Aussie Nukes

[pmccarthy]

This is the greatest news on Aussie defence for a decade. Our own nuke subs. And the French can bugger off.

[onetrack]

The only concern I've got in this whole deal is how much time we've wasted buggering around trying to convert Froggie nuclear subs to diesel, to meet some Defence Dept clowns ideas of what a sub should look like - and the massive amount of money we've wasted on this deal, and the amount we'll have to pay out to terminate the Froggie contract. The amount will be mind-boggling, I'll wager.

And at the end of the day - we end up with nuclear subs!  FFS, we could've just bought Froggie nuclear subs off the store rack!  There's absolutely nothing like the unbelievable monetary waste, when it comes to Defence projects.

[Old Koreelah]

I tend to agree, but you do realise the following inconvenient details:

*. Scomo just cancelled a contract, so now we have no subs on order; it may take the boffins a couple of years to organise the next contract and then decades to actually build them.

* Australia has a hard time crewing our existing small fleet of subs.

* Our region is already instable; these boats won’t be operational for decades.

* This further alienates our biggest export market; much of the stuff China now refuses to buy from us is being supplied by our close “allies” the USA, who have a long history of knifing us, economically at least.

[onetrack]

Yes, I'm sure the Defence boffins will decide they need nuclear subs with some totally different build requirement - say, a different, and new type of reactor, that no-one's ever put in a sub before - and this will result in another 5 years of dithering and angst, before it's decided that that specialised build requirement can be scrapped, and the Yanks can supply a standard nuke reactor.

Then there'll be dithering and arguments over how much of the subs is to be built here, with the Americans demanding that their nuclear powerplant can only be built in the U.S. because their technology is ultra-secret.

Then someone will find the Russkies and Chinese have inserted their military/industrial espionage men into the works - and that will mean more delays as the intelligence services say the design has been compromised, and a dozen MP's demand an investigation.

Then it will take twice as long as projected, to build the few components we're allowed to build here, thanks to a lack of trained personnel, and constant ongoing low morale of the submarine workforce.

Finally, in 15 years time, after the Collins Class subs have had their third major rebuild at an unexpected cost overrun of $15B, we will launch our "new" nuclear subs - only to find the newly-developed, AI-run, autonomous underwater vehicles, can run rings around them. 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Meanwhile, we have followed America's lead in how to piss off allies.

 

6 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

*. Scomo just cancelled a contract, so now we have no subs on order; it may take the boffins a couple of years to organise the next contract and then decades to actually build them.

* Australia has a hard time crewing our existing small fleet of subs.

* Our region is already instable; these boats won’t be operational for decades.

Simple answer; the US will supply a fully crewed fleet at a small cost... Been done before (not with subs, but with a/c).

 

I am also perplexed as to why we didn't just say, let's take out all the mods of the French nuclear subs and taken them. Oh.. the USA must be having a bad year for exports..

 

It is big news here.. Most people who ring into the chat shows here seem to be wondering why Aus is doing it..

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

er... maybe I am thinking I will not come to Aus.. The LNP seem very willing to make it a target:

 

[Old Koreelah]

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

…Simple answer; the US will supply a fully crewed fleet at a small cost... Been done before (not with subs, but with a/c).

Yes Jerry that had occurred to me; when the F-111 project was running late the Yanks lent us a few F-4s to “tide us over”.

When fully loaded they could only fly 13 minutes after takeoff- enough time to find a tanker.

Australia didn’t have any tankers, so we didn’t have any warplanes either.

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

I am also perplexed as to why we didn't just say, let's take out all the mods of the French nuclear subs and taken them. Oh.. the USA must be having a bad year for exports...

Of course. The US weapons industry rules.

[nomadpete]

I see we've already squandered 2.4 billion dollars on French bribes.... (errr... non submarines). And that doesn't include contract termination clauses, which will probably not be much disclosed in murdocks media.

Once again I hear echoes of "All the way with LBJ!".

 

And after all this expensive groveling to the USA, Biden graciously thanks SFM "And I want to thank that, uh, fellow Down Under," he said. , on international television, no less...... how humiliating!

 

 

Edited September 16, 2021 by nomadpete

[Dax]

It's supposedly going to be 2040 before we get the first nuke sub, way to late by then. It's simply amazing how the people allow such fools to run our country, which say very little for the intellect of the vast majority U got q rid on a nuke sub back in 1964, USS  Swordfish. Compared to the standard of conventional subs we had, Swordfish was immense inside and nor a bit of noise. It was amazinly advanced for back then, but the crew and especially the officers were incompetent and acted no different to US troops on the ground, stupidly.

 

Getting Nuke subs is great, but a couple of decades late and like most of the things our governments do, it will turn out to be another disaster just like most of our overseas defence purchases and projects these drop kicks create. The new warships don't work, the patrol boats don't work, the aircraft they buy don't work and yet the people continue to vote for these totally incompetent idiots. Must be another planet I can go to, where at least the majority have working brains and not simple ideological denialist programming.

[Marty_d]

Hope the US subs are better than the US planes (F35).

 

Note that the costs haven't been released yet.  For a government who fights tooth and nail about addressing climate change because it might cost a bit, they don't seem to have a problem splashing taxpayer's money on subs.

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to lease some boats from the Yanks?  They can build themselves new ones and we could rent the old ones, minus the nuclear weapons of course.

[Dax]

10 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

Wouldn't it make more sense to lease some boats from the Yanks?  They can build themselves new ones and we could rent the old ones, minus the nuclear weapons of course.

There will be quite a few differences between US, UK and Aus nuke subs. I expect they will base ours on the UK models and use USA and UK systems which will be adapted to our requirements and enhanced. If you look at the record of Aus military equipment, it is far superior to anyone else at the time. When I was on the navy, we had the most advanced anti submarine technology on the planet. I was originally a solar controller, what was classed as UC2 and when in Asia, we exercised with USA and UK ships and subs. However because was part of the dive team, spent my time as a quartermaster.

 

Before my ride on Swordfish, we had an exercise with major units of the UK and USA, which included attacks by swordfish and a couple of pommy conventional subs. Out of the entire fleet, which was over 50 ships, Yarra which I was on, was the only one who  could track, lock on and engage Swordfish because of her speed and ability to become so quiet, she was supposedly undetectable, But Yarra with the newest system, which was capable of spotting and tracking subs at more than 20 miles distance, locked onto swordfish many times and claimed strikes on her with our new hunter torpedoes. The yanks were really pissed off and one time Swordfish got so frustrated at being tracked long before she could get inside the convoy screen, she surfaced after trying to sit underneath us at speed, but our captain almost turned Yarra inside out and Swordfish shot past, to be lock onto an theoretically sink her. They were really, pissed of and tried to claim we cheated but we had all the evidence and ran up the jolly roger when entering Subic bay, much to the our captains disgust. However upon our return to Aus, we entered Sydney harbour flying the jolly roger and hanging from the bridge wings, two made in Aus signs. We wer pretty proud of our all Australian designed and built state of the art warship. Having triumphed at anti sub detection, sunk the USA major carrier and bombardment. Our gunners hit the target with all their shots, not long after that Yarra was designated to do a bombardment of a commie base in Borneo, which we dispatched quickly, knocking out their defences on the first run and blowing their stores apart with our second run.

 

We really had fun on the exercise, sinking USS enterprise with our little ship and 4 inch guns. The yanks tried to deny we had tracked and sunk swordfish and that we cheated when attacking Enterprise, but upon return to Subic bay after the exercise, our captain took all the recorded logs to the debriefing and reluctantly, they accepted the evidence.

 

Back then we had a very advanced defence design and manufacturing industry, we even designed our own jets and one they designed was so advanced, it was better than anyone else but the government decided to scrap plans to build it and decided on the F111.

 

That's about the time lawyers started to get elected and from that point, our defence industry was dismantled and we started buying stuff from overseas. Now we get everything built by private enterprise and mostly overseas, in the event of war, we have no hope without a manufacturing industry. Spares, fuel, munitions and operational equipment all comes from overseas and there is no way and enemy would allow convoys to get to Aus. Not with the technology they have today, convoys can be attacked anywhere on the planet without the enemy leaving their bases and our arms suppliers, would be hard pressed to supply us and themselves, so we would miss out.

[Yenn]

When the government started looking for new subs, they had several to choose from. from memory there was Japan, a Scandanavian country, France and the US all lined up. So we decided to go with diesel technology, probably because Nuclear was a dirty word and ignore nuclear. Now the experts have realized that the advantage of a submarine is that it stays under water, except of course if it is diesel and has to breathe, they want to change their nappies.

No doubt it will cost massive amounts of taxpayers money for the priveledge of waging war for the failing USA.

Scumbag is long on driving the fear factor up, so that he can be seen as our guardian angel, with an election due in the next 8 months,

LNP have sent out special forces into Afghanistan and tied their hands behind their backs, not allowing them to engage until their is proof that the enemy is about to attack them. They have also sent troops into Iraq on a completely false premise as they did in Vietnam.

We could do much better without the LNP because they cannot draw a conclusion from the evidence before them. They have to ask the US President what to do. We would be far better off as another state of the USA, rather than paying to hang onto their coat tails. But it would be better for us if we became an outpost of new Zealand.

[onetrack]

Only a professional spin-artist like ScoMo could claim that the $2.4B pissed up against the wall on the Froggie subs was "an investment" (in the Attack class subs).

FFS, if spending $2.4B of taxpayers money to end up with nothing but a large compensation claim in return from the French is "an investment", I'd hate to see what ScoMo calls a "divestment".

 

Meantimes, the Govt constantly refuses to increase compensation payments to TPI Veterans, who have lost their earning abilities due to their war injuries. The TPI as a percentage of Male wages has been declining since 1950.

A modest increase in the TPI payment has been costed at around $280M a year, but of course, the Govt can't possibly afford that huge payout - particularly after they've just given $2.4B to the French, and multiple hundreds of millions to their billionaire business mates, in the form of totally unjustified Jobkeeper payments. Bring on the Federal Election.

 

Edited September 17, 2021 by onetrack

[Jerry_Atrick]

As an FYI, I read the breakage costs were EUR90M while the project has in high level design mode, and EUR230M once they started working on the detail design - or something like that...

 

 

[old man emu]

Nothing like having fisticuffs in the NATO mess hall.

https://7news.com.au/politics/world-politics/france-recalls-ambassador-to-australia-c-3996546

[spacesailor]

Good ridance !.

Australia should not have  ambassadors from 'terrorist ' counties, .

Shall we now have Afganistan's ambassador,  ?

spacesailor

[old man emu]

 

13 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

Shall we now have Afganistan's ambassador,  ?

Due to COVID travel restrictions, there's an overseas taliban in force.

[Old Koreelah]

Commentators are saying that the French have good reason to be furious with Australia for abandoning the sub contract, and the way it was done. The French are saying nasty things about our country breaking its word, but they should remember the utter hypocracy shown by France to our region not so long ago.

 

Their dumb ‘secret’ agents were arrested after bombing the Rainbow Warrior and were convicted in a NZ court. The French put enormous trade pressure on NZ to transfer these terrorists and promised they would serve out their sentences in a French gaol. Instead, they were freed and given medals. How’s that for keeping your word?

 

[willedoo]

The French are just getting some of their own back. Their weakness and subservience to the U.S. was the cause of them breaking the naval ship building contract with Russia. France proved to the world then that they are unreliable defence acquisition partners and that their word means nothing. Now the shoe is on the other foot, they're bleating like lambs. Good riddance to the hypocrites and their crappy subs.

[onetrack]

If the subs were designed and built like French cars, they would need to have the engines taken out to fix a leak in the conning tower, the parts cost would be astronomical with all the European social welfare taxes added on, and the mechanics and fitters would commit suicide on a regular basis, just at the thought of working on them.

[Old Koreelah]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

If the subs were designed and built like French cars…

We often hear comments like this, but my wife’s Peugeot is the best car we’ve owned. 260,000 km in 17 years, mobs of power, nimble, very economical (over 1,000km on a tankful). Most of the maintenance jobs were a breeze due to clever design.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Is it an old 504? They have a reputation for being unbreakable.. My brother only buys Puegots after having one of those. Apparently, they are (or were) used widely in Africa due to their reliability, robustness and ease/low cost of maintenance.  But some French marques lately have copped a lot of flack about their reliability.

[pmccarthy]

In Sweden in the 1980s I saw diesel 504s used as service vehicles in an underground mine.

[Old Koreelah]

6 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Is it an old 504? They have a reputation for being unbreakable.. My brother only buys Puegots after having one of those. Apparently, they are (or were) used widely in Africa due to their reliability, robustness and ease/low cost of maintenance.  But some French marques lately have copped a lot of flack about their reliability.

First model of the 407 HDI with every conceivable luxury nick nack; the opposite of what I need in a car, but it’s my wife’s.

Unlike her 307 (bought new) everything works and it has been very reliable. Years ago a few Jodel builders fitted Peugeot diesels and that engine was estimated to have a TBO of 10,000hours. At the time PSA were building 3,000 diesel engines per day and had tested a bunch of them to destruction; the first failed at 12,700 hours, with a dropped exhaust valve.

[onetrack]

I was selling one of our surplus Camrys once, and the potential buyer got an RAC patrolman to come around and do an inspection on it. This bloke was good at his job, and we got talking about the various brands.

He loved Toyotas, and like most people, reckoned they had to be the most reliable and durable brand made. But then I brought up French cars and I thought he was going to have an apoplectic fit.

 

He became very animated and exclaimed forcibly, "Never, ever buy any French car!! The greatest P'sOS ever produced!! 4 hours to change a headlamp bulb, and you have to take the bumper off to do it!!"

"They are nothing but trouble! Every third time I'm called out to a car breakdown, it's to a French-built car!! I hate them with a vengeance! The worst cars ever, to work on!"

 

I knew the old Pugs were pretty reliable, but the last 2 or 3 decades seems to have seen a major decline in French car design and quality - along with massive parts rorts.

One friend of the Missus wanted a car, and her hubby went and bought her a Citroen C4 without even consulting her. She hated the thing, and it broke down all too often.

 

The worst bit was the remote falling apart in her hand. Citroen wanted $800 for a new remote. I examined it and saw that the PCB was still O.K., it was just the plastic case that had crapped itself.

So I got her an aftermarket case and told her to get her hubby to take the guts out of the remote and install it in the new case - which he did, as he's pretty mechanically-minded. 

But not long after he did that, the Citroen got sold and a i30 Hyundai replaced it! She likes the Hyundai much more than the Citroen.

 

The old truck mechanic opposite my workshop got a 504 in one day to do some work on it, and he wasn't impressed with it. He showed me the top radiator hose, which was designed with 2 x 180° bends in it.

The outlet on the radiator and the outlet on the engine faced different directions, so the hose had to have a double bend in it - and it was something like $145 for the hose!!

Why they had to design the top coolant hose setup like that, has me beat - unless the engine was initially designed for a different vehicle. But regardless, it was poor designing.

 

Edited September 18, 2021 by onetrack