[gatronicus]

One article said that the France contract was about 7 bil per diesel sub, while the new one will be 4 bil per nuclear sub.

I can't imagine how you can justify 7 bil for a diesel sub.

Is it possible that France though that Aus had no alternative and ran the price up?

[sofixa]

> One article said that the France contract was about 7 bil per diesel sub, while the new one will be 4 bil per nuclear sub

Both of those are wrong.

> Is it possible that France though that Aus had no alternative and ran the price up?

No, there was an official procedure with multiple candidates ( France, Japan and a third one I can't recall). Australia chose the French option, even though it required significant modifications to a nuclear design to make it diesel electric.

> I can't imagine how you can justify 7 bil for a diesel sub

Furthermore, the contract included significant know-how transfers and construction in Australia, so whatever the price per sub turned out to be, it wouldn't be for the subs alone.

As for why the 4 bil per sub is wrong - they haven't decided anything. They don't know the design, upon what it will be based ( the smaller UK Astute class or the bigger US Virginias), etc. Lots of infrastructure needs to be built, and people have to be trained since Australia has no nuclear sector to speak of. So any price projection as of today is purely theoretical.

Oh and the first subs under the new contract should be available in 2040, so probably a decade later. That's a long time.

[thow-58d4e8b]

This is the real question. From the outsider perspective, it looks like the navies and militaries of the western world are evolving towards extremely expensive, specialized high-tech "toys", produced in very low numbers, that require extensive year-long training just to get anything done. Most of which are useless against guerilla warfare insurgencies, and of doubtful utility against peer nation state competitors. Feels more like a job program than efficient armed forces.

As a deterrent against nation states, it's questionable how a billion dollar submarine would handle a swarm of thousands of suicidal drones, at a fraction of the cost of the submarine. The submarine takes years to build, a no-name Chinese factory can pump out thousands of drones in a day.

Imho, the approach of the PLA, betting more on unmanned drones backed by China's industrial capacity, is a more logical evolution of warfare.

Some links: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37062/china-conducts-t...

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13284/americas-gaping-...

[gatronicus]

The main purpose of the submarine is to deliver nuclear missiles from near the enemy shore, so arguably it's most important feature would be to remain undetected.

It's unclear if modern tech can "reveal" where the subs are, rendering them useless.

I agree on your point regarding surface ships, they are walking dead, they can't defend against drone/missile swarming.

[detaro]

That's one class of submarines. One that doesn't really make sense for Australia, given they don't actually have any nukes to deliver.

[grandinj]

Much more likely that the standard optimism that runs through people when they are starting new projects lead them to dramatically underestimate the difficulty of the project - which ended up being "design a new sub from scratch" instead of the intention, which was "lightly modify an existing design"

[worrycue]

That’s kind of irrelevant to the situation though. It’s not Australia changing suppliers that’s the problem but how they did it. France found out they got dropped from the news if I’m right.

[Adrig]

afaik, the cost comes from the original requirement from Australia that wanted the adaptation of existing nuclear designs into diesel ones. France was one of the few willing to tackle the work, and also why this 180° change towards nuclear-powered subs is a bit weird.