Debate: "The Submarine Choice"
The strategic risks of Option J

In their paper supporting Option J, Andrew Davies and Benjamin Schreer don’t just rebut some of the strategic arguments raised against it, but also provide their own argument on strategic grounds in its favour. Their …

Submarine construction: the Swedish view

With continuing uncertainty in Australia about the future direction of SEA 1000, it’s both interesting and refreshing to visit Sweden to see what’s happening regarding the development of the next generation of submarines. There’s a …

The push for a submarine tender

The government doesn’t seem to understand the words it has been saying on submarines. It has committed to a ‘competitive evaluation process’ for the future submarine project—a term not used in defence circles—and some seem …

‘Future submarines’—an Australia soap opera

A soap opera typically has a number of common features: forced characters, somewhat unbelievable; a plot in which dramatic events occur frequently but the story itself doesn’t reach any sort of conclusion; a familiar setting …

Are we having the right submarine debate?

After reading Peter Briggs’ excellent posts on why Australia should build its own submarines (here and here), it occurred to me that we may be missing a more important element of the discussion. Recently, I …

Learning from experience: the lessons of Collins

Late last year Benjamin Schreer speculated on what 2015 might hold for the Australia–Japan security relationship. One of the issues he identified as being important in its development was that of potential cooperation on Australia’s …