Axing Attack: Will Australia Dud Its Fourth Submarine Builder?
For the third time Australia has severed relationships with a partner selected to assist the RAN acquire submarines. The decision to acquire nuclear powered submarines using the newly created AUKUS arrangements and prematurely end the Attack class program adds to the list of barely considered ‘politicians picks’ in Australian defence equipment selection, along with classics such as the F-111 and F-35. Yet although the agreement of the United States to release its nuclear propulsion technology is historically significant, subsequent discussion largely has been misguided. The submarines will be the last technology that Australia will see delivered and it is likely that the digital technologies of cyber warfare, quantum computing and artificial intelligence will have transformed the nature of warfare before they have arrived, suggesting that the acquisition of the submarines is by no means certain, at least in the terms that have so far been revealed. Despite an undertaking to constru