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AUKUS
Just recently there have been programmes on the U.K. T.V. about nuclear submarines. Two different shows at the same time. One a drama set in an SSBN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigil_(TV_series)
Then there is the programme showing an Astute class SSN minding an SSBN in the Atlantic.I thought this overload might be to soften us up for something, then today it is announced, that we will be helping Australia to cancell their French contract for diesel-electric submarines and the U.K. and the U.S.A. will be assisting Australia to manufacture nuclear powered submarines.
https://www.rt.com/news/534966-france-aukus-nuclear-submarine-deal/The U.K. puts more distance between the U.K. and the E.U.
At one time the Five Eyes, Canada, U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand and the U.K. were linked with the E.U. When the U.K. had no working aircraft carriers, we had a lease agreement with the French that we could use their nuclear powered aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle
I guess that no longer applies as we have two aircraft carriers, built in Scotland, of our own.Probably, now, the E.U. has no in, with Five Eyes, as the U.K. has departed from the E.U. All Five Eyes countries mostly speak English.
The U.K. no longer use diesel-electric for the Royal Navy Submarines. They all run on R.R. reactors. The U.K. is expecting, soon, to become less involved with the E.U. and more involved in the Indo-Pacific regions.
New Zealand has claimed that nuclear powered submarines will not be allowed to port in New Zealand?“The American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note and regret,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defence Minister Florence Parly said in a joint statement.
Speaking on French radio on Thursday morning, Le Drian expressed his anger over the deal.
“It’s really a stab in the back. We had established a relationship of trust with Australia, this trust has been betrayed,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio.
Somebody is teaching the French Administration some lessons. That two cancellations to French pride in a week, first Valneva
now the subs.
They must be hopping mad. Also, we are threatening to cancel the money the U.K. gives France to keep the migrants out of the U.K.
Sour Grapes all round.
Who saw this coming
China has just asked to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58579832This is likely to be a counter foil to AUKUS
This I thought was amusing.
Australia has made a choice it was probably forced to make. Caitlin Johnstone’s article is illuminating.
“So there you have it. Australia is not aligned with the US to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the US to protect itself from the US.”
“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “Right you have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.”
“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”
The debate from which those quotes come can be found on youtube here as well as being embedded in Johnstone’s article. It is worth watching all of it including the Q+A.
MOA also has an article about this.
“The price for the new submarines Australia will have to pay will be much higher that for the French ones. Some $3 billion have already been sunk into the French contract. France will rightfully demand additional compensation for cancelling it. The new contract with the U.S. or UK will cost more than the French one but will only include 8 instead of 12 boats. As three boats are needed to keep one at sea (while the other two are training or in refit), the actual patrolling capacity for Australia’s navy will sink from 4 to 2-3 concurrent submarines at sea.”
I have read elsewhere that Australia will continue its commitment for no civil (nuclear power stations) or military (Nukes) nuclear infrastructure. So the reactors will come from USA or UK as will the required nuclear fuel. How will Australia deal with the nuclear waste? If they have no infrastructure who will dispose of it for them?
Australia will have to develop port facilities to handle these subs and maintain the reactors. This will give UKUSA access to capable ports to dock their own subs helping to perhaps extend their abilities to remain on station in that part of the globe.
The French are pissed off not simply because of the lost contract but also because as recently as August there was a meeting between an Australian and French dplomatic teams to work on the submarine deal. Obviously at this point the Aussies knew they were going to drop it.
Ultimately The French will realise the Aussies had little choice and the ultimate response will be directed at USA.
The U.K. government has announced £170m will be invested in developing technology for a new generation of submarines for the Royal Navy.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said it marked “the start of a new journey”.
Two contracts for £85 million each have been awarded to BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce to deliver design and concept work for the replacement vessels.
The investment will guarantee 350 jobs: 250 at the shipyard in Cumbria and 100 at Rolls-Royce operations in Derby.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58599757
The design work will help inform future decisions to decide on the replacements for the Astute Class submarines, the nuclear-powered fleet of submarines currently in service with the Royal Navy.
Described as “the largest, most advanced and most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy”, the Astute Class submarine can launch long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles at sea, striking ground targets “hundreds of miles inland with pinpoint accuracy”.
Yes, rather amusing that these two T.V. programmes are currently on air, who would have thought, government propaganda still alive and well.
– “So the reactors will come from USA or UK as will the required nuclear fuel. How will Australia deal with the nuclear waste?”
Presumably, removing spent fuel and refuelling will be done together. Either the subs will go somewhere for a fuel change (Diego Garcia perhaps), or they will rendezvous with some kind of service vessel which brings new fuel and takes away the spent rods. Or, if done in an Australian port, the spent fuel could be stored until taken for reprocessing.
The UK used to do this with Magnox reactors in various countries; spent fuel elements from all over the world went to Sellafield, earning the UK the nickname “the world’s nuclear dustbin”. The idea was that by selling reactors but retaining control over the fuel cycle the UK could make money and gain power, and build up a stockpile of plutonium. But the reprocessing facility at Sellafield got trashed in 1974(?) when the Magnox stations were run flat out to try and break the miners’ strike, leading the spent fuel pond, Building B30, to become the most contaminated site in Europe, gaining the nickname “Dirty Thirty”.
Can you name the second submarine drama about hunting an SSBN, please? Amusingly [or not] Vigil had just been released here in Australia on Binge, a few weeks before this AUKUS business.
I wonder if this was actually set up / put in motion by Donald Trump.
Trump hates France and Germany and the E.U. and China – all the gang who are upset.Channel 5’s Submarine:
“Life Under the Waves”
features Devonport-based HMS Trenchant
It’s the first time British cameras have been allowed on board a hunter-killer submarine on live operations in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/channel-5s-submarine-life-under-5910284‘Submarine: Life Under the Waves’ is the first time British cameras have been given access on board a hunter-killer submarine on live operations.
The documentary series covers life aboard the Royal’s Navy’s oldest submarine on a four-month tour of duty to the mid-Atlantic, before it returned to Plymouth for the last time in March for decommissioning.
First major blow to E.U. from Brexit-Fall-Out
According to Ben Judah, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, AUKUS is unlikely to have been formed had the U.K. staying in the E.U. He tweeted:
“AUKUS without Brexit? Technically, yes, but as an E.U. member the U.K. would have been involved in so many overlapping negotiations with France and with so many French ways to screw them back in Brussels, no Prime Minister would have taken a $90bn swipe at their defence industry.”
My thoughts exactly, this is Global Britain sticking two fingers up to France.
“the U.K. and the U.S.A. will be assisting Australia to manufacture nuclear powered submarines“
To be honest if Australia wants to have submarines they need to be nuclear powered. Just to get around the place requires range and endurance.
Why has it taken so long?
There is a well entrenched anti-nuclear lobby in Australia, possibly as a result of British nuclear testing that covered the continent with radiation under the reign of Prime Minister Robert Menzies. Understandably Menzies spent a lot of time in England while his country was being covered in radioactive fallout.
It doesn’t end there. Enter the French who, despite vehement protests, covered parts of Northern Australia in radioactive fallout while conducting nuclear bomb tests. The Queensland government banned mothers from breastfeeding and all the cows milk had to be dumped until the radiation levels dropped. This happened multiple times.French travelers have complained to me that Australians don’t like French people and I tell them that it is nothing personal. Lots of Australians remember the French bombings. In contrast not many of us down winders (from British nuclear bomb tests) are left and even fewer know that they were irradiated at all since Menzies didn’t issue any warnings.
The French Barracuda class submarine is designed to be nuclear powered, so Australia could have simply chosen a French nuclear power plant. However, the memory of France ignoring Australia begging them to stop their nuclear tests precludes this. To buy nuclear power from the State that heartlessly covered us in radioactive fallout would be too much to bear.
Prime Minister Covid Morrison has two things on his side. Nuclear subs are really the only practical option and Aussies won’t mind a bit of pay back on the French for their nuclear vandalism.
So ultimately who should be furious here?
Karma’s a bitch!AUKUS
“While Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines will not be nuclear-armed, the small reactors used to power them do produce weapons-grade uranium as waste. And it’s the ability to produce weapons-grade uranium that is behind the decades-long nonproliferation dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
And that’s the leverage point Beijing has chosen to target.
Chinese military experts warned that such a move will potentially make Australia a target of a nuclear strike”
There is a serious realignment going on.
America has just pulled out of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is close to China/Russia/Pakistan/India/China/ex-Soviet Central Asia.
Part of the strategic importance of Afghanistan, is, its potential to be a Methane hub.Methane could flow from Russia/Ex-Soviet Central Asia/Iran/Gulf of Persia into Pakistan/India or China.
Russia has just constructed NORDSTREAM TWO from Russia to Germany.
World traded price of Natural Gas is going through the roof.
America is against Russia Natural Gas flooding the E.U. but America is in favour of Fracked Gas becoming LNG and being transported from America to Europe.So, just partly AUKUS might be payback for the E.U. taking Russian Methane?
From America/U.K. point of view, this kills many birds with one stone.– “the small reactors used to power them do produce weapons-grade uranium as waste. And it’s the ability to produce weapons-grade uranium that is behind the decades-long nonproliferation dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.”
Both statements are nonsense; see below the dotted line.
What the Chinese government is really worried about is this map:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/11i/aussubmap.jpg
China is out of range of conventional subs from Australia, but very much within range of nuclear powered subs. And China will only have Australia’s word that these Australian subs won’t have US or UK nuclear weapons on board.
– – – – – – – –Physics:
Reactors produce “spent fuel”, a horrible, highly radioactive mixture of some of the original fuel (U235 and U238), fission products (radioactive isotopes of strontium, caesium, iodine etc, the same as fallout from a nuclear bomb), plutonium, and other ‘actinides’, which are radioactive elements with higher atomic number than uranium.
The plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs, but (1) it needs complicated reprocessing facilities to separate out the plutonium, and (2) it can only make A-bombs, not the far more powerful H-bombs. You need to make tritium as well to make H-bombs.
I think what the clueless author means (couldn’t he have just asked someone?) is that the Chinese government is concerned because the fuel elements for these subs will be uranium of fairly high enrichment; 60% U235 with 40% U238 – whereas civilian reactor fuel elements are only 5% U235. But you can’t make bombs with 60% U235 either; you need 95% U235 for bombs.
It is quicker and less staggeringly expensive to make 95% U235 from 60% U235 than 5% U235, but a complicated and costly enrichment facility is still needed – either a centrifuge cascade or a gas diffusion facility. Australia has neither of these, and it would be blindingly obvious if it started building one. The same goes for a reprocessing facility, for extracting plutonium from spent fuel.
The only thing about these subs that makes it easier for Australia to get nuclear weapons is that they could sail to other countries and collect them.
Iran:
According to US intelligence agencies, in 2003 I think, Iran had stopped attempting to develop nuclear weapons some years earlier; Iran is fully open to IAEA inspections. The “decades-long dispute” is basically driven by Israel, objecting to Iran enriching to 20% U235 for its research reactor which can produce medical and industrial isotopes. But these days Russia does Iran’s uranium enrichment anyway.
I don’t have a good comment but I have loads of rhetorical questions!
- Why is China our enemy and Japan our friend?
- Why is Russia our enemy and Ukraine is our friend?
- Why are Absolute monarchies in ME our friends but autocracies are enemies?
- Should party in power provide food and well being to it’s population or free speech?
- How USA could have been leader of FREE WORLD While having SEGREGATION (until 1964)
- How come UK would engage in nuclear war to protect us East Europeans but do not like us living among yourself?
- Why is Little Fascist racist country in the ME our the best ally?
No wonder I am subconsciously on China’s side.
“if you like China so much you should go and live there”!!!!
Too old for that and climate doesn’t suit me!
P.E. fantastic questions, I am fairly sure, most of us have asked ourselves these exact same questions. Let me have a dab.
Israel, The first Jew to become a prime minister was in England but by then his Dad had converted the family to church of England for their family advancement, Benjamin Disraeli was the most favored prime minister of Queen Victoria.
The U.K. set up Israel. Thus we are friends. Some of the money to set up Israel came from Russia.
It is thought that Israel sits on a massive Methane field.
Israel “controls” the Middle East.
The U.S.A. was an incredibly fascist country, perhaps until the Second World War, they speak the correct language, they came out of The British Isles. The U.K. and America between them drove the enslavement of Africans. Two peas out of the same pod.
The U.K. is the most famous enduring Monarchy, in the whole World, why would they not get on with other monarchies?Pigeon English, you and other East Europeans are very welcome in the UK so far as I am concerned, and I’m sure my friends would all agree.
Don’t take sides, because that is the trap – divide and rule. Everywhere, the people are exploited by the power structures around them. Even nasty, powerful people are exploited by those structures because they were shaped by them, promoted by them and are continually rewarded and gratified by them, yet simultaneously threatened by them – the more they are rewarded, the more they have to lose. Their nastiness is useful to the structure, so the structure cultivates it. There are nasty but powerless people too.
Also please bare in mind our Queen is also Queen to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the remnants of Empire.
Such as Isle of Mann, South Georgia and Antarctica.
U.K. is about to reconfirm its love of India.
Queen Victoria, although never visiting India was Empress of India.
She loved everything about India.
Her grandson George Frederick Ernest Albert
was initiated into the Emperor of India at the Durbar in 1911.
P.E. you have given us a great laugh, thank you for the gift of humour.
I once had a foreman, in Reading, who one day came to work subdued, I asked him what the matter was. |¦| He said his granddad had just attacked a Japanese tourist on a bus. |¦| Strange.
It turned out my foremans granddad had been captured and tortured by Japs in the Second World War, and he hated them with all his being. |¦| He was unable to distinguish the past and the present.
I actually felt sorry for all of them, my foreman, his granddad and the innocent Japanese person. |¦| That is history and your personal perception.
Before the First World War, the country of Japan was given the nomenclature of honorary European country. |¦| So, after World War Two the Japs reverted to being Asian/Europeans, we like them but we hate the Chinese Communists.
I hope that sorts things out for you.Clark
you are right. Let’s not be divided between- global warming or not
- vaccines or not
- oppressed and oppressor
- etc.
Take it easy do not play in their hands! (I know what you mean ?)
Regarding Brexit thank you for kind words and all other lovely people of Uk I had pleasure to befriend during my great stay in England but TBH with you guys, because of Brexit my wife’s job moved to Netherlands and so did I. ?
Internet + bbc on Tv makes me British expat. ?Trident starts off with 6ft 11in diameter rocket, so no, Trident cannot be fired from an Astute, which does fire Raytheon Missile Systems, Tomahawk; these are fired through their torpedo tubes 20.4″ in diameter.
What’s more, Raytheon are already embedded in Australia, such as at Woomera Rocket Test Range.
Raytheon Australia’s experienced team is committed to delivering mature sovereign capability across joint battlespace systems, mission systems, above water systems and under water systems delivery areas. The company also remains focused on delivering innovative solutions for key areas including targeted exports, sovereign weapons, advanced test and training, as well as integrated air and missile defence.
https://www.raytheon.com/au/news/feature/capability-partner-australias-defenceRaytheon GLENROTHES – Manufacturing Facility
I wonder how much of the Tomahawk missiles are manufactured in Scotland?
French government very angry at Australia
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1493650/Emmanuel-Macron-France-Australia-trade-talks-UK-US-submarine-deal-latestParis has signalled it will block future talks between Brussels and Canberra after the latter’s decision to renege on a contract for French-built submarines Australia instead agreed to a new pact with Britain and the United States to purchase nuclear-powered vessels. Clement Beaune, France’s hardline Europe minister, said future negotiations between the E.U. and Australia would be “unthinkable” as a result of the feud.
Looks like France is incredibly miffed, so much so, that they may cut off their own nose to spite their face.
Today the French Defence minister has cancelled his trip to London to meet with Mister Wallace, the Defense minister of the U.K.I wish we had Craig’s insight and experience on these developments.
Europe can’t be pleased with the UK joining the new US cold war against China, increasing the chances of the geographically European UK becoming a nuclear target in any future conflict.
