Australian Submarine Program - AUKUS

Oh boy... what an interesting story we've had on this ongoing saga of replacing the much lauded... venerable... and widely beloved Collins-Class Submarines. First it was going to be with French Scorpene Nuclear Submarines, modified to be Diesel-Electrics, which couldn't even stay underwater for more then twenty minutes, then there was talk of adopting American Virginia-class Submarines (which is still a thing btw) and now the AUKUS Submarine Project is the latest iteration.





The White House actually seemed to release the most easily digestible summary of what everyone apparently agreed upon. In short, by the 2040's the United Kingdom and Australia should both be possessing domestically manufactured Nuclear Submarines. The path getting there is as follows:

1. Rotation of one British Astute-class Submarine and four US Virginia-Class Submarines to Australian Submarine Bases.
2. 2030's there will be a sale of three American Virginia-Class Submarines to Australia with the option of two more.
3. The new SSN-AUKUS will start to be built in the early 2030's in Britain to replace the British Astute-Class with the first Australian SSN's built in Australia arriving in the early 2040's.
4. Giant Asteroid Impacts the Earth in 2046 Wiping out All Surface Life. Submarines Will Now Rule the Waves.

Yeah, I see no way how this could get more complicated or exceed the original budget estimates by several times. If I remember right the first decision was to build a tripartite diesel-electric submarine as Australian public was against nuclear submarines (also the reason why Scorpene was picked initially), but then it was changed to nuclear ones.

The Indian procurement bureaucracy:

Some nerd countering some of the commonly held arguments against AUKUS.

His main argument is contrasting the cost of the previously adopted Attack-class SSK program and contrasting it with the cost of this new AUKUS program.