Sam Roggeveen

Well, Orcas was announced in September of 2021 when the Morrison government decided that the project to procure Orcas

12 french designed and built submarines which were powered by conventional that is diesel electric motors that that project would be cancelled and instead we would buy nuclear-powered submarines from the united states today i announce a new partnership a new agreement that i describe as a forever partnership a forever partnership

The actual reason why we cancelled the French deal and went with AUKUS instead is actually still a bit of a mystery.

There's a great book to be written on that subject by someone in the future, but no Australian government, I would argue, has yet given a really coherent and comprehensive strategic case for why we switched from the French attack class submarines to the AUKUS submarines.

Indeed.

Well, I would have the world's smallest violin for the French, I must say.

I mean, there's a reason you put cancellation clauses in contracts.

It's so you can cancel them.

And the French were generously compensated.

Well, it's up to $368 billion.

That's the figure we have from governments.

So somewhere between 268 and 368, that was the figure offered at the time.

Essentially, what we get for that is eight nuclear-powered submarines.

And the first three and potentially as many as five of those submarines will be American.

They will be Virginia-class submarines from American shipyards.

And then the final three, and maybe as many as five, will be a new class of nuclear-powered submarine to be designed and built primarily in the UK, but also in Adelaide.

And at the moment, that's simply called SSN AUKUS.

But that is purely a paper design at the moment.

The process of designing and building that submarine has only just begun.

Well, it's actually worth remembering that AUKUS is an extremely attractive commercial proposition for the United States.