US, Uk and Australia announce new defence partnership, technology sharing

[Corvus]

The US, UK and Australia have announced a new defence partnership, named AUKUS - and if they don't use a killer whale as the symbol for it, I shall be terribly disappointed.

Its stated goal is to counter threats in the Indo-Pacific. No names were mentioned but, yeah, it is China. Naturally China has taken umbrage, labelling it as destabilising, amongst many other things, but you could have written that news release even before anything was said.

Included in the new alliance is technology sharing, over the fields of cyber security, AI and quantum computing, but the bit one that is making the news is the US sharing its closely guarded secret nuclear technology to enable Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines. The deal only includes nuclear propulsion, not nuclear weapons or civilian nuclear capability. Expect that one to be a little controversial given Austalia's anti-nuke stance.

[Mihalik]

The US, UK and Australia have announced a new defence partnership, named AUKUS - and if they don't use a killer whale as the symbol for it, I shall be terribly disappointed.

Its stated goal is to counter threats in the Indo-Pacific. No names were mentioned but, yeah, it is China. Naturally China has taken umbrage, labelling it as destabilising, amongst many other things, but you could have written that news release even before anything was said.

Included in the new alliance is technology sharing, over the fields of cyber security, AI and quantum computing, but the bit one that is making the news is the US sharing its closely guarded secret nuclear technology to enable Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines. The deal only includes nuclear propulsion, not nuclear weapons or civilian nuclear capability. Expect that one to be a little controversial given Austalia's anti-nuke stance.

The UKs desire to get involved in Pacific affairs is really weird. It has no meaningful territorial presence in the Pacific and it cannot reliably operate ships in the region independently due to the distances involved.

I know that a segment of British society still thinks that Britannia rules the waves....but really what it's doing is deploying ships it cannot independently support to act as auxiliaries to the US there. It really comes off as a "notice me senpai" thing....but hey, it's the British taxpayers money that is being shovelled straight into the Mariana Trench, who am I to criticize.

[Mayhem]

The UKs desire to get involved in Pacific affairs is really weird. It has no meaningful territorial presence in the Pacific and it cannot reliably operate ships in the region independently due to the distances involved.

I know that a segment of British society still thinks that Britannia rules the waves....but really what it's doing is deploying ships it cannot independently support to act as auxiliaries to the US there. It really comes off as a "notice me senpai" thing....but hey, it's the British taxpayers money that is being shovelled straight into the Mariana Trench, who am I to criticize.

Do they even have a meaningful presence anywhere else? I mean, might as well be non-present somewhere else.

[Shadowferal]

NZ isn't happy.
But Singapore and Japan seem glad.

[Mihalik]

Do they even have a meaningful presence anywhere else? I mean, might as well be non-present somewhere else.

Operating in the Atlantic, especially in the North Atlantic and the Arctic would make infinitely more sense considering the fact that the UK and Russia actually have competing interests in the region and that it can actually realistically support whatever ships it has in that general area.

But hey....whatever rocks their boat.

[PC2]

Western liberal democracies have similar values, so yeah, it's a no brainer to strengthen each other's military. It could make sense to include more countries but most countries don't have much of a navy to work with anyways.

[Hollycakes]

Aww this statement from France's minister:

"The American choice which leads to the removal of an ally and a European partner such as France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region ... marks an absence of coherence that France can only observe and regret,"

I feel like he shed a tear as he said that lol.

Honestly though, wtf?
You guys spent all that time and money retro fitting a nuclear sub to be diesel and now have finally decided that you should in fact enter the present day.
Governments gotta government I suppose.

I didn't know Oz was Swiss about Nukes.

Edit: This is the second time I've posted something here on mmo champ and then it shows up on youtube suggestions.
A vid about nike-hercules nukes just came up which I've obvs never watched anything about before.
I can't think of the other one now but it was also outside my realm of usual vids from something I said here.
This is not something I was aware of.

[Shadowferal]

France feels bitch-slapped

The Aukus deal has left the French political class seething at Joe Biden’s Trumpian unilateralism, Australian two-facedness and the usual British perfidy. “Nothing was done by sneaking behind anyone’s back,” assured the British defence minister, Ben Wallace, in an attempt to soothe the row. But that is not the view in Paris. “This is an enormous disappointment,” said Florence Parly, the French defence minister.

As recently as August, Parly had held a summit with her Australian counterpart, Peter Dutton, in Paris, and issued a lengthy joint communique highlighting the importance of their joint work on the submarines as part of a broader strategy to contain China in the Indo-Pacific region. Given Dutton’s failure to tell his French counterparts of the months of secret negotiations with the US, the only conclusion can be he was kept out of the loop, was deeply forgetful, or chose not to reveal what he knew.

There was no forewarning. France only heard through rumours in the Australian media that its contract was about to be torn up live on TV in a video link-up between the White House, Canberra and London.

Moreover, the move was presented not only as a switch from the diesel-powered subs France was building to longer-range nuclear vessels, but as part of a new three-way security pact for the region that would develop new technologies. Perhaps someone had decided the French could not be trusted to join this alliance. Perhaps there were sensitivities around US-UK tech transfer in nuclear propulsion and the other areas of tech cooperation, such as undersea drones, artificial intelligence and quantum.

To add insult to injury, Biden timed the announcement for the day before the EU was to publish its long-planned Indo-Pacific policy. The EU said it was not consulted in advance, although Pentagon officials said otherwise.

Australia said it had given ample warning that design delays meant it could look elsewhere by September, and France’s Naval Group was in fact given until September to revise its plans for the next two years of the project.

But in reality, Australia was already working on plan B with the US. To French eyes, Biden had showed – and not for the first time – that he will put the US national interest first.

But France’s exclusion shows the extent to which the US does not trust it with nuclear technology. This is a big win for Boris Johnson, and those that said post-Brexit Britain would remain more important to the US than the EU, even if it is going to alarm the pro-China business lobby in the UK.

------

Hmf...there was always a special relationship between the US and the UK. Wasn't going to let the UK hang after brexit.
Still, France is too important to allow to stew.

[anveena]

Naval Group dropped the ball hard on this. France has no one to blame but themselves over it.

[Corvus]

On the matter of the French and the subs, it has been mired in troubles for a long while and was going badly over budget and time.

The deal was made back in 2016 to build 12 subs, at an estimated cost of $36 billion AUD. It is now 2021 with no building work started and the estimated cost for those 12 subs is now $90 billion AUD. What is more the first one wasn't expected to be delivered until the 2030s and the last the 2050s, and that is if there were no further delays. It is little wonder that the project got axed.

And if this happens, Australia will be the first nation to operated nuclear powered subs that doesn't also have nuclear weapons.

As to why, well, the conventional subs just didn't have the range for the uses they would be needed. Given the distances from Australia to where any trouble would likely be (ie the SCS), they would only have a very short period of time there before they had to return to refuel.

[Hollycakes]

Jacinda Ardern said you can't come play in NZ with them too I saw.
Banned.
lol

I was trying to refrain from using boondoggle but fuck if that's not a textbook example.

[Deus Mortis]

Jacinda Ardern said you can't come play in NZ with them too I saw.
Banned.
lol

I was trying to refrain from using boondoggle but fuck if that's not a textbook example.

Yeah they have had a ban on Nuclear Power weapons/ships entering their waters since 1985.

[Toppy]

So if I have this right.

France failed to deliver on their own promises, in a spectacularly shitty way.
So AUS went to the US who will deliver.
Now France is whining and crying about how they're betrayed, comparing Biden to Trump despite the Biden administration having had talked to France about this, and over all showing that THEY are the ones that no one should trust?

[Shalcker]

So if I have this right.

France failed to deliver on their own promises, in a spectacularly shitty way.
So AUS went to the US who will deliver.
Now France is whining and crying about how they're betrayed, comparing Biden to Trump despite the Biden administration having had talked to France about this, and over all showing that THEY are the ones that no one should trust?

Got to remember that France reneged on their Mistral contract with Russia too.

French are inherently unreliable in that area.

[ati87]

The UKs desire to get involved in Pacific affairs is really weird. It has no meaningful territorial presence in the Pacific and it cannot reliably operate ships in the region independently due to the distances involved.

I know that a segment of British society still thinks that Britannia rules the waves....but really what it's doing is deploying ships it cannot independently support to act as auxiliaries to the US there. It really comes off as a "notice me senpai" thing....but hey, it's the British taxpayers money that is being shovelled straight into the Mariana Trench, who am I to criticize.

It;s understanble really.
Every great empire always tries it one more time to win back old glory.
The Ottomans in WW1 entered WW1, they took the a stupid excuse and decided to enter a stupid conflict (granted WW1 was in general a pointless war from all sides).
Greece tried it after WW1 and again when trying to take over Cyprus
Nazi Germany tried it during WW2
Japan around WW2
Russia is trying it now
UK has been trying to flex it muscles post 9/11

Probably missing allot of examples but you can see a pattern of countries that either start a conflict (Russia, Germany) or enter a conflict for no good reason (Ottoman Empire and UK).

[Specialka]

Got to remember that France reneged on their Mistral contract with Russia too.

French are inherently unreliable in that area.

Sorry, we decided to not sell our equipement to a dictatorship.

[Shalcker]

Sorry, we decided to not sell our equipement to a dictatorship.

...yeah, totally, and then you sold it to Egyptian Sisi.

Such principles, wow. /s

[JohnBrown1917]

Dont think anyone should be happy about military posturing between the west and China. It's not going to end well.

Japanese nationalism is like that. No wonder they get along with the US.

[Flarelaine]

Do they even have a meaningful presence anywhere else? I mean, might as well be non-present somewhere else.

They hold a bunch of islands in the South Atlantic for strategic sheep purposes.

[Mayhem]

They hold a bunch of islands in the South Atlantic for strategic sheep purposes.

Eddie is the best!