submarine contract

One only gets into the submarine procurement business to spite government treasurers and economic managers.  Efficiency and effectuality are bonus additions, but hardly necessary.  Witness the evolving disaster that is Australia’s SEA 1000 Future Submarine program, won by France’s DCNS, now Naval Group, in 2016. From the start, this seemed an audaciously peculiar choice. Australia […]

It was all a funny business, but it is very clear that the Australian relationship with France, at least when it comes to matters of defence, has changed over the years.  From being belligerents keen to pursue nuclear testing in the Pacific, to being “cheese eating surrender monkeys” prior to the Coalition of the Confused’s attack on Iraq in 2003, France has stormed into fashion as a military supplier for the Royal Australian Navy.