555 million euros or the settlement price. Last June, the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced the payment of financial compensation to Naval Group to settle the dispute between his country and the French shipowner after the submarine affair. An “important agreement” that means allowing the opening of “a new page” in the bilateral relationship between Paris and Canberra, had been welcomed by the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu.
This agreement was a necessary first step to ease tensions between France and Australia after the cancellation a year ago of a 56,000 million euro contract for the supply of 12 conventional submarines of the Barracuda program. At the origin of this change of course: former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who ultimately made the decision to join the Aukus alliance to provide his country with American or British nuclear-powered submarines. Without informing France in advance.
A “blow in the back”, the former Minister of the Armies, Jean-Yves Le Drian, had denounced, before Emmanuel Macron openly accused Scott Morrison of deceit and lies before the press. If the trauma is still alive, the arrival of Anthony Albanese at the head of the Australian Government in May has facilitated the resumption of dialogue between the two countries in recent weeks. At the beginning of July, the Labor leader was received at the Elysee for a visit aimed at “regaining confidence”. Two weeks ago, it was Sébastien Lecornu’s turn to host his Australian counterpart Richard Marles in Brest, where the French Navy’s base for its ballistic missile nuclear submarines (SNLE) is located. Today, the Australian press even mentions a possible trip by Emmanuel Macron to Australia in November, before the G20 summit in Bali.
Will Australia really have its submarines?
The change of leader at the head of Australia does not change anything in the background. The “deal of the century” now broken with France, it is the United States and the United Kingdom that Canberra will have to rely on to renew the Royal Australian Navy’s aging fleet under the Aukus alliance. This strategic partnership provides for the acquisition of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines. At the end of a phase of discussions that began in November and is expected to last 18 months, the Defense Minister will have to announce whether a British or American version will be chosen.
Whichever option is chosen, business is likely to get tough for Australia, which should not receive its first submarines before 2050 at best, when the contract with France promised first deliveries in 2030. construction costs are rising sharply, order books are already full… Several reports, including one from the US Congress, have called into question the ability of US and UK industries to meet Australian demand on time when they are already struggling to meet your own needs. What Richard Marles himself recognized.
“I think we have to take seriously the possibility that we may never get the Aukus submarines,” he said in the guardian Sam Roggeveen, director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute, an independent think tank based in Sydney. Without going that far, a delay in the supply of submarines would be a real setback for Australia, which has to face the withdrawal of its Collins submarines around the 2040s and, therefore, risks not finding replacements. before that date. Unimaginable at a time when tensions with China are growing in the Indo-Pacific region.
France ready to build four submarines for Australia?
To bridge the capability gap between the scrapping of the Collins and the arrival of new US or British nuclear submarines, Australia is looking for an alternative. Having already ruled out the United States and the United Kingdom lending some of its submersibles, Canberra is considering guardian to turn to other partners. Among the suggested options: submarines from Spain, Germany, Singapore, Israel or even Sweden, through the Saab group that participated in the design of the Collins-class submarines. L’Australian Financial Review He affirms that another, more unexpected country would have also applied: France.
According to the Sydney Business Daily, it was during Anthony Albanese’s visit to Paris last July that Emmanuel Macron offered to supply Australia with four conventionally powered submarines, to be built at the Naval Group’s site in Cherbourg. If neither of the two countries has confirmed this information, the Australian unions would already reject such a solution, they who want the submarines not to be built abroad but in their country to speed up the training of local workers (the 12 Barracuda submarines ). planned in the “contract of the century” were to be built in Adelaide).
We will have to wait until March 2023 to find out more about the Australian strategy. On this date, Richard Marles will present not only the model of submarines retained within the framework of the Aukus society, but also the way in which his country intends to strengthen its fleet between the withdrawal of the Collins and the reception of American or British submersibles. .
Source: BFM TV
