Sam Roggeveen

speaker

193 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 8 Jul

Sam Roggeveen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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ABC News Daily · Why AUKUS delivers second-hand subs · 3 Jun 2026 podcast

And so when production is tight and when the Americans are struggling to fill their own order book, their commitments to Australia,

then naturally you would expect that they want the newest and the best submarines for themselves.

And they will leave the secondhand submarines, the slightly less capable models, to Australia.

Well, I do agree there should be a plan B. The important thing is not to think about submarines as such, but to think about the capabilities that they provide.

So what is it that submarines do?

What is it we want them to do for Australia?

Well, one thing that submarines are really good at is sinking ships and sinking other submarines.

But there are other ways to do that.

So Australia can buy a whole suite of different capabilities that would compensate in the event that we did have a submarine gap.

So I think Australia should be thinking along those lines, thinking about more aircraft that can fire anti-ship missiles and

There are surface ships that can also act as anti-ship platforms.

We're at the forefront of undersea drone technology that has a part to play.

All of these factors can come together to create a network of systems for Australia that give us really good capabilities to sink ships and to sink other submarines if we need to.

Certainly it's not optimal for Australia to have a submarine gap.

We're better off having submarines than not having submarines.

But if we have to have a submarine gap, that's not the end of the world.

I mean, I would personally support that, but I can see all sorts of political roadblocks.

One is that Richard Marles, the Deputy Prime Minister, a very powerful figure in the government, is clearly committed to this.

Another factor is that we have already invested something like $9 billion in this project.

There is also the other factor of the alliance with the United States.

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