They wanted it to be a surprise.
…so a goalpost shift.
Gotcha.
Not that it matters, but it’s more than a mere contract dispute. This wasn’t Auntie Helen deciding she wanted to move from one cellphone provider to another. It’s a 66 billion dollar contract termination that is going to take probably 3 years to resolve and is going to have significant impact on the French economy.
When I get dressed in the morning, my goal isn’t to “make do” like the rest of the world, it’s to look my very best. Why should Australia “make do” just because that’s good enough for a number of other countries? In all honesty, I can’t see how that’s an argument.
Because there’s a certain cost/benefit ratio. The reason most nations in the world use diesel rather than nuclear is because nuclear tends to be highly expensive, and they usually only need relatively short-to-medium range for their subs. That’s why nations like Poland, Sweden, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Germany, etc. all use diesel only. They don’t need a Ferrarri when a Toyota will do (not the best analogy, but you get my point.)
For a while, Australia got by on diesel, but then when they tried to replace their subs, the French eventually charged them such a high price that the price became akin to a nuclear sub - and with a rising China in the region, Australia eventually decided that it needed long-range subs as well.
Nuclear is actually less expensive in some contexts, particularly if you have need of covering vast operating distances with regularity. Over the life of the vessel.
But that also somewhat depends on if you’ve done the work of building out a Naval reactor program. The main reason a lot of countries don’t do nuclear submarines is because they are incredibly complicated to design and build, and the few countries that can do it don’t tend to share that technology. Getting set up to do that design work is non-trivial.
When the U.S. was developing the world’s first Naval nuclear reactor, it involved the work of three large labs: Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. The budget of any one of these labs approaches the entire defense budgets of some countries (exceeds others.) They are also filled up with smart people who have PhDs in physics and experience in designing nuclear reactors, these aren’t people you find on a turnip truck. During the program to build the first nuke sub–the Nautilus, many of these people were scientists and engineers who had worked in the Manhattan military district designing the first atomic weapons.
The simple truth is a lot of countries plain cannot do this, even if they tried really hard.
After that there’s the matter of staffing and training a Nuclear navy, also non-trivial. “Nuke School” in the U.S. Navy is the hardest academic program in the United States military, at one point in time it had a drop out rate higher than Navy SEAL training (in more modern times they’ve switched to a “pipeline” model where they focus more on only admitting people into the program who are likely able to complete it, so that has changed.) Every submarine officer (which excludes the supply officer who doesn’t have a command role) on a U.S. nuclear sub has to go through nuke school. There’s also practical training, difficult exams, field training etc you have to go through before being put on an actual sub as a real nuke officer.
During the first couple decades of the program’s development every officer who sought to complete this process had to complete a personal interview with Admiral Hyman Hickover.
It seems extreme but it makes a difference.
Despite operating far fewer nuclear submarines over the Cold War–the Soviet Union experienced 11 radiological incidents from nuclear submarine accidents. The U.S. Navy has a perfect service record, with 0 radiological incidents since the launch of the Nautilus–that involves over 6000 reactor years, 500+ reactor cores and hundreds of millions of kilometers traveled.
The actual cost of the subs and the delivery date frankly aren’t the biggest barriers Australia is going to face, as a first world country wary of nuclear power, Australia needs that same perfect service record. I have to assume we have promised them significant help in setting up their own nuke school, and wouldn’t be surprised if leaders of that program will likely be going through America’s nuke school soon to start getting ready. It will take years and years to build a pipeline of nuclear submarine officers.
FWIW if you want to know how much the Navy values nuke officers and enlisted sailors (by the way, every enlisted sailor on a nuclear sub goes through an enlisted version of the training that is nearly as rigorous as difficult)–when these guys terms of service come to an end they’re regularly offered upward of $40,000+ tax free signing bonuses to re-up, by far the highest of any career field in the military.
Huh? I’m fully aware that ambassadors do get withdrawn as an extreme reaction to extreme circumstances. I said…
Which I would have thought is clearly referring to the reason behind the withdrawal, not that a withdrawal itself is unprecedented as that is obviously not the case and never has been.
I’d have said “ambassadors never get withdrawn for any reason” if that was what I meant.
A big contract dispute but a contract dispute nonetheless. Not realistic grounds for the withdrawal of an ambassador in my opinion.
I don’t want it to sound like I’m saying diesel-electric submarines are not good by the way. Each country has different operating parameters and strategic goals. For example for a country like Sweden, Germany or Italy, a nuclear submarine program does not make a ton of sense. Additionally diesel-electric sub technology isn’t sitting stagnant, some modern diesels using the Swedish designed Stirling engines can get pretty damn good submerged endurance numbers–more than good enough if you’re a country with relatively small territorial waters and only interested in defensive patrolling.
Australia has the world’s third largest exclusive economic zone, and the other four countries in the top five of EEZ size all have nuclear powered naval forces. Australia frankly was kind of in a disadvantageous position due to the size of its area of responsibility, and the fact it has a relatively low population, even as a wealthy country it still would likely have serious issues scaling up design, manufacturing etc necessary for an independent nuclear propulsion program on its own. This is compounded by Australia’s long aversion to nuclear of any kind–it has no civilian nuclear power sector, so it also would be very behind the curve in getting scientists and engineers trained to even work on such a propulsion program.
I frankly would not be surprised if elements of the U.S. deal with Australia are frankly tilted heavily in Australia’s favor. All signs are we are pursuing this with Australia for strategic reasons, France was pursuing its arrangement primarily to stimulate its domestic defense industry as its first goal. I wouldn’t frankly be shocked to see the U.S. actually eating costs in helping the Aussies get their own nuke school setup, and even potentially leasing the Australian Navy, probably at an advantageous rate, one of the soon-to-be decommissioned Los Angeles class nuclear subs to assist in Australia’s training on nuclear submarines. I don’t believe anything like that would or could be offered by France.
Sure, but the fact that it was going to have such a significant impact on the French economy means…the French should have worked better to keep the deal.
It’s not the customer’s fault that poorly-executed-work-leading-to-a-canceled-contract is going to hurt the contractor and make it hard for his business and livelihood. That’s on the…contractor.
Imagine if you hire a contractor to remodel your home, but 1/10 of the way through you can already tell he’s doing a lousy job, so you cancel - and then he protests “You’re making it hard for me to support my family.”
The Maginot Line is a good metaphor for expensive anachronisms.
Something I’ve never understood: after WWII, the French re-occupied and upgraded the Maginot Line fortifications despite their uselessness against Germany, and maintained forces there until the late 1960s.
Maybe France has a few old U-boats lying around that it could sell the Australians cheaply?*
*it turns out that the only U-boat allocated to France after the fall of Nazi Germany, U-510, served in the French Navy as Bouan until 1959 and was scrapped after that.
And posts a billboard proclaiming how nasty the new contractor is for out-competing him.
…I cited the precedent.
This was a diplomatic dispute with the US, not a contract one. The contract termination was with Australia.
I’m pretty sure your opinion doesn’t count here.
As has already been cited:
Lets stop pretending that is about a “poorly-executed-work-leading-to-a-canceled-contract.” In the face of all the available evidence, including the clause that Australia decided to cancel the contract, this is utter nonsense. Literally on the day of the announcement, the Australian Navy said they were satisfied and were ready to move to the next phase. You can’t fix a problem when your client is insisting that everything is okay.
France is not at fault here. Not one bit. The original tender process had three countries openly competing for the contract. The deal with the US was done behind closed doors. France never had the opportunity to “put things right.”
This is all on Australia, and is part of a much bigger issue that I’ve talked about in a previous post. This was a decision without a mandate, without public input, without oversight, made in secret, that is part of a larger pattern of doing the same thing over and over again.
Did you honestly think I was asking for precedents of ambassadors being withdrawn under any circumstances?
Sure. I guess that’s why the Australian Admiral in charge of the whole project wrote last week that he had “taken a close look at the state of progress in the contract… and was extremely satisfied that performance of the French submarine was excellent”, and that they were ready to move to the next phase of the contract.
Do you have a cite for ‘poorly executed work’?
Actually, it was a representative of French Naval Group that used the phrase “extremely satisfied”, it actually looks like all that Australia did was confirm that to that point the contract was fulfilled as agreed upon in terms of a specific system review.
Here is how Australia describes the communication:
It believe he was quoting the letter. Without seeing the letter it’s difficult to say anything more definite.
Obviously Australia doesn’t want to admit that there were no problems. If there were problems you can be sure they would have mentioned them.
It also is likely that Naval Group and France should have realized there were problems with Australian satisfaction, as per this article: Why Australia wanted out of its French submarine deal – POLITICO
Here are some key points:
If I was working for a defense company, and a major customer refused to sign a next phase contract because they were unhappy, it would not be my perception that things were going well. If some pro-forma review was completed and confirmed as completed by Australia, I would not take that to show extreme satisfaction. Especially when their confirming the completion of that review, did not actually constitute agreement to continue with the contract.
Now I’m not sure on how much the French government was aware, but I was in logistics and procurement for much of my career in the military and the guys working for the big defense contractors here in the United States at least would be highly concerned if representatives from the DoD / service branch were giving feedback of that nature.
The article also notes that the Australian defense minister indicated in June in an open session that they were starting to plan for scenarios if “they decided not to proceed with the contract.” (This is noted in the linked article.)
Some other interesting tidbits (I won’t quote too many more to respect fair use of copyrighted materials):
I certainly believe President Macron and his government have every reason to want their voters to believe they were blindsided, but the smell test doesn’t hold up on that.
Indeed. And it appears that is precisely what happened.
Where is your precedent for France withdrawing the American Ambassador for any reason?
Diplomatic relations with Vichy France ended in 1942. We had sent them an ambassador; does anyone know if they sent us one? Not at all what you’re asking, but I was curious.
I’ve read that France has never recalled an ambassador to the U.S. in the history of our diplomatic relations, 240 years. I don’t consider Vichy (occupied) France the same way. YMMV.
Yes. The pre-war ambassador was replaced by the Pétain government in 1940, but the replacement (Gaston Henri-Haye) was apparently interned by the US when the Germans occupied the unoccupied zone of France in 1942, and the Free French representative was treated as ambassador.