Publication

This commentary discusses Australia's planned procurement of 12 new submarines over the next two decades. The author discusses lessons learned from Australia’s last purchase of submarines and then examines various acquisition options, including the purchase of ‘off the shelf models’ from other countries and/or collaboration with designers from German, Sweden and Japan. He also suggests that the rejection of nuclear powered submarines offers an additional design challenge. Finally, he talks about budget constraints and the possibility of unmanned underwater vehicles alleviating these monetary pressures in the future.