So let’s instead plan for a rapid import program for submarines of the US Virginia class. No less complex an organism than the entire Australian Defence Force aircraft fleet is supported in that way. Imported ships of off-the-shelf design can be supported locally simply by training maintainers and buying enough spare parts.

But more than a century of experience of any number of countries, including Australia, shows that that’s not true. The only excuse for this madness is the one that supposedly justifies all our naval construction: that we allegedly can’t support naval vessels if we don’t build them. No submarine class for which deliveries would begin around 2040 can be a design that is now in production. Worse, because we can’t begin building early, this plan implies that we’ll add a worrying additional source of risk to the schedule and budget: extensive development work. Of course, it could all go off the rails and take longer than expected.

To build in Adelaide, as the government says we will, facilities there must be prepared and managers and workers must be hired and trained for an exotic new endeavour. It’s the sole reason why delivery of the first boat to the Royal Australian Navy probably can’t occur until around 2040, making the program laughably-or tragically-irrelevant to our increasingly urgent regional security problem. Construction in Australia is the single factor that cripples Australia’s plan to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines. First, ditch the notion of building in Adelaide.

First submarine