Hacker News Reader

Comment by tkojames | Hacker News Reader

It is super laughable because the nuclear powered version that they are building for themselves was a fixed bid contract for something like 10 billion for 8 subs.. and the Australian contract keeps going up and up something like 35 billion for ten subs. The diesel sub for Australia is based on the nuclear sub that they signed the fixed bid contract for. Anybody with half brain can tell they are making up the lost of fixed bid contract by charging the Australia more.. and then they act surprised when Australia pulls out when they can get nuclear subs for cheaper. When nuclear subs usually cost 2.5* the cost. These people do great reporting on all of this. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone

View on HN

The upset is not just about the loss of a commercial deal, I'm sure there will be some contractual compensations.

The issue is about the manner in which the deal was announced. Newspapers describe the urgent calls from the AU officials to their French counterparts hours before the very public announcement by the US, UK and AU.

Diplomatically, that's a pretty callous thing to do to a partner. The ballooning costs may have been a factor in the decision, but it's more likely that the move is purely geopolitical. In these matters, there is also no guarantee that the deal with the US will end up cheaper at all.

The more important subtext here is the damage done to the US' image and trustworthiness as it's willing to do backroom deals to serve its interests by disregarding friends and allies. Not the end of the world, but not a very smart move either if you want to be trusted.

As a French, this is very much the feeling here. We do not talk much about the financial impact (though Naval Group is obviously not happy) but indeed rather the way it was announced.

As for the trust part, I would say that this is more being naive, which is always a surprise to me.

We dealt with the British during Brexit and the overall feeling is that we lost the deal (fishing, British disregard of the deal, Irelands as an open entry point, ...). This is probably just a gut feeling, but we tend as a nation to wake up the hard way - surprised that others are not friendly.

It is time to acknowledge that we are a small fish compared to the US, China and we need to find a way to deal with that, and not still live in the idea that the world is looking at is.

You need to unify with Germany and other countries with the EU, this will give you the required clout against the other blocs of the world. As a Brit, Brexit was the day the world fell apart.

It works for many other aspects, but not the military: there is no EU army.

I'm pretty sure they will have to, this AFUKUS thing has forced their hand.

Actually Europe is super important as a force of balance. There is nothing more coveted by the Chinese than European friendship.

One should note that diplomatic dealings are not going to be reported in the press. What gets reported in the press is what is announced and/or what is leaked (on purpose).

We comment on what we think is diplomatically callous without actually knowing if/when France was informed. I think that France's best option, domestically, is to act surprised in order to save face. What should they do otherwise, after losing such a huge deal in a lucrative region? Honest question. What would you recommend France do in response, even if they realized there were substantial issues months ago and a real risk of losing the contract?

There is a lot of speculation without anyone here likely knowing what the truth is.

Actually, as mentioned multiple times in the past couple of days by former French Ambassador to the US Gerard Araud, diesel was an Australia demand, which required France to modify its subs (all nuclear powered) and added complexity to the project. According to the former Ambassador, it would have been much easier and cheaper for France to supply Australia with nuclear subs.

Then why is it the US's fault Australia changed its mind?

These nuclear subs run on highly enriched uranium. There is serious NPT issue involved that only the US has the power to ignore.

Power plants run on about 5% enriched, subs on 50%, weapons on 90%. Any country that can sell you a nuclear sub can also sell you the fuel, non-proliferation doesn’t come into it.

US and UK subs run at 93-97%. Other countries use 20-50%.

> There is serious NPT issue involved that only the US has the power to ignore.

Incorrect, the UK has already shat all over the NPT.

The recent Trident plans will raise the UK's weapons from 180 to 260 warheads (> 40% increase).

Which is in complete violation of article VI.

The NPT is for the rest of us.

The US probably pressured Australia. At this point, one can assume that Australia is just a bunch of land where some people live on it while being monitored electronically.

Well I suspect the demand was at least partially due to budget, as opposed to philosophical or technological reasons for diesel over nuclear.

Separately, I've got to think turnkey access to the tomahawk missiles has almost got to play a bigger role in this than the sub itself, other than being capable of carrying said missiles.

It was technical, of sorts. The initial demand for diesel refit was because Australia has no home nuclear capability and wanted to be able to do some of the maintenance locally. Otherwise they spend half their time in the northern hemisphere.

This may be a precursor to increased US naval presence/base in Australia.

>Australia has no home nuclear capability and wanted to be able to do some of the maintenance locally.

That's premised on whether France would have been willing to sell that capability to AUS, and for what price, vs the price (economic and military) of French nuclear maintenance, vs buying diesel.

That equation is easily changed by a competing US/UK offer, be it technology sharing/ training for AUS to gain dinners nuclear maintenance capabilities, or that by being more politically aligned with the US/UK, relying on a foreign country for maintenance isn't as much of a military risk.

>This may be a precursor to increased US naval presence/base in Australia.

I suspect the opposite. What does the US gain by naval presence in Australia (vs Guam or Okinawa or Philippines, etc) besides an additional layer of rapid response in the region? AUS & US already partner in most things that would make a larger military presence in AUS beneficial.

Whereas equipping AUS provides a potential partner for any international rapid response needed in the region. And I think for most incidents that would merit a US/UK rapid response in the region (ie China), AUS would have an equal or greater interest in responding to it.

The other advantage is logistical- if the US and UK deal involves sharing industrial capabilities with AUS, it gains the US and UK likely use of those AUS capabilities and facilities in the event of conflict, instead of having to return to the US/UK.

AUS gains technological and economic benefits, while US and UK get backup maintenance and repair facilities on the other side of the world, without having to pay for a base or for a contractor's presence. (Maybe you'd consider this increased US naval presence.)

New Zealand does not allow nuclear-powered vessels in its waters [1][2], maybe this contributed to the initial diesel requirement.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_nuclear-free_zone

[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nz-says-australias-new-n...

When you look deeper, the true entire purpose of this deal was not to build subs. It was to "create 3000 jobs" and save one politician (Christopher Pyne) who did win the next vote, then "retired" shortly thereafter and went to "work" as a highly paid lobbyist for EY (who he brokered this twisted dodgy deal with in the first place, when he was a politician).

This is borderline corrupt behaviour IMHO (and many others HO's too). There are "guidelines" for the political class, but nobody ever enforces anything even when the corruption is so blatant.

Don't even get me started on Barnaby Joyce and Angus Taylor funnelling tens of millions of taxpayer funds paying for fresh water runoff that was never realistically ever going to be worth anything to anybody. [2]

It was sent to Angus' Cayman Islands company that he founded, then he claimed he did not benefit personally (yeah right).

Also see Christian Porter and his "blind trust" suddenly donating a million bucks into his failed defamation rape case against the ABC. [3] [4] He says he has no idea where the money came from. Yeah right.

For more about Christopher Pyne, and how confected this French Frankenstein sub deal was, read the first 3 links I posted elsewhere earlier [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28580443

[2] https://www.michaelwest.com.au/barnaby-joyce-80m-valuation-d...

[3] https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/blind-trust-gift-...

[4] https://chaser.com.au/national/prime-minister-who-said-we-ca...

French contract took 4 years to be negotiated, the US one less than 6 months, in total secret with no public check… expect big surprises at the end, US weapons program are not known to never overrun their costs

For sure all that is right as well. But if I was in the Australian shoes this is just to good of deal from US and UK to turn down.

The cost on the French contract had already gone up by tens of billions of dollars, and nothing had been delivered.

UK frigate program for Australia navy is having the same issues: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/getting-real-about-the-sch...

Of course, 'negotiation' concludes faster when it's one way.

The most recent submarine program (Virginia class) was effectively on-budget.

Probably due to its predecessor, the Seawolf, from which it was derived ended up being wildly cost ineffective.

That is not correct.

Seawolf was cancelled and only three units were built, causing R&D costs to be spread across those three units, raising unit price.

It was cancelled because it was expensive, but it was ordered during the end of the cold war and was radically more capable than the class it was meant to replace. This cost was acceptable at time of order, but then subject to budget cuts after the USSR collapsed. This raised the per-unit cost, but lowered the overall cost.

The eventual replacement (Virginia) ended up being more evolutionary from the previous class (not from Seawolf) than revolutionary, but much cheaper.

Do you have a source for this? The Virginia shares many more features with the Seawolf that the LA class. The Virginia is basically a scaled down Seawolf hull with a different weapons arrangement.

Look at the USS San Juan and later hulls.

My source is having been on all three classes of submarine.

Concur. Unlikely to find prompt jumps in design that weren't previously field tested. Technologies pioneered by Seawolf class were rolled into the VA class, but ultimately decades of building 688s was more valuable than 3 Seawolfs (seawolves?)

I heard (from The Drive https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42390/australian-navy-...) the French deal had gone up to $70 billion. Why is this fact not presented more obviously? France seems to have been soaking Australia for an inferior, non-nuclear submarine fleet. Why is it surprising or even controversial that they cancelled the deal? I realize France is doing a full time PR push, here, but it seems to come down to a pretty terrible deal that Australia doesn’t want any more. Seriously, $70 billion for 12 diesel subs??

How trustworthy is The War Zone? It seems to be largely focussed on US defence tech industry, so I expect fairly biased reporting on this topic. Is there a better source?

It is 100% biased to USA sources. But they have interesting information on how the US defence tech industry works and goes more in depth than most places. It is a very fair point. I like how they actually talk about the technology and all that. Thanks for reminding me to keep in mind the source!

Thanks for clarifying! This was not meant to be an attack, but with analysis pieces on these matters I am always hesitant with respect to the source.

None taken it all. It got me thinking about what I learned in high school about what you said about sources. It is really is appreciated.

There is some pro-US military bias in their analysis and editorial content. But their factual reports tend to be more accurate than the mainstream media.

> But their factual reports tend to be more accurate than the mainstream media.

How do you know that?

They have a POV, but I wouldn't call it a US bias. They're pretty quick to criticize. (It's one of my few regular reads besides HN.)

They always post their sources, and then explain any speculation from there. Usually the speculation is more accusative of the US military than anything else, but Russia, China etc also get covered.

Now, many of the "sources" are US military or other US government FOIA requests or similar, as well as some vets sharing technical details of what their deployment was like, etc.

(I actually think they have more trouble with bias in proximity to US domestic politics than they do any US bias.)

Any US "bias" isn't really a skew of reality, so much as the US military is pretty much the topic the focus on covering.

They get giddy about some historical stories, but it's usually more about the tech than the allegiance.

Is hacker news biased for having a large number of articles about, or from the POV of, tech/startup/otherwise-HN crow? (excluding comments) Or is it just what the site is about?

All reporting is biased. You shouldn't try to find unbiased reporting - you'll never succeed, except at fooling yourself - instead you should identify the biases of the things you read and read sources with a variety of biases.

The War Zone looks interesting, but I find the combination of detailed military asset reporting from a website otherwise devoted to automotive news and car reviews odd.

Australian submarine situation has been a shit-show for 40 years. Glad its all over.

If Labor wins the next election, it's quite probable that they pull the plug on this deal.

they appear to be right behind it right now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com