Tuesday 15th of October 2024

kids and their toys....

SUBBSUBB

At a time when the Reserve Bank’s interest rate rise is adding to cost of living pressures and increasing the chances of a recession, Albanese is finding it hard to justify the staggering $368 billion cost of AUKUS nuclear submarines.

Anthony Albanese says it only took him 24 hours to decide to back the AUKUS pact between Australia, the UK and the US. And not much longer, it seems, to decide to get nuclear submarines, if not precisely how. The rush shows. At a time when the Reserve Bank’s interest rate rise is adding to cost of living pressures and increasing the chances of a recession, Albanese is finding it harder to justify the staggering $368 billion cost of these submarines. As explained below, this is 20 times more than 12 superior conventional submarines would cost.

 

By Brian Toohey

 

So he’s taken to claiming the job creation benefits of building a handful of subs in Adelaide is just as important as the national security benefits. During his visit to England for the Coronation, Albanese visited Barrow-in-Furness where the Astute class nuclear submarines were built. The shipyard employs 11,000 people­, which is due to rise to 17,000. Albanese said, “I see this is being very similar to what the car industry provided for Australia in the post-war period.” In fact, employment in car manufacturing in Australia was much higher at its peak. Employment dropped by 80,000 between 1973 and 1980, yet it was still 45,000 in 2015. Large sums of government funding failed to ensure car manufacturing survived.

Albanese’s government estimates that 20,000 jobs will be created by building seven submarines, called the AUKUS class, at Adelaide. Although sharing the design work for a highly complex product is rarely successful, it will be done in this case between the three AUKUS countries. The construction jobs won’t start to flow at discernible rate until shortly after 2040. Yet Albanese implies the job benefits will be available before the next election. If job creation is the goal, there are much better ways to achieve it.

Given Albanese’s excitement about the quality of the work done at Barrow-in-Furness, it’s worth looking at what actually happened. The National Interest reported in November 2021 that, although the first boat, HMS Astute, had been laid down in 2001, the key design and production facilities had atrophied, resulting in delays and cost overruns that continue to harry the program today. Basic drafting and engineering skills had deteriorated. Problems emerged with software used to design the sub. After HMS Astute entered service in 2014, the crew suffered from excessive heat. It ran aground during sea trials a month after delivery.

Earlier, the Guardian reported in 2012 that during exercises that year a pipe carrying seawater from the back of the submarine to the reactor sprang a leak, forcing the boat to surface. An investigation revealed that a cap was made from the wrong metal, but construction records said the right metal had been installed. The Guardian also said a lead-lined water jacket surrounding the reactor core was fitted with substandard lead, creating a risk that electrical charges in the lead could generate false readings in instruments monitoring the state of the reactor.

A confidential Ministry of Defence memo obtained by the Guardian says extensive corrosion is “a cause for major concern”. The memo said the damage means “severe problems” can be expected in future and warns that the submarines will have to spend more time than planned under repair. All is now supposed to be going well.

Although he knows almost nothing about submarines, Albanese gave the go-ahead to acquire nuclear ones without insisting on a cost effectiveness study showing how they compare to modern conventional versions. An objective study would’ve shown the latest conventional ones are superior – they are much harder to detect and are operationally available far more often because they don’t suffer few serious maintenance problems. The program cost of twelve high quality conventional subs is only about $18 billion compared to $368 billion for 11 nuclear ones that repeatedly break down.

In the circumstances, Albanese’s failure to consider conventional submarines before going nuclear was deeply irresponsible. Perhaps he wasn’t told by his advisors. In any event, no Australian official has publicly mentioned this huge drawback in acquiring nuclear submarines.

Quoting from secret US Navy documents, Newsweek on April 19 confirmed earlier authoritative reports showing that only a quarter of America’s Virginia class submarines are operationally available at any one time, due to highly complex maintenance problems. The highly regarded American defence analyst defence analyst Winslow Wheeler gave the same figure in 2021. Surely someone in Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead Admiral Mead’s 350 strong advisory team group advising Albanese on nuclear submarines should have stumbled across it.

Mead gave an astonishing interview to the Guardian published on March 8 and 9 this year. Mead wrongly described Australia’s existing Collins class conventional submarines as “the most advanced in the world”. They are certainly not. They lack modern equipment such as fuel cells and advanced batteries that let submarines operate extremely quietly for sustained periods without having to rise to the surface to recharge their batteries every day or two, unlike the Collins class. Modern German, Japanese and South Korean ones are in this category. These submarines have low sustainment costs, unlike the Collins class where this burden has hit almost $700 million a year, not including fuel and crew costs. Taking the Collins out of service would free up billions in funding for new conventional submarines.

Because nuclear subs are significantly bigger than most conventional subs, they are easier to detect as they move through the earth’s magnetic field and the water column. Rapid advances in sensor power and computer processing increase the chances of subs’ detection – and destruction. Mead said he had taken account of the prospect oceans would become more transparent by 2050. His solution is to use underwater drones in places where you don’t want a nuclear submarine to be detected. That would be just about everywhere that the presence of nuclear submarine was supposed to be important. Apparently, the nuclear sub would control a drone at a safe distance. In this case, far cheaper platforms can be used to control the drones.

Mead claimed that nuclear-powered submarines enabled them to remain undetected. On the contrary, nuclear submarines are comparatively noisy because they rely on a reactor to heat the water for steam engines to propel the boat. The process creates noise from cooling pumps, turbines, alternating currents, and steam flowing through the pipes. These subs also expel hot water that can be readily detected, as can the wake they leave when travelling at high speeds.

Mead says the submarines will aim “to deter anyone seeking to do harm to Australia” and notes the country is heavily reliant on international trade and underwater telecommunications. Given that Australia will only have two nuclear submarines operationally available at any time after the full complement arrive, this will be of little use when Australia’s international trade relies on tens of thousands of shipping movements every year. Moreover, China as a major trading country, has no motive to block any trading ships outside a war. If a war occurs, shipping companies will not risk their ships straying into danger. Many countries try to protect their underwater telecommunications. Submarines (both conventional and nuclear) are only one of many contributors to this task.

Mead said the Navy would implement the most stringent security protocols to make sure the submarines’ sealed reactors are not opened for the life of the boat. This is relatively easy. It’s what happens after they retire that’s hard. For safety reasons, the submarines should be dismantled. The severely radioactive waste fuel left from highly enriched weapons grade uranium used in the reactors must be stored in stable rocks, deep underground. This is the critical issue that Australian ministers and officials do not want to confront.

It also another horrendous problem that conventional submarines don’t have.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/aukus-very-bad-advice/

 

 

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nasty NATO......

 

NATO ‘s Great New Idea: ‘Let’s Start A War with China!’

 

BY Ron Paul

 

NATO’s post-Cold War history is that of an organization far past its “sell-by” date. Desperate for a mission after the end of the Warsaw Pact, NATO in the late 1990s decided that it would become the muscle behind the militarization of “human rights” under the Clinton Administration.

Gone was the “threat of global communism” which was used to justify NATO’s 40-year run, so NATO re-imagined itself as a band of armed Atlanticist superheroes. Wherever there was an “injustice” (as defined by Washington’s neocons), NATO was ready with guns and bombs.

The US military-industrial complex could not have been happier. All the Beltway think tanks they lavishly fund finally hit on a sure winner to keep the money pipeline flowing. It was always about money, not security.

The test run for NATO as human rights superheroes was Yugoslavia in 1999. To everybody but NATO and its neocon handlers in DC and many European capitals, it was a horrific, unjustified disaster. Seventy-eight days of bombing a country that did not threaten NATO left many hundreds of civilians dead, the infrastructure destroyed, and a legacy of uranium-tipped ammunition to poison the landscape for generations to come.

Just last week tennis legend Novak Djokovic recalled what it felt like to flee his grandfather’s home in the middle of the night as NATO bombs fell and destroyed it. What a horror!

Then NATO got behind the overthrow of the Gaddafi government in Libya. The corporate press regurgitated the neocon lies that bombing the country, killing its people, and overthrowing its government would solve all of Libya’s human rights problems. As could be predicted, NATO bombs did not solve Libya’s problems but made everything worse. Chaos, civil war, terrorism, slave markets, crushing poverty – no wonder Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the neocons don’t want to talk about Libya these days.

After a series of failures longer than we have space for here, DC-controlled NATO in 2014 decided to go all-in and target Russia itself for “regime change.” First step was overthrowing the democratically elected Ukrainian government, which Victoria Nuland and the rest of the neocons took care of. Next was the eight years of massive NATO military assistance to Ukraine’s coup government with the intent of fighting Russia. Finally, it was the 2022 rejection of Russia’s request to negotiate a European security agreement that would prevent NATO armies circling its border.

Despite the mainstream media and US government propaganda, NATO has been about as successful in Ukraine as it was in Libya. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been flushed away, with massive corruption documented by journalists like Seymour Hersh and others.

The only difference this time is that NATO’s target – Russia – has nuclear weapons and views this proxy war as vital to its very existence.

So now despite its legacy of failure, NATO has decided to start a conflict with China, perhaps to take attention off its disaster in Ukraine. Last week NATO announced that it will open its first-ever Asia office in Japan. What next, NATO membership for Taiwan? Will Taiwan willingly serve as NATO’s newest “Ukraine” – sacrificing itself to China in the name of blundering NATO’s seemingly endless appetite for conflict?

We can only hope that America will elect a president in 2024 who will finally end NATO’s deadly world tour.

(Republished from The Ron Paul Institute

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.unz.com/rpaul/nato-s-great-new-idea-lets-start-a-war-with-china/

 

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toy guns.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7ii55ooq6M

 

MEANWHILE:

 

US sells weapons to majority of authoritarian regimes – The Intercept


Washington sold weapons to at least 48 countries classified as being under authoritarian rule in 2022, the outlet said

 

The administration of US President Joe Biden sold weapons to at least 57% of the world’s authoritarian regimes in 2022, according to analysis published on Thursday by The Intercept.

In a lengthy review of US arms-dealing practices and recently released government data, the American publication noted that Washington has accounted for around 40% of global arms sales each year since the end of the Cold War.

It added that, according to a classification system devised at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, the United States distributed weapons in 2022 to at least 48 of 84 (57%) countries described by the ‘Varieties of Democracy’ project as being under autocratic or authoritarian rule.

The Swedish study categorized global governments on a scale ranging from ‘closed autocracy’ to ‘liberal democracy’, principally using methodology to discern how free and fair a country’s elections might be.

US weapons exports are typically divided into two categories: foreign military sales (FMS) and direct commercial sales (DCS). FMS requires the US government to act as a direct intermediary, with Washington buying the assets from a weapons manufacturer before it provides them to a foreign government.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/576137-us-biden-arms-sales/

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEA6L8MLQ00

 

 

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