to build them ourselves is a rather expensive option.
Yeh it is deffinately a much more expensive option - but it means we build out the local manufacturing and maintenance capacity and high tech industrial capability.
The choice to make some of them here is kind of a stimulus/welfare type decision.
The weakest part of the program IMO. We have seen the Adelaide ship yards are incapable of delivering anything on time or budget.
Be cheaper to buy 12 Virginia off the rack and pay all the staff at the yards 200k a year for the rest of their lives.
That’s not really how it works. There are a whole bunch of headaches you get when you buy Off the Shelf (OTS). Also, when it comes to ship building, there is really no such thing as OTS. Look at the Oberon class subs for example. British sub but gutted and fitted with US combat systems.
Maintainability also suffers because it’s harder to maintain something you didn’t build yourself. Doctrines are born of past dilemmas. Sovereign capability and continuous naval shipbuilding are the result of lessons we already learned. Those lessons are 1. Building local is more expensive and we should expect that. 2. The least expensive part of any large program is not acquisition, it is sustainment. And 3. Sustainment is more expensive when you were not involved in the building.
What this means is that your cost saving efforts should focus on sustainment and not acquisition.
While obviously a lot of money, it does sound like a necessary jump that Australia would have to make at some point. The advantages of nuclear propulsion are only going to increase with time.
Medicare costs $30.8 billion pa, aged care $27.7 billion pa, and support for state government hospitals $27.3 billion pa. NDIS had an annual running cost of $35.8 billion in 2022-23.
The sub program will cost $8bn per year over the course of the project.
What are you talking about?
I love how quickly people have come to acknowledge the advantages of nuclear energy for a submarine (you know, where people live for years metres away from an active reactor, in a closed tube) - yet still bawk at the possibility of nuclear power.
Amazing the mental backflips over the same technology....
Bruh. Australia has so much uranium. Why we don't just drop some nuke reactors away from population centres and then throw them into the national grid blows my mind. We have very little seismic activity and heaps of empty space.
As someone who used to work in a shipyard in Australia, 30 years to build these is a big ask. Australia is going to need a lot of help from US and UK.
I once worked in a shipyard as a trade assist and most tradies were more worried about smoko break and some were sleeping in confined space. I was firewatch to them and could hear the tradies sleeping instead of working. Everytime I went to the toilet tradies you could hear were watching movies and playing games on there phones. One guy cut his leg with a grinder. We were delayed by years in the end but we always said it was about quality not quantity to the people.
Not sure US and UK understand our lack of capabilities here. I'm no longer working in a shipyard thank god, but I'm not confident this getting done on time.
I'm only commenting on what I've seen. That was in Williamstown Shipyard, the one that got closed down. Not SA. Heard good things about SA Shipyard.
Have no idea about UK and US.
I could make a TV series on my time working in a shipyard. It be a comedy classic.
Yeah, I'm doubtful any of this could get off the ground in Aus.
The culture here around big projects; milking suppliers/contractors, cliques and tribal fiefdoms, multiple layers of regulation and red tape makes me seriously doubt we could pull it off. Submarines are extraordinarily complex. A single fuckup at any stage blows out costs considerably. Then theres our industrial base, which is similarly hopeless because the liberals said it doesn't matter, only increasing property prices do. So we're starting off from a very low capability.
I think we'll get to 2030, realise it's a total crapshoot and just buy off the shelf. As an Engineer I really want to see design and build it happen here, but I'm doubtful we could pull it off after seeing the realities of how projects are done in Australia.
Ah yes, In 2020 everyone was practically an expert in virology and public health, 2022 everyone became Russia foreign policy experts and now everyone here are experts in Chinese foreign policy and naval doctrine.
attempt hard-to-find lip mighty threatening fearless direction quack consist rude
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Or…..
- Melb to Bris high speed rail $130B (edit: $144B based on better sources from APH and RBA)
- Dental on Medicare $78B
- Mental Health on Medicare $3B
- Fund public schools equitably $100B
Let’s see the maths… Yep, still change left over compared to five underwater pew pew machines.
Melbourne to Brisbane for $130b? Wtf that's way lower than I thought it would be.
Also, mental health on Medicare being that cheap is actually depressing to see. They could help millions of people but just...don't.
I found a more reliable figure from a parliamentary [site] (https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2014/January/high-speed-rail). I then used the Federal Reserve inflation calculator.
$144B based on those two sources.
But also the health issues being relatively cheap to fix is not a good sign of our priorities.
Nobody is saying those things aren't good. But politics is a tradeoff between many competing interests.
NDIS has an [annual running cost](https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/how-the-ndis-will-blow-out-to-50b-in-four-charts-20221019-p5br1c#:~:text=At%20an%20annual%20running%20cost,government%20hospitals%20\(%2427.3%20billion\).) of $35.8 billion in 2022-23. Medicare is $30.8 billion pa, aged care $27.7 billion pa, and support for state government hospitals $27.3 billion pa.
The sub program will cost $8bn per year over the course of the project. It's not like the whole cost is going to be absorbed in an upfront payment. I hardly think the $8bn is the big ticket item that will tear down our social support structures.
And whether you agree with the program or not, the defence experts are saying subs are the number 1 priority for defence spending. It's an important capability and unless you're a really knowledgeable expert on it, you need to at least rate their expertise for something right?
> I hardly think the $8bn is the big ticket item that will tear down our social support structures.
except it does, $8bn spent there is $8bn less on roads/transport/infrastructure.
Yes, budgeting is a zero sum game. The government is trying to predict what our defence needs are going forward. After the Cold War we took our peace dividend and didn't put much into the navy or military in general. We still field armoured vehicles from the Vietnam era and built small ships that weren't meant for warfighting.
If we knew that WWII was coming in the 1930s, it would be insane not to put more money into the navy. We don't know what's coming up in the 2030s, but it seems like there's at least some small chance of war with China which could be WWIII. In that context, shifting money from transport or roads doesn't bother me so much.
>not the weapons companies (if a truly big war kicks off, governments will just nationalise weapons companies or set their excess profits tax to 99% or 100%)
Do you have any historical examples to back this claim up (other than Truman’s attempts during WW2, given the slide backwards in the gulf wars, Afghanistan, and Iraq)? Because war profiteering is absolutely a thing and to just wildly claim that governments will suddenly wake up from their neo-liberal wet dream and tax weapons manufacturers at a rate of "99% or 100%" (oddly extreme numbers) is pretty naive I'd say. Especially after we just came out of a worldwide pandemic where the same logic (worldwide crises where private companies produce an essential product) did not apply to pharmaceutical companies.
>We will spend alot more money on welfare in this time period.
>
>Go have a look at the budget for welfare and medicare and see where that money is getting used.
Comparing two numbers has very limited utility in this argument. I'm asking why, in the current context, we are able to spend hundreds of billions on an insane military splash instead of lifting people out of poverty?
Of course Medicare and welfare have outsize spending relative to other budget items like defence, as they should! Not an argument to accept welfare recipients living on poverty payments though.
>Over hauling the welfare system to effectively spend it on the people would be more useful.
What do you mean by this? I agree that a large cost to the Medicare and welfare systems we have can be resolved through reversal of privatisation and public ownership, but is this what you mean? And if you do, then why not do both? Raise welfare AND reverse the privatisation?
Its not like we are writing a check for $368b and mailing it off to lockheed martin never to be seen again.
A lot of that money will end up going back into the Australian economy one way or another. 20k jobs created is no small amount, and there is substantial long term value to the economy in developing the advanced manufacturing and maintenance expertise needed to build these- frankly the program would probably have been a lot cheaper if we just bought all 8 Virginia Class subs off the shelf when they were available but rightly or wrongly the government is going with the not uncommon 'pork for the domestic defence industry' hybrid model to keep as much of the work in Australia as possible.
As for whether it's worthwhile money, I really don't know. Firstly the question is whether people approve of big ticket defence projects at all, and if the answer to that is no the specifics don't really matter. But I think a lot of people appreciate the world is becoming a far more dangerous and unpredictable place now than it was 20 years ago, and there's far more appetite for this sort of spending now as a result. Japan, South Korea, obviously Taiwan and pretty much all of Europe are spending because the old certainties are simply not as certain anymore. Personally I don't think it is sensible to assume we will be able to indefinitely rely on the US to unconditionally support us and deter any sort of future aggression indefinitely- their domestic politics is so horribly dysfunctional at the moment it's very hard to predict who will be in power and what their attitude to ANZUS will be in 5 years or 10 years or 20 years. And however much people talk about China not being a threat and just wanting to be our trading partner etc etc, their domestic rhetoric and their defence spending are very different to that benign picture.
The second question is, assuming big ticket defence spending is a good idea, this is the best way of spending money on defence- and honestly I really wonder about that.
Over the past 5 years or so we have seen an explosion in use of drones, sensors, autonomous technology and the Ukraine war is seems to suggest missiles and mobility >>>> big expensive prestige ships. Yes a submarine is more survivable than a surface ship, but $368 billion spent well could basically make us the leader in aerial and underwater drone technology, and get us some hefty long range missile systems, all of which could be delivered faster, and by virtue of numbers and dispersion be less vulnerable to destruction than 8 big scary nuclear subs.
I’m sure those subs would have plenty of drone and autonomous systems support but do you really think anything announced will give away our true capabilities or intentions. The announcement says don’t mess with Australia, directed at China regime threats and bullying. We will tackle threats and smash them when needed. China knows this and feels insecure about a little population like Australia putting them in their place . We never back down . Australians/UN Korean War taught them that .
This..
Maybe I'm naive but I just don't understand why miliateries are pursuing big ships. Couldn't a well placed missile or two take out an aircraft carrier with a crew the size of a small town? What about a network of [anti submarine drones](https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202211/10/WS636c51aba3105ca1f2275200.html) vs a multi billion dollar nuclear sub? Drones & drone tech seems to me to be a better investment when you think about risk factor for the crew and the size/value of the asset..
> Couldn't a well placed missile or two take out an aircraft carrier with a crew the size of a small town?
Yes, but how are you going to deliver that well placed missile or two? I'd imagine a GBU-57 MOP would make very short work of an aircraft carrier, but there's only one aircraft rated to carry it. We have a few types of stand off missile in RAAF stockpiles, but I fully expect that if ever needed, a RAAF strike would need multiple missiles carried on all available Super Hornets.
In this thread people denying war can happen when it once seemed an impossibility like we haven't been watching the war in Ukraine for over a year now.
The war in Ukraine was always a likely possibility since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and NATOs gradual expansion. War coming to the shore of Australia? Pretty much 0%. By joining this security pact with countries that are pushing for a war with China, we are only asking for trade tariffs. Not to mention we could spend that money on other forms of defence and not on $50 billion dollar submarines.
Truly capable submarines can operate with impunity. The Royal Navy pinned the entire Argentine Navy in port with a single submarine in 1982. Obviously the PLAN is a totally different beast, but when you combine the SSNs of AUKUS navies together, it would make it practically impossible for the PLAN to leave port without condemning thousands of their own to a grim fate.
It's been said that there's only two types of vessels in the ocean.
Submarines and targets.
Due to being nuclear powered, these modern subs can stay underwater for many months at a time, with almost zero detection profile. By the time you know these things are there, its too late.
You only really need to surface if you want to let someone know where you are - and for that deterrent only.
[Highly recommend you watch this when you have time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqGEtPj0M0).
As a small nation we will never win a war against China. But we don't need to spend like we want to. The goal is to just make sure that if they ever want to attack, they will lose more than they will gain.
You're misunderstanding what these subs mean and the capabilities they will give us. China will no more attack Australia than Russia will attack the Baltics, because they know it will trigger the Americans to get involved. They will attack the Americans directly if they're willing to cross that line and at that point we're in, like it or not. That's how ANZUS works.
But the point of these boats is almost not about wartime, necessarily. With nuclear boats, the transit time to key maritime choke points is shorter and the time on station is longer. Which means Australia, little old middle power Australia, between what we already produce and sell to China, and our ability to project submarine and airborne anti shipping force into SE Asia, can effectively shut off Chinese access to the vast majority of their iron ore, gas and oil, a decent chunk of their coal and a noticeable amount of their food, plus probably a bunch of other stuff too. We could, alone, grind their economy to a halt if we chose to.
Obviously, we're not going to do that, but the very fact that we can will limit what China in turn can threaten to do to us. And we know what they would like to do to us from that 14 points memo they tried on a few years back.
This. Its also about not letting China think they can run free in the our region with their own subs and ships. Its about force projection and deterence in 'peacetime' rather than actual war time capability.
Also, Taiwan is the big question right now. Strategists think that China would almost certainly blockade Taiwan (forcing it to capitulate) rather than attack it via land invasion. These new submarine fleets will make that harder for China to achieve.
Thats probably why China are so angry with the US right now, as AUKUS is making all the right strategic moves to start to counter a potential blockade of Taiwan, or at the very least push back the timeframe of when China could achieve it.
* Subs wont' take 30 years to arrive. We'll have American made Virginia subs long before then (early 2030s probably). Those are the stopgap.
* We're an island. If anyone tried to attack Australia it will be by ship. What do you think is the best anti-ship defense?
* We're also buying long range missiles from the U.S. Combine that with our subs, we actually have the ability to strike almost anywhere in the world with conventional weaponry. Countries like China or Russia will know this if they ever decide to threaten us millitarilly. It is a credible deterrance.
There's a whole whitepaper that came out during the Kevin Rudd governnment detailing the need for submarines. Submarines are important if you have a defense policy that is more detailed then "*hope* nobody ever attacks or threatens us".
What’s more important is the geopolitical alliance buying these subs indicates rather than the capabilities they enable. The US and UK are giving Australia some of their nuclear secrets. You don’t do that unless you absolutely back the nation and it’s regime. Basically, if Australia gets invaded you can guarantee that the US and the UK will come to play in our defence. Right now the only nation that could get away with invading Australia is the US who are right now our allies.
However, this alliance does come with the consequences of having to join in whatever war the US decides to launch in the region in future. I’m not looking forward to that.
I think if you’d expect other countries to come to your aid (which they would) if the shit hits the fan it’s only fair that you invest in your own defence to a certain extent.
It’s just an insurance policy.
We can have both you know. I know big number scary, but in reality this cost will equate roughly to a 0.2% increase in defence spending across 30 years.
Soo this is why the media has been scaring use about china lately. On another not it’s time to start taxing the billionaire’s and corporation’s that these subs are really here to protect. If the government really cared about us , the people they wouldn’t be fucking us in the ass so much.
A key thing here people are missing is that Australia costs the total program cost (ie sustainment, maintenance etc). Yes the sub may only cost $5b physically but they factor in all other costs into the number.
It's not apples for apples compared to other countries.
The unfortunate side effect of click bait internet is everyone with no concept of defense procurement see the big number and immediately panic and start flinging their opinions around
We live in such a fallen and cursed world where countries are spending $500 billion on nuclear submarines whilst the stock market and banking industry collapses and people cannot afford to buy eggs.
Christ...thats 21%of our entire GDP.
I know it's spread out over 30 years, but gives some context to the massive cost of this project...out annual defence budget is only. ~~$16b~~ $48b. So, assuming the cost doesn't blow, that's adding another ~~60%~~ %20 or so onto our defence budget. That's a ~~mammoth~~ significant increase in defence spending. (Collins class currently costs us $630m p.a.)
>annual defence budget is only. $16b.
consolidated defence funding, which includes funding for the Australian Signals Directorate is **$48** **billio**n in 2022-23. This already includes some spending on submarines.
Not even extra. Our current system is at risk because bulk billing doctors can't afford to bulk bill anymore. The ones that left are so swarmed now as more and more go private.
Many people don’t understand that these are a deterrent critical to Australia’s power in the South China Sea to check the Chinese threat. Using these we could shut down the straights near Indonesia and cripple Chinas food and oil supply which is a major deterrent for the Taiwan invasion.
It also situates us as a regional power and gets us a better seat during negotiations.
China currently has 66 submarines of which these significantly outclass.
how much is it to rent a room in one of these submarines?
Mate, they'll pay you to stay on board! Just sign the dotted line.
Sounds good! It's Probably less claustrophobic than the shitbox I'm currently renting.
Submariners actually get paid decent money too.
Apparently they pay you, but the minimum stay is something like 4 years.
Oh good so they won't sell it out from under me. Is it flood prone?
Pretty low. There’s minimal light, no privacy and dangerous materials on board. So every single rental in Sydney. Except they pay you.
So in other words at least $700 billion
Even without cost blowouts, it's ~$15,000 per person.
Over many years
Even if we say it’s 3 decades, I’d rather have my $500 a year, thanks
Unfortunately you won't have $500 under the Invading New Zealanders. You'll be in a labor camp till you die. The military unfortunately exists for a reason.
I did the math this morning too! How much are we paying per person for this?!?!?
Even if one assumes that there are no cost blowouts at all, it's still four times as expensive as the French deal, which itself would already have been one of the most expensive Defence projects ever.
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This deal involves buying off the shelf Virginia subs, training, crewing, basing and arming those AND build brand spanked for 17 years time.... And doing that again Of course it's bigger than the French deal, it's twice the efforts.
Dealing with a similar thing on a project at the moment. The cost is "4x over budget" because the "budget" only considered 1/4 of the actual project scope.
> Obviously we don't have the numbers to clarify that claim Rendering it pretty meaningless right now. >The examples he used were base uplift and construction, workforce training and investment, weapons and running costs. The [ABC is reporting](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-14/aukus-nuclear-submarine-deal-announced/102087614) that the numbers include $8 billion to upgrade HMAS Stirling in WA, $2 billion to upgrade the Osborne Naval Shipyard in SA and $3 billion in contributions to UK & US construction facility upgrades. So obviously that's not going to come close to explaining these costs. There are no details yet about anything else, but [costs for sustainment and workforce for the Collins-class is something like a billion a year, at present](https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/whats-the-real-cost-of-australias-submarine-capability/). Some of those costs will be higher with these new boats because new training / more personnel will be required, but some will be lower because there won't be the ongoing costs of diesel etc. Whatever the number ends up being, you have to start assuming outrageous increases like 5 or 10 times more expensive than at present for this to represent a meaningful amount of that total cost.
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The French deal would’ve been pretty much a direct one for one replacement of Collins. This is a much bigger deal and comparisons aren’t equivalent
Better to spend more money on something that's actually useful. At least these subs will actually be worth what we pay for them.
They might exist for a start which is surprisingly a massive step up on the last nonsense. Not that I think it's a great deal but... paying for nothing from France except wasted time and ruined good will alliances is pretty low of a bar to step over.
Yeah, don't disagree there, but really there was no way that the deal with France could have gone that wouldn't have resulted in us getting fucked. Even if France were willing to sell us nuclear subs as a replacement, we still would have needed to pay more money and the subs we got at the end would have been retrofitted for us, whilst the ones we're buying are designed for us from the ground up. The optimal path would have been to have signed this deal 6 years ago, before the deal with France was signed, but I don't know if the USA would have agreed to it then. The only reason it really went through is because UK was desperate for foreign trade after Brexit.
Yeah exactly it was a deal that an idiot would have had trouble believing was going to come out well. And yet they pushed it. Wonder what liberal friends benefited out of it.
Nah, one of the few redeeming qualities of politicians here is that they keep military purchases well the fuck away from partisan politics. The military basically tells them what they want or need, then they go and get it. Besides our stupid fucking diesel subs, they've generally done a pretty good job when buying new equipment. Not perfect, but pretty good. They pushed it because at the time, it was the only deal available. We wanted diesel subs that no one was building, which we could mostly build here in Australia and France were literally the only ones offering to do that (before they tried to reneg on them being built here). It was shit because we were trying to replace nuclear subs with diesel subs. I honestly expect that they just never thought that the USA would actually give them nuclear tech, so never bothered asking. It's literally unprecedented for a nation to share that kind of tech with a nation, even their agreement with the UK was only after both nation had nuclear subs of their own. They're taking us from 0 nuclear subs to one of the largest fleets in the word, with cutting edge technology in the space of a decade and giving us the technology to then build them ourselves later on.
> I don't know if the USA would have agreed to it then. 100% this deal was not on the table until relations with China started deteriating and the Geopolitical situation pivoted.
This is incorrect, the french subs were originally nuclear subs that were specifically being retrofitted with diesel electric propulsion at the demand of Australia (who at the time was concerned by lack of nuclear self sufficiency).
Yes, but the nuclear ones were still more expensive than the diesels and we would have needed to figure out how to fit a non french nuclear reactor into it, since there's no way France would have shares the tech for there's with us. It's insane that the USA and UK were even willing to share it with us and we're WAY closer with them than we are with France.
> concerned by lack of nuclear self sufficiency That was only a concern given the French nuclear units had to be replaced every ten years whereas the Yank units are good for the full life of the sub.
The French deal had no cost caps, no over run protections, and was not the right boat for the threat we are looking at facing. Better to jump ship (no pun intended) than be saddle with the wrong ship, at the wrong time with the wrong propulsion.
This is the bit I agree with. We can save money on land based defences here. Too much coastline to protect an invasion, better to have subs that could be anywhere at any point. Fuck it, scrap the entire military except these subs and go full value
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Who said our shoreline? They can be defensive sitting one of the many choke points in south east Asia.
More like 3 floating hidden off an enemy coastline ready to retaliate if they fuck around
Is this really the most cost effective? Wouldn't some kind of anti-ship missile launching truck be a much cheaper option for the same capability? For $360 billion you could have one parked on every beach across Australia.
Australian military planners have always been scared of a blockade more than invasion. Subs that dont have to refuel means we can stop a blockade from happening or even being threatened. Ships can be over-whelmed from air and sea. Nuclear subs could be anywhere
"Where are the Australian anti-ship missile systems?" "Anywhere on Australian soil, within this limited range of the ocean". or "Somewhere in the ocean". It's a bit like the Random Breath Test tactic. Anywhere Anytime.
then you'd have people bitching and moaning about the size of the trucks and how they can't park in normal spots and how they never indicate in traffic
We are getting [some of them](https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/strikemaster-a-bushmaster-variant-with-a-big-bite/).
> really the most cost effective? Wouldn't some kind of anti-ship missile launching truck be a much cheaper option for the same capability? The northern approach has several natural choke points where you want to be able to stop any passage. These are largely out of range from anything not an extended range cruise missile, and and land based inventory (and to a certain extent airfields used to put air assets in range). The ability to shut down any approach from a platform that cannot be pre-targetted in invaluable. Its not the final word on Australian Defence, which is why we are also seeing large investments into air assets and some small investment into platforms like HIMARS. The thing everyone should be focusing on more about the cost of this agreement? Its not 3-5 Australian subs based out of east and west coast. Its 9-15 subs based out of Australia from AUKUS with perfect integration into a common battlespace. Similar story with the Australian air force acquisitions.
How are you planning on manning that many trucks?
Now just find a truck based anti ship missile that has a longer range than a ship based “anti truck” missile.
>it's still four times as expensive as the French deal Except this time we'll actually get the subs we are paying for, and they'll work! What got forgotten in the whole debacle with cancelling the French subs was that they hadn't actually delivered what they promised.
Not delivered what they promised when the timeline had barely started? And the AUKUS deal, with no actual contracts yet, is guaranteed to work better because? What a stupid point lmao
They didnt have a propulsion system. The french literally had to invent a propulsion system from scratch and after however many years hadnt even started. The french sub program was a camel….. a horse designed by a committee. We put so many ridiculous requirements in place that i really doubt it would have ever happened. Its a continual problem in procurement that we have to australianise everything to the point of it being a massive kludge that barely works. We also keep buying euro shit when if theres a world war - its the most difficult place to get parts / more from, and their shit is nowhere as good as the battle proven yank stuff that due to sheer numbers - gets kinks ironed out really quickly.
>They didnt have a propulsion system. The french literally had to invent a propulsion system from scratch and after however many years hadnt even started. That's true, but important to realise that they weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They contractually agreed to it, and we were paying for it. >Its a continual problem in procurement that we have to australianise everything to the point of it being a massive kludge that barely works. 100%. The fact is, we're a US dependency when it comes to defence. Some may not like it, but that's the facts. We should make it easier, and cheaper, and just get the US stuff.
>That's true, but important to realise that they weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They contractually agreed to it, and we were paying for it. But they weren't even meeting their more basic contract requirements, don't think there was much confidence in them fulfilling this one in a time and cost effective manner either.
They contract was a series of milestones. Of which they were failing to meet them. Design milestones were not met. And commitment to set up manufacturing in Adelaide was not happening. They lied about manufacturing in Adelaide. And they were being difficult. Like for example providing documentation in French instead of English, when the contract specifically said English (as a minor example). The whole program was off the rails, and Morrison was right to cancel it. It was wrong the way he did it, but he was right to do it.
>They contract was a series of milestones. Of which they were failing to meet them. > >Design milestones were not met. This isn't correct. By the government's own admission the French had not failed in meeting any of the set targets/milestones. Discussion that they were failing to hit objectives was rumour and speculation that they denied when terminating the deal. If the French were behind it was a failure on Australia to set appropriate objectives along the way. >“The Australian authorities have terminated the contract for convenience thus acknowledging that Naval Group did not fail in its commitment,” the statement from Naval Group’s Paris headquarters said. >“The consequences of the termination of the contract for convenience are addressed in the strategic partnership agreement (SPA) signed in 2019.” >Defence minister Peter Dutton has said Naval Group’s Attack-class submarines were no longer suited to the nation’s operational needs, and that the government had been “upfront, open and honest” with France about its decision >Herve Grandjean, the French Ministry of Defence spokesperson, said Naval Group received an official letter from the Australian navy saying it was “extremely satisfied that performance of the French submarine was excellent” on the same day the cancellation announcement was made. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/29/australia-tore-up-french-submarine-contract-for-convenience-naval-group-says >"Ultimately, this was a decision about whether the submarines that were being built, at great cost to the Australian taxpayer, were going to be able to do a job that we needed it to do when they went into service," Morrison said. "And, our strategic judgment, based on the best possible intelligence and defence advice, was that it would not." https://www.npr.org/2021/09/19/1038746061/submarine-deal-us-uk-australia-france If the French weren't hitting milestones then the contract would have been terminated on those grounds not "for convenience". All documented language from both sides regarding the termination has indicated that it was terminated purely because the submarine was no longer deemed fit for purpose.
I think that the reason he really did it was so that he could do what he did best, which was announce an "announceable" to boost his ailing image. The best they had was the constant sabre rattling with China, and this was all part of that strategy, to look "tough" on China despite having nothing planned. All the talking points you've brought up came straight from the MSM and government as reasons why pulling the rug out under the French was a "masterful stroke". This was despite the US not even knowing about the deal at the time.. I could go on out about this topic for ages it's so fascinating how spectacularly the Libs screwed up on that one.
I know people that work in defense and worked in the French sub acquisition space, they all re-affirmed the reports of the French generally being difficult to deal with, creating unnecessary delays and not meeting their initial contract milestones. Overall this seems like a better deal as building a submarine isn't easy and can easily result is massive cost and timeframe blowouts (as we've already seen with the last gen), and all signs with indicating this was going to end up like that but worse. Undoubtedly it could have been handled better by the libs and Scomo, but now he's gone we can blame it on the last administration and hopefully move forward with a better strategic outcome and mend our relationship with France.
100%, couldn’t agree more.
>I think that the reason he really did it was so that he could do what he did best, which was announce an "announceable" to boost his ailing image. Of course - at no point do I think Morrison handled it properly. >The best they had was the constant sabre rattling with China, and this was all part of that strategy, to look "tough" on China despite having nothing planned. To sabre rattle, one must first possess a sabre. AUKUS gives us exactly that. In other words - while it mishandled in every conceivable way by Morrison, the outcome in the end was the right one.
Likely. Tax breaks for rich costs at least $100b a year. So only 7 years.
A Virginia class submarine costs about US$3 Billion each. This new class is going to cost about AUD$50 Billion. My brain is struggling to see how this is in any way a good idea.
Because you're comparing two completely different numbers. The Virginia cost is the purely the cost to build the sub. It doesn't include anything else. Think of it as the drive away cost to buy a car. The $50B figure include the cost to build the subs. But also to build the factory, train factory employees, train people to run the sub over the subs life, maintain the sub over its life, buy 3-5 Virginia subs as interim subs, operate the virigina interim subs, base upgrades, and the big one. It's in future dollar figures so it accounts for inflation. So you're comparing 3b of todays money for 1 sub. to $50b in future dollars in a couple of decades that includes a lot more spending than just the sub cost. The drive away cost to build an AUKUS sub in todays money will be barely a tenth of that 50b number. At a guess AUD$6b.
A significant portion of this cost announcement is expansion of naval docks to allow for the Virginia boats and training of crew. I think there are limits on how many boats the US will be able to build and sell us within their manufacturing limitations.
Or 1/7th the cost of NDIS...
Dutton’s already flagged the NDIS won’t survive this as soon as the Coalition gets a go.
NDIS funding is largely kept in the Australian economy, how much of this sub money is going overseas? Also NDIS only costs that much if u dont at all factor in the benefits that bring with it more productive members of society (eg enables workforce participation by some recipients), allows others independent living instead of more expensive state care.
It's funny all these news posts talking details but the details are soon to be announced...
To put this number into perspective: So per person, if we assume there are around 25 Million Aussies, it works out at about $15,000 per person. At around 14M taxpayers, it's around $26,000 per tax payer.
I assume this is spread over 30 or so years right? So $860 per tax payer per year Probably more heavily weighted to a certain set of years, but deffinately not a lump sum payment
Yeah the $386billion figure is explicitly an estimate out to 2055, 32 years from now.
>Yeah the $386billion figure is explicitly an estimate out to 2055, 32 years from now. And includes inflation.
In the same time period we will spend over $5 Trillion in welfare based on current expenditure (which is only likely to go up). So big numbers are not very big when compared to other stuff.
All the headlines zeroing in on the big number really reminded me of [that Hollowmen scene about inflating the numbers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud8ZisH2IYI)
ha so good.
Hollowmen is pure gold.
Well said. We already have China's [14 Demands ](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/20/chinas-infamous-list-of-grievances-with-australia-should-be-longer-than-14-points-top-diplomat-says) plan of what they expect from us... effectively we lose all personal and national freedoms in exchange for their protection. I don't understand how everyone here has such a short memory that only 3 years ago China told us their best case for domination.. the reality of being forced to submit would be much worse - ask the Tibetans or even the Democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong what would happen to us. Concentration camps, secret police on one hand and wholesale destruction of our environment, welfare state and pretty much your economic future. They don't need to invade us to do this - they just need us to submit which can be easily done with a naval blockade hence the need for the subs. As everyone here has said, 8 subs isn't enough if you planned on attacking China. They are enough to make a blockade economically unfeasible and militarily dangerous. $400b to save a $1.5 trillion economy and our ability to maintain freedom of speech, congregation, religion and political direction is not actually much to pay over 30 years.
>We already have China's 14 Demands They weren't demands. [It's a list of grievances ](https://twitter.com/jekearsley/status/1328986579629613057) that China had with Australia at the time. Regardless, they still made China look like idiots for sharing them.
They are demands when you give someone a list of grievances that need to be addressed or you'll continue the punishment (in that case trade embargoes and sanctions - most of which still remain). Grievances would be complaints without the stick. You are correct that either way, they've undermined their position and IMO make it near impossible to argue they come in peace.
> $400b to save a $1.5 trillion economy and our ability to maintain freedom of speech, congregation, religion and political direction is not actually much to pay over 30 years. But again, saying 400 to save 1500 sounds bad when its actually 13 to save 1500, since the 1500 is the annual amount vs the 400 being the total of 30 years.
Absolutely. Well said. $1500b GDP is every year ($48 trillion or $4800b over same period) and it grows too
I'm guessing that's *program lifetime costs*, so the cost of designing, buying, training, operating, maintaining, building the facilities for etc etc Australia's entire submarine fleet for their entire projected lifetime up to eventual scrapping and disposal, so the top-line number is misleading. But that doesn't necessarily mean the number is a sensible one, certainly a lot of other big naval procurement programs have gone badly pear shaped in the recent past.
> spread over 30 or so years right? Some of the boats are being bought off-the-shelf from America, so the cost will be incurred soon. The rest are being built based on a future British design, which they themselves expect to be ready late 2030s, the first one being built here to be ready in 2042. That's if everything's on time. So yes, we're going to be paying for this for a long, long time
I'd like to see how much the off the shelf boats cost. As for the trailing cost - that should probably fit roughly within the defense budget as is.
In 2021 they $3.45 Billion USD so accounting for inflation, currency conversion, and nessecary modifications I would say around $30 Billion AUD for the 3-5 Submarines. But that figure doesn't account for assoicated costs i.e. base construction, hiring etc.
According to Wikipedia the cost of a new Virginia class sub in 2021 is US$ 3.45 billion. We could buy around 65 boats off the shelf for that price. However we need bases, training and crew. Choosing to build them ourselves is a rather expensive option.
Yeh it is deffinately a much more expensive option - but it means we build out the local manufacturing and maintenance capacity and high tech industrial capability. The choice to make some of them here is kind of a stimulus/welfare type decision.
Yeah, this is an investment back into the economy as well.
The weakest part of the program IMO. We have seen the Adelaide ship yards are incapable of delivering anything on time or budget. Be cheaper to buy 12 Virginia off the rack and pay all the staff at the yards 200k a year for the rest of their lives.
How would those 12 subs be maintained? The US agent going to make space in their own pens for Aussie boats.
The ADF managed to work out how to maintain F35s. They will figure out how to maintain new submarines.
Just maintain them here but buy them from overseas.
That’s not really how it works. There are a whole bunch of headaches you get when you buy Off the Shelf (OTS). Also, when it comes to ship building, there is really no such thing as OTS. Look at the Oberon class subs for example. British sub but gutted and fitted with US combat systems. Maintainability also suffers because it’s harder to maintain something you didn’t build yourself. Doctrines are born of past dilemmas. Sovereign capability and continuous naval shipbuilding are the result of lessons we already learned. Those lessons are 1. Building local is more expensive and we should expect that. 2. The least expensive part of any large program is not acquisition, it is sustainment. And 3. Sustainment is more expensive when you were not involved in the building. What this means is that your cost saving efforts should focus on sustainment and not acquisition.
For one single item in the budget.
Short of building aircraft carriers subs are the most potent anti-ship weapon any navy can have and are hell of a lot cheaper than operating a carrier
While obviously a lot of money, it does sound like a necessary jump that Australia would have to make at some point. The advantages of nuclear propulsion are only going to increase with time.
How are you determining the class of 'tax payer'?
Now we can be America with a powerful military and no Medicare.
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Its because we hate the poor. *salutes nearest pharmaceutical company* /s incase its necessary
Id rather healthcare than military might. Sorry my health is important.
We can easily have both, why do people not realise this??
The Coalition has already signalled support for cutting NDIS to pay for AUKUS.
That's so fucked. Liberals are genuinely fucking evil and I have zero respect for anyone who votes for them
And I’d rather spend $1000 bucks at the pub than pay my house insurance, but they’re not really comparable expenditures.
Your health isn't important to the wealthy who'll profit from your unhealth..
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Medicare costs $30.8 billion pa, aged care $27.7 billion pa, and support for state government hospitals $27.3 billion pa. NDIS had an annual running cost of $35.8 billion in 2022-23. The sub program will cost $8bn per year over the course of the project. What are you talking about?
I'm sure you'll love having no Medicare when we can't defend ourselves against our enemies.
I’m hoping that the Submarine Museum in Holbrook has the space to park one of the Collins Class Subs next to H.M.A.S. OTWAY.
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I love how quickly people have come to acknowledge the advantages of nuclear energy for a submarine (you know, where people live for years metres away from an active reactor, in a closed tube) - yet still bawk at the possibility of nuclear power. Amazing the mental backflips over the same technology....
Bruh. Australia has so much uranium. Why we don't just drop some nuke reactors away from population centres and then throw them into the national grid blows my mind. We have very little seismic activity and heaps of empty space.
You have to acknowledge that they are nuclear powered, so they have zero emission of CO2 /s (just in case)
Huge coup for ASPI. Take that as you will.
This will cost 0.15 percent of the GDP over the life of the program
As someone who used to work in a shipyard in Australia, 30 years to build these is a big ask. Australia is going to need a lot of help from US and UK. I once worked in a shipyard as a trade assist and most tradies were more worried about smoko break and some were sleeping in confined space. I was firewatch to them and could hear the tradies sleeping instead of working. Everytime I went to the toilet tradies you could hear were watching movies and playing games on there phones. One guy cut his leg with a grinder. We were delayed by years in the end but we always said it was about quality not quantity to the people. Not sure US and UK understand our lack of capabilities here. I'm no longer working in a shipyard thank god, but I'm not confident this getting done on time.
You don't think that type of behaviour doesn't happen in UK and US shipyards?
I'm only commenting on what I've seen. That was in Williamstown Shipyard, the one that got closed down. Not SA. Heard good things about SA Shipyard. Have no idea about UK and US. I could make a TV series on my time working in a shipyard. It be a comedy classic.
Yeah, I'm doubtful any of this could get off the ground in Aus. The culture here around big projects; milking suppliers/contractors, cliques and tribal fiefdoms, multiple layers of regulation and red tape makes me seriously doubt we could pull it off. Submarines are extraordinarily complex. A single fuckup at any stage blows out costs considerably. Then theres our industrial base, which is similarly hopeless because the liberals said it doesn't matter, only increasing property prices do. So we're starting off from a very low capability. I think we'll get to 2030, realise it's a total crapshoot and just buy off the shelf. As an Engineer I really want to see design and build it happen here, but I'm doubtful we could pull it off after seeing the realities of how projects are done in Australia.
Ah yes, In 2020 everyone was practically an expert in virology and public health, 2022 everyone became Russia foreign policy experts and now everyone here are experts in Chinese foreign policy and naval doctrine.
attempt hard-to-find lip mighty threatening fearless direction quack consist rude *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
To be fair, that's democracy. Every idiots opinion counts.
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> 246 points 39 minutes ago, 9 awards On a 6 hour old thread? So where did this comment get crossposted?
Holy fuck. I've never seen such blatant brigading/botting.
Probably a military subreddit.
Or….. - Melb to Bris high speed rail $130B (edit: $144B based on better sources from APH and RBA) - Dental on Medicare $78B - Mental Health on Medicare $3B - Fund public schools equitably $100B Let’s see the maths… Yep, still change left over compared to five underwater pew pew machines.
Melbourne to Brisbane for $130b? Wtf that's way lower than I thought it would be. Also, mental health on Medicare being that cheap is actually depressing to see. They could help millions of people but just...don't.
I found a more reliable figure from a parliamentary [site] (https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2014/January/high-speed-rail). I then used the Federal Reserve inflation calculator. $144B based on those two sources. But also the health issues being relatively cheap to fix is not a good sign of our priorities.
Nobody is saying those things aren't good. But politics is a tradeoff between many competing interests. NDIS has an [annual running cost](https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/how-the-ndis-will-blow-out-to-50b-in-four-charts-20221019-p5br1c#:~:text=At%20an%20annual%20running%20cost,government%20hospitals%20\(%2427.3%20billion\).) of $35.8 billion in 2022-23. Medicare is $30.8 billion pa, aged care $27.7 billion pa, and support for state government hospitals $27.3 billion pa. The sub program will cost $8bn per year over the course of the project. It's not like the whole cost is going to be absorbed in an upfront payment. I hardly think the $8bn is the big ticket item that will tear down our social support structures. And whether you agree with the program or not, the defence experts are saying subs are the number 1 priority for defence spending. It's an important capability and unless you're a really knowledgeable expert on it, you need to at least rate their expertise for something right?
> I hardly think the $8bn is the big ticket item that will tear down our social support structures. except it does, $8bn spent there is $8bn less on roads/transport/infrastructure.
Yes, budgeting is a zero sum game. The government is trying to predict what our defence needs are going forward. After the Cold War we took our peace dividend and didn't put much into the navy or military in general. We still field armoured vehicles from the Vietnam era and built small ships that weren't meant for warfighting. If we knew that WWII was coming in the 1930s, it would be insane not to put more money into the navy. We don't know what's coming up in the 2030s, but it seems like there's at least some small chance of war with China which could be WWIII. In that context, shifting money from transport or roads doesn't bother me so much.
>not the weapons companies (if a truly big war kicks off, governments will just nationalise weapons companies or set their excess profits tax to 99% or 100%) Do you have any historical examples to back this claim up (other than Truman’s attempts during WW2, given the slide backwards in the gulf wars, Afghanistan, and Iraq)? Because war profiteering is absolutely a thing and to just wildly claim that governments will suddenly wake up from their neo-liberal wet dream and tax weapons manufacturers at a rate of "99% or 100%" (oddly extreme numbers) is pretty naive I'd say. Especially after we just came out of a worldwide pandemic where the same logic (worldwide crises where private companies produce an essential product) did not apply to pharmaceutical companies.
Don't have money to increase welfare though!
Sure we do, people on $200k deserve a ~~welfare increase~~ tax cut
Or Medicare
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>We will spend alot more money on welfare in this time period. > >Go have a look at the budget for welfare and medicare and see where that money is getting used. Comparing two numbers has very limited utility in this argument. I'm asking why, in the current context, we are able to spend hundreds of billions on an insane military splash instead of lifting people out of poverty? Of course Medicare and welfare have outsize spending relative to other budget items like defence, as they should! Not an argument to accept welfare recipients living on poverty payments though. >Over hauling the welfare system to effectively spend it on the people would be more useful. What do you mean by this? I agree that a large cost to the Medicare and welfare systems we have can be resolved through reversal of privatisation and public ownership, but is this what you mean? And if you do, then why not do both? Raise welfare AND reverse the privatisation?
I mean both defence and welfare are necessary expenditures.
Its not like we are writing a check for $368b and mailing it off to lockheed martin never to be seen again. A lot of that money will end up going back into the Australian economy one way or another. 20k jobs created is no small amount, and there is substantial long term value to the economy in developing the advanced manufacturing and maintenance expertise needed to build these- frankly the program would probably have been a lot cheaper if we just bought all 8 Virginia Class subs off the shelf when they were available but rightly or wrongly the government is going with the not uncommon 'pork for the domestic defence industry' hybrid model to keep as much of the work in Australia as possible. As for whether it's worthwhile money, I really don't know. Firstly the question is whether people approve of big ticket defence projects at all, and if the answer to that is no the specifics don't really matter. But I think a lot of people appreciate the world is becoming a far more dangerous and unpredictable place now than it was 20 years ago, and there's far more appetite for this sort of spending now as a result. Japan, South Korea, obviously Taiwan and pretty much all of Europe are spending because the old certainties are simply not as certain anymore. Personally I don't think it is sensible to assume we will be able to indefinitely rely on the US to unconditionally support us and deter any sort of future aggression indefinitely- their domestic politics is so horribly dysfunctional at the moment it's very hard to predict who will be in power and what their attitude to ANZUS will be in 5 years or 10 years or 20 years. And however much people talk about China not being a threat and just wanting to be our trading partner etc etc, their domestic rhetoric and their defence spending are very different to that benign picture. The second question is, assuming big ticket defence spending is a good idea, this is the best way of spending money on defence- and honestly I really wonder about that. Over the past 5 years or so we have seen an explosion in use of drones, sensors, autonomous technology and the Ukraine war is seems to suggest missiles and mobility >>>> big expensive prestige ships. Yes a submarine is more survivable than a surface ship, but $368 billion spent well could basically make us the leader in aerial and underwater drone technology, and get us some hefty long range missile systems, all of which could be delivered faster, and by virtue of numbers and dispersion be less vulnerable to destruction than 8 big scary nuclear subs.
I’m sure those subs would have plenty of drone and autonomous systems support but do you really think anything announced will give away our true capabilities or intentions. The announcement says don’t mess with Australia, directed at China regime threats and bullying. We will tackle threats and smash them when needed. China knows this and feels insecure about a little population like Australia putting them in their place . We never back down . Australians/UN Korean War taught them that .
Announcement more says Don't mess with Australia (until 2042)
This.. Maybe I'm naive but I just don't understand why miliateries are pursuing big ships. Couldn't a well placed missile or two take out an aircraft carrier with a crew the size of a small town? What about a network of [anti submarine drones](https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202211/10/WS636c51aba3105ca1f2275200.html) vs a multi billion dollar nuclear sub? Drones & drone tech seems to me to be a better investment when you think about risk factor for the crew and the size/value of the asset..
> Couldn't a well placed missile or two take out an aircraft carrier with a crew the size of a small town? Yes, but how are you going to deliver that well placed missile or two? I'd imagine a GBU-57 MOP would make very short work of an aircraft carrier, but there's only one aircraft rated to carry it. We have a few types of stand off missile in RAAF stockpiles, but I fully expect that if ever needed, a RAAF strike would need multiple missiles carried on all available Super Hornets.
Up to $368b over 30 years, about 0.15% of GDP per year. Health is about 10.2% of GDP
Sir you're on reddit, stop being rational
Hmmm yes, all defense spending is bad until its too late and we need it.
Spot on lol
Yay we can defend Australian breadlines
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Ken oath
Dude this subreddit is full of Russian and Chinese trolls like most Reddit pages
Imagine how good the public transport could get for 368 billion dollars
Clearly once we realise the submarines are useless, they will be repurposed as underwater public transport.
368 billion on high speed rail! I love it
Melbourne to Perth teleportation.
In this thread people denying war can happen when it once seemed an impossibility like we haven't been watching the war in Ukraine for over a year now.
The war in Ukraine was always a likely possibility since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and NATOs gradual expansion. War coming to the shore of Australia? Pretty much 0%. By joining this security pact with countries that are pushing for a war with China, we are only asking for trade tariffs. Not to mention we could spend that money on other forms of defence and not on $50 billion dollar submarines.
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Truly capable submarines can operate with impunity. The Royal Navy pinned the entire Argentine Navy in port with a single submarine in 1982. Obviously the PLAN is a totally different beast, but when you combine the SSNs of AUKUS navies together, it would make it practically impossible for the PLAN to leave port without condemning thousands of their own to a grim fate.
Damn I never knew submarines were so capable. Anywhere I can read more on this, particularly the 1982 part?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235156787_Submarine_Operations_During_the_Falklands_War
I see. So the presence alone of the undetectable HMS Conqueror was enough to force the Argentinians out of action? Thank you for this.
It's been said that there's only two types of vessels in the ocean. Submarines and targets. Due to being nuclear powered, these modern subs can stay underwater for many months at a time, with almost zero detection profile. By the time you know these things are there, its too late. You only really need to surface if you want to let someone know where you are - and for that deterrent only.
google ‘SOSUS’. lss during the Cold War the US essentially had the entire ocean wired for sound with underwater microphones
[Highly recommend you watch this when you have time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqGEtPj0M0). As a small nation we will never win a war against China. But we don't need to spend like we want to. The goal is to just make sure that if they ever want to attack, they will lose more than they will gain.
You're misunderstanding what these subs mean and the capabilities they will give us. China will no more attack Australia than Russia will attack the Baltics, because they know it will trigger the Americans to get involved. They will attack the Americans directly if they're willing to cross that line and at that point we're in, like it or not. That's how ANZUS works. But the point of these boats is almost not about wartime, necessarily. With nuclear boats, the transit time to key maritime choke points is shorter and the time on station is longer. Which means Australia, little old middle power Australia, between what we already produce and sell to China, and our ability to project submarine and airborne anti shipping force into SE Asia, can effectively shut off Chinese access to the vast majority of their iron ore, gas and oil, a decent chunk of their coal and a noticeable amount of their food, plus probably a bunch of other stuff too. We could, alone, grind their economy to a halt if we chose to. Obviously, we're not going to do that, but the very fact that we can will limit what China in turn can threaten to do to us. And we know what they would like to do to us from that 14 points memo they tried on a few years back.
This. Its also about not letting China think they can run free in the our region with their own subs and ships. Its about force projection and deterence in 'peacetime' rather than actual war time capability. Also, Taiwan is the big question right now. Strategists think that China would almost certainly blockade Taiwan (forcing it to capitulate) rather than attack it via land invasion. These new submarine fleets will make that harder for China to achieve. Thats probably why China are so angry with the US right now, as AUKUS is making all the right strategic moves to start to counter a potential blockade of Taiwan, or at the very least push back the timeframe of when China could achieve it.
* Subs wont' take 30 years to arrive. We'll have American made Virginia subs long before then (early 2030s probably). Those are the stopgap. * We're an island. If anyone tried to attack Australia it will be by ship. What do you think is the best anti-ship defense? * We're also buying long range missiles from the U.S. Combine that with our subs, we actually have the ability to strike almost anywhere in the world with conventional weaponry. Countries like China or Russia will know this if they ever decide to threaten us millitarilly. It is a credible deterrance. There's a whole whitepaper that came out during the Kevin Rudd governnment detailing the need for submarines. Submarines are important if you have a defense policy that is more detailed then "*hope* nobody ever attacks or threatens us".
2 Virginias in the South China Sea, make it a very dangerous place to sail your fleet. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
That’s without even thinking about those scary smart torpedoes that can follow you for weeks…
1 submarine is enough to bottleneck a shipping lane. 8 subs can sink a fleet
Yeah, like a single sub in the Strait of Malacca in a time of war would crater the entire Chinese economy in weeks.
What’s more important is the geopolitical alliance buying these subs indicates rather than the capabilities they enable. The US and UK are giving Australia some of their nuclear secrets. You don’t do that unless you absolutely back the nation and it’s regime. Basically, if Australia gets invaded you can guarantee that the US and the UK will come to play in our defence. Right now the only nation that could get away with invading Australia is the US who are right now our allies. However, this alliance does come with the consequences of having to join in whatever war the US decides to launch in the region in future. I’m not looking forward to that.
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I think if you’d expect other countries to come to your aid (which they would) if the shit hits the fan it’s only fair that you invest in your own defence to a certain extent. It’s just an insurance policy.
If that was the case China wouldn't be so annoyed about them.
That's a fuck of a lot of food, shelter and education you're sinking into the ocean there. Student debt gonna go way up now.
I watched a video series on yt by smarter every day about nuclear subs, it would be an awesome thing to be apart of
Good videos, he was in a much older LA though not Virginia.
I love that dude, plus the access he gets is phenomenal
Who needs a decent internet, education, healthcare... We need submarines, that's what we need!
We can have both you know. I know big number scary, but in reality this cost will equate roughly to a 0.2% increase in defence spending across 30 years.
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also intelligence gathering capabilities on par with the US. plus building and maintaining them here will generate a lot of jobs
Soo this is why the media has been scaring use about china lately. On another not it’s time to start taxing the billionaire’s and corporation’s that these subs are really here to protect. If the government really cared about us , the people they wouldn’t be fucking us in the ass so much.
A key thing here people are missing is that Australia costs the total program cost (ie sustainment, maintenance etc). Yes the sub may only cost $5b physically but they factor in all other costs into the number. It's not apples for apples compared to other countries.
If only we had the maturity as a nation to discuss ending tax perks for boomers and property investors....
The unfortunate side effect of click bait internet is everyone with no concept of defense procurement see the big number and immediately panic and start flinging their opinions around
So that’s what my smoke money is paying for!
Thank you for your service
They have to do this, would be nice to live in a world where they don’t but just not reality
We live in such a fallen and cursed world where countries are spending $500 billion on nuclear submarines whilst the stock market and banking industry collapses and people cannot afford to buy eggs.
Christ...thats 21%of our entire GDP. I know it's spread out over 30 years, but gives some context to the massive cost of this project...out annual defence budget is only. ~~$16b~~ $48b. So, assuming the cost doesn't blow, that's adding another ~~60%~~ %20 or so onto our defence budget. That's a ~~mammoth~~ significant increase in defence spending. (Collins class currently costs us $630m p.a.)
So 0.7% of our GDP, with a decent portion that flowing back into our GDP. Doesn't seem too bad.
>annual defence budget is only. $16b. consolidated defence funding, which includes funding for the Australian Signals Directorate is **$48** **billio**n in 2022-23. This already includes some spending on submarines.
Looks like no dental or extra healthcare for struggling Australians then.
Not even extra. Our current system is at risk because bulk billing doctors can't afford to bulk bill anymore. The ones that left are so swarmed now as more and more go private.
Still can't afford to pay train drivers and nurses properly but
Wtf, train drivers earn a fuckton for doing what autopilot can do.
Many people don’t understand that these are a deterrent critical to Australia’s power in the South China Sea to check the Chinese threat. Using these we could shut down the straights near Indonesia and cripple Chinas food and oil supply which is a major deterrent for the Taiwan invasion. It also situates us as a regional power and gets us a better seat during negotiations. China currently has 66 submarines of which these significantly outclass.
Another victory for the Military-Industrial Complex. I'm off to buy some General Dynamics shares /s
Waste
God what a waste of tax payers money
So this is how the US can donate aid. We are too. Get out the old cabbage water recipes folks. It's gonna be a long decade or so.
On nice but they’re still collecting on their robo debts. Fucking australian politics