PLAN B: Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen on how to defend Australia without submarines
Show notes
This week, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen joins Hugh White to discuss his article in Australian Foreign Affairs, Plan B: How to defend Australia without submarines, by David Kilcullen
“There's two ways it could fail.
“One could be that the US Virginia class submarines, which we were supposed to start seeing arrive from 2032, are simply not transferred across by the US government. And there's language in the agreement that allows the president to—sorry—requires the president to certify that the submarines can be transferred without any loss of capability to the United States, and Congress then has to sign off on that”
“And earlier in the year, Elbridge Colby expressed concern that US ship builders are not building US submarines fast enough. So, I think that is a flag that even the United States is thinking ‘okay, what if things do not transpire in such a way that we can actually transfer the submarines across.”
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