"Recently Australia has taken the approach with military aircraft to buy foreign, proven equipment with minimal adaptation for local conditions...."
Let's face facts, Defence Procurement here has an atrocious record of nepotism, corruption and incompetence, highlighted especially in the case of the current overcost, under-performing flying turkey, the F35.
Already many years beyond it's due date, costing many times the initial quote, and utterly useless for it's designated roles, and easily outflown and out-fought by even the current crop of opposition planes, let alone any in development, it's been proven nothing more than a cash-cow for the American arms industry.
As for all those crying about the cost of having our own defense industry I say be damned to Neo-con thinking, in this instance our National Interest is best served by being self-reliant, not by saving a few dollars that will be quickly pocketted by politicians and their cronies anyway. That's bean-counter thinking, and it was and is the bean-counters that white-ant projects like the Collins class subs, their penny-pinching and bureacractic b/s mitigate against any real chance of success.

G'day Bruce, well said.
G'day plantagenet, you make some fine arguments. However, when the grocery store shelves are empty within a week, fueling our submarines might be the least of our worries.
G'day Hasbeen, no doubt the unions need a good kicking occasionally. And buying our military hardware from the yanks has always been such a winner; after all, when have they ever failed to deliver our order on time and under budget? Why on earth should we bother to learn from our mistakes, build up our own manufacturing and industrial infrastructure and employ our own people when we can just buy everything from the rest of the world?
It's so nice to be so rich.

G'day Grim and G'dayBruce

Cost (be it typified as bean-counting) is still important. Issues like opportunity costs are all part of the creative process of decision making.

Grim - Regarding "buying our military hardware from the yanks has always been such a winner; after all, when have they ever failed to deliver our order on time and under budget?" Well think of the on-budget, on time, Super Hornets, Abrams M1 tanks and the C-17 military transports. But yes there are those F35 JSFs and many lesser "cutting edge" projects .

The US is the main strategic ally benefactor, I hope. It is that dominant conventional and nuclear umbrella supplier. So premiums on the US alliance come by way of overspending on many of their weapons.

If it was politically realistic those Virginia nuclear subs from the yanks would be ideal. But my second pick is a German sub which can be rapidly and safely tailored to Australian conditions.

Also Germany, unlike Japan, has had a great deal of experience exporting to customers with local content-offsets for local (eg. Australian shipbuilding) benefits.

If our Government wants a sub of the "right" size but wrong contents it should live dangerously and buy Japan's Soryu.

Pete

G'day Pete, points ceded.
But (always a but) when one is allied to the biggest bully in the schoolyard, at some point one has to wonder whether he is getting you out of more trouble than he is getting you in to, particularly when he insists on interfering in the sovereign rights of others.
It is very easy when discussing military strategy to focus on frontline troops and forget the quartermaster. Just as Australia's greatest weakness is our almost total dependence on foreign oil supplies, America's greatest weakness is it's own dollar; specifically it's “reserve currency” status.
Should the global community ever lose faith -due to egregious over supply- America could very quickly become a crippled liability.
There are signs this is already happening, indeed more than conspiracy theorists wonder if this was not Saddam's greatest crime -in American eyes.
So who can we trust?
We, as much if not more than other nation are remarkably capable of self sufficiency. With our resources and isolation we could be a much more secure fortress than America ever was (Certainly our border security is superior).
Winning a war is about survival. You can't survive if you can't eat.

I'm a bit disappointed in this article Pete. As we discussed last time, any discussion on military equipment must happen only after the strategic and military capabilities are defined.

Some suggestions for the next article:
1. Start with a description of what we actually need a military for, people don't really seem to understand strategic or military planning

2. Explain the capabilities that our military needs to achieve these goals. Why are submarines needed as a platform at all? What can they do that satellites, aircraft, ECHELON/Pine gap can't?

3. If we do need submarines, you need to explain what they need to do, where they need to do it, and for how long. Once we know these things, then look at platforms that meet these criteria. A limited list from the top of my head would be anti-Submarine warfare (best platform for this), intercepting communications and command and control systems, capturing encryption/jamming to develop countermeasures, tracking and escorting of commercial shipping, sea denial, land attack etc. etc.

4. Australian submarines will be fitted with American systems and weapons. This not only increases risk and cost for for an OTS (is it even OTS after such significant modifications), but how will this effect space, range etc?

5. You have not discussed the value of domestic build capabilities. It is fair enough to argue the (many) disadvantages of domestic design and construction, but there must be some value for this capability. Do you think that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages? We don't know because you ignore this side completely.

Now I don't have these answers, but if I read an article I hope to finish more informed than where I started. Anyone can pull up numbers of various platforms and do a basic A vs B vs C comparison, but without context this tells us nothing.

I've posted a link to this article on another forum for discussion. Many of the posters are very well informed and will provide useful and constructive comments. I'll post the link in the next post if you are interested.

Almost anyone who has been exposed to the very basics of business understands there's two columns to consider; and not just the debit ledger.
The other is the credit ledger. Or how any acquisition will affect/increase the income stream.
The govt is clearly focused on just the debit ledger, when it comes to subs, and has thrown it out the window, when it comes to war planes!
When it comes to warplanes, pure speed is less important than invisibility/silent running.
And we know how to build a planes that are invisible to radar.
We also lead the world in molded carbon fibre production.
We also have the capability to build/assemble/maintain VTO aircraft.
All we really need is an ability to get planes in the air; and from virtually anywhere!
And our homemade smart bombs are at least as good as the Yanks.
Other posters have identified that we just don't need a dozen big subs, when all we need to sink shipping is small ones.
Around two decades ago, one of our Aussie innovators invented a two man sub that virtually flies through the water, powered by a super smart steam venturi system.
Largely built from bulletproof see through acrylics; it can outpace/outmaneuver any current torpedo, and respond with underwater capable rockets, no underwater vehicle/torpedo can outrun!
However, we do need a vehicle that can carry a swarm of these units to where they are the most useful/needed.
Today's Nuclear powered subs are as big as a WW11 aircraft carrier.
Which could conceivably therefore, carry as many as a hundred of the smaller subs, and all their munitions, as identified.
Rhrosty