Defence minister Richard Marles has said Australia is saving money and simplifying the navy by taking old US subs instead of a new one, The Guardian reports. Marles and his counterparts have agreed Australia won’t take a new Virginia-class submarine from the US as previously planned, with all three ships now to be secondhand.
Speaking in Singapore this morning, Marles said that option had always been considered and he was “really pleased” it had been adopted. He said: “In the context of a very complicated endeavour, we need to place a premium on simplicity.”
Marles said the former plan would have had the Australian navy operating up to four classes of submarine at once: the existing Collins class, the secondhand Virginia, the new Virginia model and the SSN Aukus, to come in the 2030s. He said. “That gets pretty complicated in terms of how you’re operating a fleet of submarines. What we will have here is a much simpler pathway. It will mean that the Virginia-class submarines that we are acquiring will all be of the same type.”
He said the secondhand models were “cost-effective”, asked if Australia was saving money, he said, “It’ll be significant . . . It is definitely cost-effective. . . . This is a very expensive program, obviously. And so we are trying to find every cost-effective option.”
The full report is here
