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US and Western Defense Policy in the Next Four Years


BansheeOne

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US foreign policy will focus on root causeĀ of all the mayhem in recent years. Whether its civil war in Syria, Taliban in the Stan, Ruskies moving on Crimea, or the Chinese building a road with belts: CLIMATE CHANGE!

He who controls the climate, controls the universe!

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2 minutes ago, ex2cav said:

US foreign policy will focus on root causeĀ of all the mayhem in recent years. Whether its civil war in Syria, Taliban in the Stan, Ruskies moving on Crimea, or the Chinese building a road with belts: CLIMATE CHANGE!

He who controls the climate, controls the universe!

Ā 

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1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Cold War Finland called, they want their foreign policy back.

Idea that Finland had no independent foreign policy is on the same level as idea that... eg. Spain or Greece did not.

Edited by bojan
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16 hours ago, bojan said:

Idea that Finland had no independent foreign policy is on the same level as idea that... eg. Spain or Greece did not.

But it still gave birth to the noun 'Finlandization'.

Sure they had a foreign policy. But at the same time, they werent going to be allowed to join NATO or run a foreign policy contary to that of which the USSR approved. Ā  Still isnt tolerated now, come to that.

https://warsawinstitute.org/russias-threat-finland/

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1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

... they werent going to be allowed to join NATO...

Were Greece or Spain allowed to join WP?

Ā 

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Im sure Greece could have done if they asked, and had left NATO first. Im not particularly clear why Franco would have wanted to though...

Its true were the Gladio stay behind groups that were setup by the CIA and intended to thwart things like that. Although as Andreas Papandreou was able to return from the coup Gladio itself helped organize, setup a Socialist Government and subsequently order Gladio in Greece disbanded, I dont hold out much hope for its effectiveness.

If you want to see how much largesse European nations were given, have a look at Turkey invading Greek territory in 1974. How many times did you see Warsaw Pact nations invade each other without Soviets ordering them to?

Ā 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/7/2021 at 9:28 AM, BansheeOne said:

People are now interpreting fine points like the ship going around the Pacific clockwise rather than counter-clockwise, which apparently precludes a meeting with the British QE battlegroup, and means a port call at Shanghai will happen before transiting the South China Sea.

Well China has rejected a port call ofĀ Bayern, so I guess that concludes the debate over how much inappropriate friendliness towards them that would have brought to the cruise.Ā 

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let's hope it gets a nice catchy name like Ingsoc.

There are also claims Australia may be embarking on a nuclear submarine again, which the Americans want to help them with. The Astute might be a good model, because the Americans were key players in that.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
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23 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Ā 

Well, the LA and the Trafalgar are not contenders, they haven't been built for 20+ years, the Virginia will probably be too expensive, and I believe the Aussies are less than happy about France and colboration, whic would leave the Astute, but they still cost a bunch, and they are not likely to be useful for intel gathering near the PRC

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3 hours ago, RETAC21 said:

...I believe the Aussies are less than happy about France and colboration, ...

Well it didn't help that officially the Aussies wanted a non-nuclear sub, and then picked a nuclear sub as the base design to replace the nuclear reactor with a different drive, and then expect everything to work on the first try. To start with, a nuclear sub needs no storage space for fuel outside of the reactor room. The cooling concept is entirely different. Sound proofing is different. So what, seriously, did anyone in the Australian MOD expect?

Unless, of course there was a plan right from the start to nominally start a non-nuclear sub program, only to re-nuclearize it well before nearing completion. That might have explained the rejection of the German sub proposal. I can tell that the TKMS guys were no happy about the tender process at all, and suspected right there that there were ulterior motives behind the decision to pick the French concept.

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The French program seemed to have been becoming more and more "build in France" with a higher and higher price in the past few years. Build in Australia was an important point. Which still leaves the German bid as perfectly suitable. But the French bid one on the assumption of build in Australia. If it was Australian thinking to intentionally quite, then the French program did a huge service for making no progress all these years while walking backwards on the build in Australia commitment. So Australian intention to cancel for full nuclear from the beginning seems unlikely.Ā 

So now what specifically is the new ssn going to look like that fits Australian needs? Something not as big as Astute? Smaller crew? Collins has just 56. If using previous design, they'll still want to reduce crew size. Best advantage with nuke for Australia is speed and endurance for the wide spanning oceans around Australia and further to the Indian Ocean or the Philippines Sea. Even though Australia has no nuclear industry, it has had some intetest in nuclear subs. So now that it looks like it'll happen, they'll need that international nuclear tech/maintenance support. So not just the sub itself but the whole support scheme will be very imporatant. All very expensize.

Depending on how well this new program goes, it still may have been better that [yeah, here it comes] they had just stuck with Soryu.Ā 

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Confirmed, it seems.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-58564837

Quote

As a result of the pact, Australia has scrapped a deal to build French-designed submarines.

I for one would love to see the Australians with nuclear submarines. They should go the whole hog and get nuclear weapons too.

It's the future, and the nuclear option is the only viable long-term counter to China's mass, especially given how unreliable both the US and UK have been historically. Future options for nuclear weapons would of course help to explain why NZ is not included.

I suppose there will now be a massive bun-fight over who gets a new submarine contract, although it would be nice for Aus to select Astute as it would provide superb continuity for UK sub manufacturing.

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The Australian establishment/culture was simply dishonest.

They wanted high Australian industry input in the projectĀ but then if the Australian firms are incapable of providing enough competency it is the main contractor that isĀ punished.Ā 

I'll probably say that the It is the best for the French to not have the project go ahead.Ā 

Now 15 or more like 20 years to have nuclear submarines. In meantime there are big odds that a war would occur in meantime...

Ā 

-----

Note that French could have also supplied a nuclear submarine of this class from beginning.

Edited by lucklucky
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5 hours ago, DB said:

I suppose there will now be a massive bun-fight over who gets a new submarine contract, although it would be nice for Aus to select Astute as it would provide superb continuity for UK sub manufacturing.

The jury's still out on whether Australia and Australians can be considered a reliable submarine buyer. They'd probablyĀ ask forĀ design changes halfway through a bathroom renovation, nevermind a $100 billion sub contract. Right before the Australian equivalent of Greta Thunberg gets elected and decides to cancel the whole thing altogether.

Caveat venditor.

Edited by Nobu
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The press conference byĀ the three leaders. Lots of emphasis on it being conventionally armed and the keeping of nuclear nonproliferation obligations, aĀ shout out to France, 18 month long planning initial phase for infrastructure/human resource research,etc., and so on.

Ā 

Edited by JasonJ
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Here is a radical and probably unacceptable idea. Australia builds a nuclear submarine facility on the Aussie West Coast to handle their new submarine fleet (say Fremantle, or anywhere else with nice beaches). They pay an agreed amount to the British Government. The UK then builds a 5th SSBN, and agrees to make it patrolĀ  the Indian ocean with the agreement that if Australia is ever attacked by nuclear weapons, it will fire in response.

No, I know its not going to happen. But it probably should.

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8 hours ago, JasonJ said:

The French program seemed to have been becoming more and more "build in France" with a higher and higher price in the past few years. Build in Australia was an important point. Which still leaves the German bid as perfectly suitable. But the French bid one on the assumption of build in Australia. If it was Australian thinking to intentionally quite, then the French program did a huge service for making no progress all these years while walking backwards on the build in Australia commitment. So Australian intention to cancel for full nuclear from the beginning seems unlikely.Ā 

So now what specifically is the new ssn going to look like that fits Australian needs? Something not as big as Astute? Smaller crew? Collins has just 56. If using previous design, they'll still want to reduce crew size. Best advantage with nuke for Australia is speed and endurance for the wide spanning oceans around Australia and further to the Indian Ocean or the Philippines Sea. Even though Australia has no nuclear industry, it has had some intetest in nuclear subs. So now that it looks like it'll happen, they'll need that international nuclear tech/maintenance support. So not just the sub itself but the whole support scheme will be very imporatant. All very expensize.

Depending on how well this new program goes, it still may have been better that [yeah, here it comes] they had just stuck with Soryu.Ā 

Well, Co-operation witht he French revolves more around assembly of French designed parts and less about having access to how they are design and the all important combat systems, so essentially the locals become an outsourcing for the French shipyard. I suspect they also became more protective after Navantia bit them by going alone on the S-80 (to then fuck up the whole process...) so Aussies would be allowed to look but not touch.

Re. swapping plants in a nuke sub, thet's a huge problem, starting with weight distribution, and amounts to a new design in practical terms.

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