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Australia 'mugged by reality' on Aukus deal as US set to halve submarine build

theguardian.com

21–23 of 23 posts

Re: Australia 'mugged by reality' on Aukus deal as US set to halve submarine build

#21

Yeah and the whole reason China is a military threat is because McArthur got shot down by Truman and military tech is constantly stolen from the U.S. Australia has to design and build it's own weapons to realistically have it's own political will. We've seen it time and time again. People like Australia shirtless and plunderable.

You may have some points but McArthur wanted to turn Korea into a sea of irradiated isotopes. I think it's fair he was turned down.

Re: Australia 'mugged by reality' on Aukus deal as US set to halve submarine build

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is industrial capacity. Right now the US has enough industrial capacity to deliver maybe 2 submarines a year, and that needs to scale a lot. But that requires the companies involved to build more dockyards, train more workers (this is fairly specialized stuff), etc. Thats a big upfront cost for those companies, and they aren’t entirely sure such investments would pay off, and things like the above budget re…

> that requires the companies involved to build more dockyards, train more workers (this is fairly specialized stuff), etc. I suppose I’m curious for the specific fixed costs General Dynamics is concerned about and why they can’t bake that into the price of the second boat.

Many of the costs aren’t actually fixed. There’s all those extra workers you’ll need to pay, and training will have to be ongoing to account for turnover. Oh, and this is fairly specialized work, meaning if someone decides to specialize in it they may not have a ton of job opportunities outside of Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls. To even get people to apply you’ll need to increase wages. Even the fixed costs like building some new dry docks and factories could be in the billions. Oh, and you can’t forget everything here has multi-year lead times. Virginia class submarines take 5+ years to build. There are 9 under construction right now per Wikipedia.

Re: Australia 'mugged by reality' on Aukus deal as US set to halve submarine build

#23
post #2

Incidentally, Scott Morrison, the former PM who scuttled the French deal in favour of AUKUS - which costs the Australian tax payer 380 billion - is now on the board of at least one US defence think tank and I think at least another military manufacturer.

Lack of integrity kills everything. This is one "resource" you start with, that you can only lose. There is no gain. Some people lost it all before they can understand what integrity is.
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