Aukus

[Berkut]

My prediction:

The US sells or leases a couple Virgnias to Australia in the next decade to get their capability, training, and infrastructure going.

There is an announced plan to build the other 6 Virginias in Australia, from components manufactured in the US. There will be delays, and the first 2 or 3 end up getting built in the US, with maybe the last three being actually assembled in Australia.

The Astutes are a possibility as well, but they are not in production anymore, as I understand it? Isn't the UK starting a new design?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Would Virginia class boats just be too much for what Australia is looking for?

Although that would kill the idea of them being built in Australia....

I would've thought yes to be honest, it's very interesting that it's starting to sound like they may just get Virginia class submarines, and some portions of the manufacture done in Australia.

[OttoVonBismarck]

My prediction:

The US sells or leases a couple Virgnias to Australia in the next decade to get their capability, training, and infrastructure going.

There is an announced plan to build the other 6 Virginias in Australia, from components manufactured in the US. There will be delays, and the first 2 or 3 end up getting built in the US, with maybe the last three being actually assembled in Australia.

The Astutes are a possibility as well, but they are not in production anymore, as I understand it? Isn't the UK starting a new design?

I could be wrong but I think the Astutes are still in active production. The Dreadnought class, which are ballistic missile subs, are under construction now and use a new reactor design--The Rolls-Royce PWR3, which is basically a "Rolls-Royce version of an American design." The Rolls-Royce PWR2 was largely independently designed by RR and is what powers the current gen Astutes. The Rolls-Royce PWR1 which goes back to the 60s now, was largely developed due to large scale and comprehensive technology transfers from the United States to RR--in exchange we got a lot of sharing from the Brits back on basic sub design.

So PWR1 can be seen as basically British made but significantly designed by the U.S. Building on that expertise in the mid-80s RR produced the PWR2 which is basically British designed, albeit derived from the original American technology--General Dynamics also did do some technology transfer of U.S. nuclear reactor design for PWR2, but PWR2 is much more of a British endeavor than PWR2.

My understanding is PWR3 in a sense kind of goes back more to being more significantly designed using American nuclear reactor design.

The PWR2 is a pretty good reactor w/an expected lifespan of 30 years before it would need refueling (which is expected to be longer than the life of the ships.) The PWR2 produces 27,500 shaft horsepower. The Virignias are powered by the S9G reactor--they can go 33 years between refueling and generate 40,000 shaft horsepower.

[grumbler]

Australia bought nuclear submarines that had to be converted to diesel power at their request.  Then they changed their mind midway through the modification process and went elsewhere to get nuclear subs.


Had they asked France for nuclear subs in the first place, France would have happily provided them, like they are doing with Brazil, even building the necessary infrastructure.

Australia bought a conventional variant on a French nuclear submarine design, with the specific intention of being able to complete some of the later-built versions as nuclear submarines, if the situation warranted.  Over time, though, the French design evolved to lose the nuclear alternative, which made the Australians unhappy.

The French are not providing nuclear submarine technology to Brazil; they are merely helping the Brazilians redesign their existing Scorpène submarine design to accommodate a Brazilian-designed-and-built nuclear reactor.

The Brazilian project is nuts.  They are going to be commissioning, in 2034, a sub whose design is 20 years old at a cost equivalent to the cost of a Nimitz-class carrier.

[Berkut]

I don't think much of anyone really understands the import of the US taking Australia into the US/UK nuclear propulsion fold.

Nuclear propulsion reactors for subs are probably the MOST tightly controlled and guarded military technology in existence outside of actual nuclear weapons.

And quite frankly, when it comes to this tech, it is the USA, and then the UK in a distant second, then France/Russia in a FAR FAR distant third, and then China/India?

The US has built hundreds of these power plants over the last half century, with a perfect safety record to boot. The latest US nuke plants are smaller, quieter, with radically greater range, and vastly safer. The US has the infrastructure and experience. They have the ability to train and the size and scale that matters.

France has no shot at a deal like this the moment the US decides to come to the table.

And the deal makes great sense from the perspective of the US, right now. It will basically allow the US to increase its effective fleet size in counter to China on Australias dime, AND will give the US sub fleet bases and support.

The US is looking at having about 30 Virginia SSNs eventually. In a potential conflict with China, that means maybe 18 or so might be available in that theater. If Australia gets an additional 8, then you could imagine 5-6 of those 8 being available in a potential conflict. That is about a 30% increase in naval projection where it matters.

This is a brilliant move by Biden.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It'll be interesting to see how Australia goes about turning its Navy into a nuclear Navy, it's a pretty big transition. I like to shit on the Navy as much as the next guy who was in the Army but even I always had a lot of respect for Naval submarine officers. They're really among the very best of the best people we have in any part of the armed forces. Every submarine officer on a sub has to go through nuclear school and understand how the reactors work--a lot of people assume it is just the ship's engineer officer who does that, which isn't accurate, every submarine officer on board in theory could serve as the ship's engineer if necessary [not every officer on the sub will be a submarine officer, there's still supply officers etc]. The Navy's nuclear power school in South Carolina, AFAIK is considered the hardest and most rigorous academic program in the U.S. military. It's 24 weeks of ~45 hours a week classroom instruction with an expected outside of class study workload of 35 hours a week. I think you only get two chances to past the exams at the end and after that your time in the submarine program comes to an end and you'd get reassigned to another part of the Navy.

The rigorous training and high standards among the U.S. nuclear submarine sailors and officers has resulted in a service record of 6200 reactor years, over 526 reactor cores, and 240 million kilometers traveled without a single occurrence of a radiological incident. For comparison during the Cold War ten different Soviet nuclear subs experienced radiological accidents, and an 11th had a criticality incident during refueling.

[Berkut]

It makes me wonder if the entire angst from Frane is just pure posturing for domestic consumption.

Because any competent French naval authority would tell Australia "Yeah, you should definitely drop us if you can get US/UK nuke boats instead". At least, that is what they should say if they actually care about making their allies stronger....


I mean, not only are they much better subs, they are likely to end up considerably less expensive! I've been seeing numbers like $3billion per sub - they want 8. Even if they buy 12, that is $36 billion versus like the $60 billion they were going to pay France for 12 diesel boats! I know some of that is infrastructure as well, but still....it is very likely that buying Virginias from the US is both cheaper and much less risky, financially. We've built, launched and commissioned like....15 already? So the price is pretty well understood at this point.

[Sheilbh]

I'd probably wait until at least the end of the 18 month technical scoping before we start talking about the price comparison - and if the primary drivers for moving were the price increases and delays Australia may be disappointed by the thrilling delights of American and British defence procurement Especially as I expect part of this will be not ust buying subs but building the industry around them in Australia both for - as the UK basing comments put it - "deep maintenance" for the UK and, I imagine, US fleet in the South Pacific and Australia's own fleet.

I don't think this is purely for domestic consumption at all - there may be an element of that. But this isn't a purely naval authority question or issue for France - if anything I think the Naval group would quite like everyone to calm down (not least because this may make it a little more challenging to win contracts elsewhere). The noise has been coming from foreign policy writers, the most outraged appears to have been the Foreign Minister etc - as I say the French were talking about their relationship with Australia, with the sub deal as a foundational piece, as a marriage. It was the centre of their Indo-Pacific strategy and, perhaps tellingly, developed when the American President wasn't particularly interested in building or developing alliances. As I say - I think not unrelatedly - this has been pushed by the non-Gaullist wing of the French establishment as the way of France's approach "complementing" the US's strategy and it's ended like this, so the Gaullist wing they've spent their careers fighting are now gloating.

The other side to it is probably strategic - you kick up enough of a fuss and you use it to get leverage. So the US is now committing more to the Sahel (the joint mission in Mali was also mentioned in the Johnson-Macron read out) - and France have left it open for DC and London to work out other ways to "re-build" the relationship. All of those are minor wins for France. In addition they can turn to the rest of Europe and say, with some legitimacy, the US is unpredictable, the Anglos aren't trustworthy and we need to develop European defence/strategic autonomy - that reinforces the argument Macron's been making his entire time in office. It may not lead to anything but you're able to leverage an unfortunate event (getting shafted on a big contract and not included in a new formal structure) into extracting more from the UK and US, while also using it in Europe. I don't know if they get any of that by demurely going along.

[Berkut]

How does this show that the US is unpredictable?

The US is taking in another strategic partner into the "special relationship". This is as un-Trump as anything can be, and is clearly about the US engaging more closely with a critical regional ally in the region of the world that is clearly going to define the next century.

The US didn't break a deal with anyone, the US didn't back out of any of our commitments to Europe. How is the US unreliable NOW?

I mean, if you want to say our reliability took a huge hit from the last four years of Trump, and the new reality that if someone like him can get elected once, someone like him can get elected again, ok - that I can understand. But this move by Biden is exactly the opposite of that - this is the US tying itself to another country halfway around the globe in a manner we have not done since signing the NATO treaty.

[Sheilbh]

France literally couldn't predict it - would other NATO (European members) have more advanced sight if the US decided to move in and replace them in a core part of their strategy in x part of the world. It was also an incredibly well kept secret that shocked analysts from everywhere as far as I can see. The one view I've not seen oon this is: "well that was predictable and as expected" As you point it's only the second time the US has shared nuclear technology with

To an extent it's a re-iteration of the Franco-British divide since Suez - both of which are pretty accurate and sort of reasonable responses to the dilemma.

For the British it reinforces the view that they can do nothing without the Americans and anything they try to do without American support can have the rug pulled from it in a second if the mood shifts in Washington (Australia came to the UK - they needed to bring the Americans on board) - so their strategy is staying as close as you can to the US to try and have sight of what's next and influence from inside a very tight alliance. For the French it reinforces their view that French interests are not necessarily American interests and they should be under no illusion about that, or that the US will sacrifice or perhaps even compromise on theirs for the sake of France's - so their strategy is to be "allied but not aligned", ensure they have a degree of ability to operate independently and work to make Adenauer's promise that Europe will be France's revenge one day come true.

[Berkut]

That is a trite definition of the term.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe - but it's why I used predictable instead of reliable.

As I mentioned I think the most interesting European (non-French) comment on this was Duda who compared it to Biden's shift on Nordstream 2, that "I understand that when they say it's a European problem, the French mean that if they can be treated this way, everyone else can be treated this way too. I can say the same about NS2 [...] It's no wonder that the French are bitter about it and are protesting. On the other hand you could say that for the US it's a way of achieving some American interests." I think that's sort of a fair summary - don't put too much of your trust in giants or at least know the risk.

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't see how America gets blamed on NS2; that was clearly a German issue.  The problem was disunity in Europe with the German half of the Franco-German engine shearing off and pursuing its own agenda.  For years all the US did was talk and toss around a few meaningless sanctions. By the time Biden was inaugurated the project was a fait accompli, done and built.  His choice was between grudging acceptance of a fait accompli and imposing bruising financial sanctions against a key NATO ally and the largest country in the EU.  He does the former and is accused of untrustworthiness; had he done the latter, he would be accused of bullying an ally and abusing American financial power.

it's basically blaming the US for failing to use coercion to compensate for a huge failure in intra-EU diplomacy.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The core issue is France thinks it can still operate as a great power, it simply cannot. France interprets EU strategic autonomy to mean "the EU following behind France, allowing France to act as a great power through the virtue of a compliant EU following its lead." That just isn't reality. France could be the leader of creating an EU lead autonomous force, but its interests would need to be shaped around those of the broader EU, not France's. France is frankly far too "short term selfish" in its thinking. De Gaulle and Trump would have gotten along quite well I think.

Trump looked at a lot of our relationships and alliances and saw "one sided deals" because he didn't understand there was another layer to the game, and that most our "one sided" relationships, like with NATO, South Korea, Japan, are actually very significant American assets.

So you have France wanting to use the EU to promote its own strategic autonomy, which is silly and will never work. You have them wanting to leverage Australia to enhance its position in the Indo-Pacific but they were bending the Aussies over the barrel on the money and the contract. First agreeing to 90% of the construction being done in Australia (part of how Turnbull justified the deal was the Australian jobs), then reducing that to 60%, then indicating even that was too high. Let costs rocket higher etc. And France was certainly not offering to help Australia become a nuclear Navy, and it is unclear if France would be actually willing to share that technology.

If France wants to be the leading nation in an EU centric autonomous force, it is probably positioned to be--it is the most powerful military in the EU and the most outward thinking of the large economies. But that means France has to look at situations like the plight of the Eastern Europeans and realize it has to come around to satisfying the concerns of countries like Poland and the Baltics, that means doing things that short term aren't easily identified as being in France's interests, but could long term build an autonomous EU with France as its pre-eminent power.

But the France way of thinking is still clearly "we're a great power, countries like Italy, Poland, Australia, Indonesia, etc should just hitch their cars to our locomotive and we'll drive."

[Sheilbh]

I don't see how America gets blamed on NS2; that was clearly a German issue.  The problem was disunity in Europe with the German half of the Franco-German engine shearing off and pursuing its own agenda.  For years all the US did was talk and toss around a few meaningless sanctions. By the time Biden was inaugurated the project was a fait accompli, done and built.  His choice was between grudging acceptance of a fait accompli and imposing bruising financial sanctions against a key NATO ally and the largest country in the EU.  He does the former and is accused of untrustworthiness; had he done the latter, he would be accused of bullying an ally and abusing American financial power.

it's basically blaming the US for failing to use coercion to compensate for a huge failure in intra-EU diplomacy.

I don't think Duda or the Poles are blaming the US for NS2 - I think they absolutely do blame Germany and sort of France, which is why Poland is still so committed to the US and NATO.

I think the point is that - from a Polish perspective - this came out of the clear blue sky from a country they thought was aligned and they were relying on. The US also, from what I can see, got very little in return. It probably made the decision probably based on the factors you've explained. It's not blaming the US or Biden for it, just noting that if American interests change then policy may change quickly and without any forewarning - and that's on an issue that's had broad bipartisan support and has been a Polish (and other NATO and EU countries') priority for a number of years.

Otto - totally agree with that. The other point I'd add is that I think part of this isn't simply France wanting to operate like a great power. A large part of it I think is saying Europe when they mean EU, saying EU when they mean France and Germany.

I think France still focuses too much on Germany and sees unlocking German support as the secret to European strategic autonomy (which is a similar delusion to British governments thinking that unlocking German support was the key to a good Brexit deal). Because of that I think France identifies its intersts with Germany, when they aren't necessarily aligned. I think that feeds into France's Russia policy, which in turn undermines support for anything like European strategic autonomy in large chunks of Europe (and chunks that are more willing to spend money on defence and use their forces overseas). I still think there is a romantic notion in the Quay d'Orsay that Paris and Moscow are somehow naturally aligned and should be settling the politics of Europe between them but that's a separate thing. Another example of this is Baltic nations threatening to pull out of the Sahel if Mali does accept Russian mercenaries.

The same sort of applies in the Med - the UK has broadly withdrawn from the Med and is not particularly interested (it is, if anything, now more focused on the Baltic and Black Seas). France should be trying to work with Italy and align policies there because Italy is a power in the Med. Instead France and Italy are funding opposing sides in Libya (France is aligned with the Gulf + Egypt, Italy with Turkey + Qatar) which makes any common European policy in North Africa difficult.

The model for France should be the way they backed up Greece against Turkey in the last few years - make the interests of Europe's periphery theirs, so they are the best partner those countries have. They should be looking to do that in Eastern Europe - I'd recommend increasing their Baltic deployment right now - and trying to work out a common approach with Italy. Instead I expect they will focus on Berlin and probably do a Franco-German-Russian summit with the new Chancellor