Given Australia's track record on building reliable subs, any thought of building nuclear-powered subs is madness.

We could get China to build them for us using our iron ore. Then we could call them 'Yellow Submarines'!

dkit
I keep on hearing different things about the performance of the Collins.. can you remember where you heard or read that they regularly sink US carriers.. ? Curious..

Oz navy is nothing but a joke. They sail around in there little boats trying to catch boat people and often cant at all. We should always encourage many more boat people to Australia because it will benefit us all in the long run. The Aussie navy are to weak anyway, to stop any enemy that attack us now. So why a new submarine, whether it's desiel or atomic? Doesn't matter because we had good subs before but Aussie Navy don't know how to operate one. Because they are always broken down and never sail to anywhere!

This is a glacial issue - sound of one hand clapping until Adelaideans stop building the AWDs around 2017

and after we have a great deal more money for the Defence budget.

Most depends on how marginal South Australia is electorally after September 7.

The subs will be built for money, jobs, unions and votes not war.

Doesn't matter how our next six (never really twelve) subs are powered or whether they work or not :)

Pete

dkit, diesel powered subs are very, very quiet, during a war game scenario in the late 1990s (if memory serves me right) one of our Collins did 'sink' a US nuclear aircraft carrier after sneaking in amongst her escorts. The yanks, of course, cried and carried on and denied it was possible. You need to understand acoustics to know the how's and why's.

I was unfortunate to be on the first ANZAC class frigate (FFH)not long after commissioning and can attest that these so-called warships were pretty much set up, as we used to call it as 'fitted for-but not with', i.e. we had the capability designed in, but very little real infrastructure which would make for a modern warship, particularly if one was to be put in harms way.

Notwithstanding the above, I think Curmudgeon and others have indicated why we will probably never get a nuclear powered, let alone armed submarine for the foreseeable future.

Most simulation and therefore planning has probably been based on fairly limited international strategic defence scenarios, i.e. do we need an offensive or defensive platform.

If the first, there are arguments for both nuclear and non-nuclear.

If the latter, one would need to assess the risk matrix, one that unfortunately changes geo-strategically all the time.

As such, and given the long lead-time if building locally, I would suggest the simple solution would be to purchase a viable off-the-shelf model, one with flexibility in capability and both offensive and defensive capability relevant to our future theatre of potential influence and capability.

It's not a simple scenario and one I would hesitate to make a certain judgement on, particularly given the precarious nature of the global financial system and the inherent risk that geo-politically lies within this risk threat.

Geoff

If our humanity cannot move beyond nuke weapons and MAD, there is no future for anyone. This includes the gutless elite 1% and their nuke shelters.