US. controls on sensitive defence exports, relaxed for AUKUS partner Australia last year, still apply to submarines, creating hurdles to defence industry collaboration on U.S. Virginia-class sub production, officials and executives said.
Whether the United States can overcome production delays to meet U.S. Navy targets is key to whether Australia can buy three Virginia-class nuclear powered submarines under AUKUS, Defence Minister Richard Marles said last month. Australia faces a 2025 deadline to pay $2 billion of the $3 billion it has pledged to improve the U.S. submarine industrial base.
 
Are you sure about that, seems the current incumbent is looking at longer terms?
He can spew bullshit all he wants, it would take a constitutional amendment to allow him to even campaign for a 3rd term.

A constitutional amendment requires passing the House, Senate, and 38 states must agree to it!

Plus we have FDR as a direct example of why that amendment limiting Presidents to 2 terms total (or if they were the VP when a president died in office, if they took over with less than 2 years remaining in the term, they can be elected twice after that for a max of 10 years minus 1 day).

Nevermind what him trying to push through with the amendment and a 3rd term would do to the country. FFS, people are currently circulating that T wants to declare Martial law on the 20th! I do NOT want a civil war, fuck you very much.
 


Here is our chance.

Regards,
 


Here is our chance.

Regards,
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s definitely dead yet, but I don’t think it really matters how much the UK & Australian governments talk it up, with this administration in the US if they want to quit they’ll leave. Wonder if in those circumstances Australia can get the money it has already paid to the US back?
 
I would say we would never get it back and more so I would think we would have to write out another cheque for a bill or two on the exit.

Or of course this could just be another US shakedown and the whole cost for us paying the US to build subs for themselves just went up.

Hey, it's only money..........................Australian taxpayers' money.

Nothing to see here.

Regards,
 
To be clear here, I think there's very little chance that the US will want to walk away from AUKUS, because the AUKUS agreement is about much more than selling Virginia-class submarines to Australia.

You can be absolutely sure that the US wants to move forward with a submarine replenishment and maintenance facility in WA, and with improved airfield, refuelling and aerial refuelling facilities in WA and the Northern Territory. They are very happy being able to preposition material in Victoria and would be over the moon if there was an actual Virginia-class capable repair yard in SA.

So they absolutely want to continue with all of that.

What they don't want to do is actually sell Australia Virginia-class submarines. They simply don't have enough of them, hence this latest bit of theatre.

Whatever happens though, you can expect Australia's cuck government to continue to fully support AUKUS in whatever new form it takes going forward.
 
To be clear here, I think there's very little chance that the US will want to walk away from AUKUS, because the AUKUS agreement is about much more than selling Virginia-class submarines to Australia.

You can be absolutely sure that the US wants to move forward with a submarine replenishment and maintenance facility in WA, and with improved airfield, refuelling and aerial refuelling facilities in WA and the Northern Territory. They are very happy being able to preposition material in Victoria and would be over the moon if there was an actual Virginia-class capable repair yard in SA.

So they absolutely want to continue with all of that.

What they don't want to do is actually sell Australia Virginia-class submarines. They simply don't have enough of them, hence this latest bit of theatre.

Whatever happens though, you can expect Australia's cuck government to continue to fully support AUKUS in whatever new form it takes going forward.
Friend of mine that I knew as a junior officer is a Submarine Engineering Duty Officer now. In charge of the submarine depot in Maine, last I heard.

When he was sent to Japan as submarine maintenance boss, he was cussing up a storm about the lack of a 3rd (4th) naval shipyard in the Pacific. There's Bremerton up north, and there's Pearl Harbor kinda in the middle. Submarine tender in Japan, if you count that. Tender in Guam. No Naval Shipyards left in California.
 
Friend of mine that I knew as a junior officer is a Submarine Engineering Duty Officer now. In charge of the submarine depot in Maine, last I heard.

When he was sent to Japan as submarine maintenance boss, he was cussing up a storm about the lack of a 3rd (4th) naval shipyard in the Pacific. There's Bremerton up north, and there's Pearl Harbor kinda in the middle. Submarine tender in Japan, if you count that. Tender in Guam. No Naval Shipyards left in California.
Frankly, as of right now I'm not even sure we have the workforce to support any more yards. I've mentioned it many times in many previous threads, that talent pool is pretty shallow.

I've worked on boats for 20 years and the personnel in the public yards is abysmal and often incapable of doing anything without vendor support.

They're working toward it with the buildsubmarines dot com initiative, but it's gonna be a while before that pays off. You'll spend years in the industry before you become genuinely useful.
 
Frankly, as of right now I'm not even sure we have the workforce to support any more yards
At the risk of being political or too controversial, maybe they should offer some student loans and contracts to those migrants south of the border to go to vocational school, get trained and build ships in exchange for legal residency. Either that or push this as a possibility of employment for students graduating high school.
 
Last edited:
At the risk of being political or too controversial, maybe they should offer some student loans and contracts to those migrants south of the boarder to go to vocational school, get trained and build ships in exchange for legal residency. Either that or push this as a possibility of employment for students graduating high school.
Well, you can't get a security clearance without being a citizen anyway so that's pretty much off the table.

Honestly, one of the big problems isn't getting bodies--it's getting good ones and keeping them. Retention is a big problem for a lot of different reasons. We don't have fat cold war coffers anymore, so there's often better pay in other industries. On the positive side, this often means that the people who stick around really want to be there... on the downside, you end up with a lot of shiftless types with a serious "not my job/I'm not paid enough" stance.
 
Well, you can't get a security clearance without being a citizen anyway so that's pretty much off the table.
You need a security clearance to weld and bend steal? Is there not like... more menial and less technological jobs in shipyards? Leave the more technological and security clearance type jobs to people with citizenship who want to be there. Or if they aren't citizens/ can't get citizenship then have them build up merchant mariner ships. We need maintenance ships just as much as we do naval combatants.
 
You need a security clearance to weld and bend steal? Is there not like... more menial and less technological jobs in shipyards? Leave the more technological and security clearance type jobs to people with citizenship who want to be there. Or if they aren't citizens/ can't get citizenship then have them build up merchant mariner ships. We need maintenance ships just as much as we do naval combatants.
You need a clearance to work in a Navy Yard. or a civilian shipyard building stuff for the Navy.
 
Sure, but if the alternative is letting domestic military shipbuilding wither - what then?
That's what they're trying to fix. better pay being the easy part they can do. Steadier work for long term is another selling point. The downside is that you're working in Norfolk or Groton if you're making subs.
 
That's what they're trying to fix. better pay being the easy part they can do. Steadier work for long term is another selling point. The downside is that you're working in Norfolk or Groton if you're making subs.

Groton is a pretty miserable place.
 
Groton is a pretty miserable place.
Even for a civvy, norfolk was depressing.

Went to the USS Wisconsin museum and saw the CVN 65 sitting at the edge of norfolk yard. Cool place to visit exactly once. Otherwise feels miserable to live there. It feels like detroit or cleveland but smaller and at night a little empty and creepy. Didn't help it was raining probably.

There was a place with a very good lobster bisque soup though...
 
Groton is a pretty miserable place.
Honestly, the area isn't too bad. Truth is, most people who hated Groton only went to BESS and A-school there and never saw the place again. Yeah, if the only think you've seen is the base, it's not great.

I lived out in Norwich. The key is to get away from all the Navy people, even if you're one of them haha.
 
Honestly, the area isn't too bad. Truth is, most people who hated Groton only went to BESS and A-school there and never saw the place again. Yeah, if the only think you've seen is the base, it's not great.

I lived out in Norwich. The key is to get away from all the Navy people, even if you're one of them haha.

Worked for Pfizer on both sides of River, back when dehoused a bunch of people via eminent domain* for their New London office park (which they subsequently abandoned). Neither place had much to recommend it. There was basically two good blocks of downtown New Kondon up against the water front worth going to. On the other side of the river there was Rose’s Cantina, a low end strip bar that the locals called “squids & kids”.

* ETA: this was a Supreme Court case that IMO had a bad ruling. Eminent domain was never intended to help corporations tear down a community, but here we are.
 
Last edited:
There was basically two good blocks of downtown New Kondon up against the water front worth going to. On the other side of the river there was Rose’s Cantina, a low end strip bar that the locals called “squids & kids”.
Visited both, the Whaling museum was interesting. Rose's was basically all UCONN sorority girls working, who all had the apparent IQ of a Golden Retriever.
 
Visited both, the Whaling museum was interesting. Rose's was basically all UCONN sorority girls working, who all had the apparent IQ of a Golden Retriever.

Nobody starts stripping to work their way through a biochemistry major.
 
Babcock has announced its taken the companies first two orders for long lead items for SSN-AUKUS, specifically the weapon handling system and the launch system.


Other long lead items e.g. reactors and structural steel have also previously been announced as having been placed with other companies.
 
Babcock has announced its taken the companies first two orders for long lead items for SSN-AUKUS, specifically the weapon handling system and the launch system.
Not gonna lie, I did not expect that the Torpedo Room would be one of the long-lead items.
 
They supply the same system to South Korean submarines.


Babcock-supports-South-Korean-submarine-programme-1-scaled.jpg
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom