Posted on 09/19/2021 12:10:32 PM PDT by george76
Another dumb aspect to this switcher-roo by Australia is that Australia apparently did not notify France of reaching a terminal boiling point on their dissatisfaction with ballooning cost for the package of submarines. If accurate, this is a royal screw up. I have read that the cost originally was about $50 billion and has increased to about $80 billion with the delivery date slipping by several years.
Something I have occasionally been able to put into commercial contracts for services and long lead time equipment are penalty and reward clauses. Exceed a benchmark and earn a bonus to the contract. Miss the benchmark and incur a reduction in $$$ owed. People and companies work their butt off when chasing a bonus on top of the base amount.
Clever use of ‘real politik’, but I don’t like giving anything to communist governments. I’d nix it.
People should understand that the French product was not only a turkey but its delivery date was postponed many times, and the subs probably would not have been delivered before 2030.
Because Vietnam has such a rich submariner history. Not worth it.
If Vietnam cannot be convinced to cough up the money and buy their own to protect their own economic rights, then come up with a cheap, effective, and right now plan— until US/UK can deliver 8 boats.
There are too many subs in Hawaii. They are too far from the fight and AUS needs subs now. Homeport 6 SSNs in AUS with the understanding husbanding services will be secured for port calls to Vietnam, Singapore, PI, Japan, S Korea. Force AUS with a sweetheart deal for home-porting with US Marines.
Move a SSGN to Hawaii. Shocked PACOM doesn’t have one.
That fixes everything to include shorter deployments for the SSNs. It’s cheaper, it pisses China off, and it alleviates the likelihood of Hawaii tipping over due to an overabundance of military and families. Hank Johnson (D-GA) will be relieved.
They probably didn’t need submarines until China started building islands off their coast.
Bingo! Winner!
Vietnam owes us money...
Let’s buy em some snails!
You don’t need nuclear subs unless you have a blue water navy. If you don’t have a blue water navy, Air Independent Propulsion is a much better option because it matches nuclear in every category except endurance but only costs a fraction of what nuclear does to buy and maintain.
And Vietnam’s navy is strictly brown water.
Vietnam’s only submarines at present are Kilo-class Soviet diesel-electric boats armed with little more than short-range anti-ship and ship-to-shore cruise missiles, nothing that justifies (or benefits from) a switch to nuclear. So if they bought nuclear boats that would more or less obligate them to also spend to get (or invent) sub-launched ballistic missiles or sub-launched cruise missiles.
Not only that, Vietnam created its own governmental atomic energy agency in 1976 with the intention of electrifying the country with nuclear power plants. But they abandoned the project in 2016 because they finally figured out what should have been obvious in 1976: there are cheaper ways to make electricity on the limited scale they need it than with nuclear power plants.
Which means Vietnam doesn’t have any nuclear reactors. ZERO. Which means they would lack the means to produce fuel for their White Elephant nuclear submarine.
So imagine that your most powerful instrument of war can’t serve its primary role unless some other country agrees to supply you with fuel and munitions.
And on top of that, adding a nuclear sub to your armada definitely will raise the profile of your fleet, and the nuclear pigboat automatically becomes the first vessel any sufficiently sophisticated adversary would target if hostilities should erupt. Which offsets the dependency on foreign aid for munitions and fuel, because it likely will be the first vessel sunk.
I doubt the Vietnamese are that stupid.
Vietnam has six conventional subs, Russian Kilos. They've been operating them for some time now.
They are too far from the fight and AUS needs subs now.
There are four submarines homeported in Guam. Just increase that number.
Move a SSGN to Hawaii. Shocked PACOM doesn’t have one.
They have two. USS Ohio and USS Michigan. Homeported in Bangor.
Just NO.
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