DECRYPTION – Canberra is looking for alternatives to avoid a “capacity breakdown” in its navy, the United States ultimately not being able to deliver submarines to it.
Sydney
The «kick in the back” denounced last year by Jean-Yves Le Drian looks more and more, for the Australians, like a blow of bamboo. Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had justified the breach of the “contract of the century”, signed with Naval Group and relating to the acquisition of twelve French conventional submarines, by the evolution of the “geopolitical context in the Indo-Pacific»a context in which it had become essential to be equipped with nuclear-powered submarines, the latter being quieter and more enduring.
If this pact sealed with the British and the Americans goes far beyond a simple arms order, it immediately raised questions: how Australia, which does not have a nuclear industry, will does it maintain these submarines? And, most importantly, when will these be delivered, and by whom?
Read alsoFor Sarkozy, the affair of the submarines is a “treason” of the United States
The question is still unanswered at this point. The Labor government, elected last May, did not take this decision…
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