Donald Winter in Canberra, and Kurt Campbell in Washington. These senior officials worked behind the scenes to scupper the contract for the 12 submarines that France was to build for Australia. The secret history of a resounding failure:
**At the beginning: a honeymoon, under the blessings of America**
Between France and Australia, the story had started well. In 2015, Canberra launched a call for tenders to renew its fleet of aging diesel-electric propulsion submarines. Paris is competing with Japan and Germany to win the famous “contract of the century.” The French company Naval Group (which will be called DCNS until 2017) finally won the order for 12 submarines. “The French offer was based on the latest nuclear submarine, the Shortfin Barracuda,” the then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Radio France’s Investigative Unit. But “with hybrid diesel-electric propulsion, at the request of the Australian government,” he said.
At that time, there was no question of nuclear propulsion, for several reasons. Certainly, France was reluctant to export its know-how, but above all, Australia was not asking for it. “Australia did not have the maturity to launch a nuclear submarine program right away,” says Hervé Guillou, former CEO of Naval Group. Canberra had neither the maintenance infrastructure nor the specialists needed to handle uranium for submarines. At the time, Naval Group proposed a model that was of major interest to Australia, recalls former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull: “it was the possibility of being able to switch from conventional to nuclear propulsion while keeping essentially the same design.
To make matters worse, when the French group signed the contract with Australia, it was working hand in hand with the United States. There was even talk of a Franco-American submarine. France was to build the submarines, and the American company Lockheed Martin was to equip their weapons system. If Naval Group won,” explains Michel Cabirol, editor-in-chief of La Tribune, “it was because there was a tacit agreement between France and the United States that they had the right to bid. And that if they won, Washington would have no objection.”
**The Chinese threat**
However, the Franco-Australian contract will falter, first for geopolitical reasons, and in particular a climate of growing tension between Australia and China. For twenty years, there had been a clear understanding between Beijing and Canberra, particularly with regard to natural resources,” explains Emmanuel Veron, a professor at Inalco and the École Navale. Until the proven compromise of a number of Australian parliamentarians in corruption cases involving China.” Beijing is increasingly seen as a threat. “President Xi Jinping had promised Barack Obama that he would not build artificial islets in the China Sea. It was part of a deal,” said Philippe Le Corre, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Administration and a member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Yet Beijing is strengthening its presence in the region, and is indeed building islands that serve as military and intelligence bases. Anti-Chinese sentiment is therefore growing in Canberra, but also in Washington, where tensions are coupled with an economic confrontation. The idea of establishing a military presence in its Australian ally is gaining ground. The United States would like to develop a nuclear attack submarine base on the western flank of Australia,” explains Emmanuel Veron, an expert on the Indo-Pacific. It would be a kind of aircraft carrier, as Britain was during World War II, in view of a potential conflict with China in the next 10, 15 or 20 years.”
**Washington’s “pawns” in the Australian administration **
What will precipitate the fall of the French contract is the presence of former American top brass in Canberra. As early as 2016, the involvement of the United States in the military policy of the Australian administration is perceptible. The Australian Naval Staff has Donald Winter, the former U.S. Secretary of the Navy under Barack Obama, as an advisor. Australia’s shipbuilding advisory committee also includes a number of former U.S. Navy admirals who serve as proxies for Washington. On the other side of the Atlantic, another key man is working under the radar. This is Kurt Campbell, the former head of Naval Operations at the Pentagon under the Bush and Clinton administrations. He is now the President’s National Security Advisor, but he has been considered the main strategist of American policy in Asia for almost a decade. He has already succeeded in convincing President Biden to intensify his military presence in the Pacific, and more particularly in Australia to contain China. These are the key men who will work underhandedly to keep France out. Their work will be facilitated in 2018 by the appointment of a new Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who no longer feels committed by the promises of his predecessor.
**The trap is closing**
In March 2021, a secret meeting took place in the premises of the Australian High Commission in London, between the Australian authorities and the boss of the English navy. “Tony Radakin, the head of the British Royal Navy, was invited unexpectedly,” says Larissa Brown, a defense specialist at The Times. He had no idea what they wanted to tell him. He then met with Michael Noonan, the vice admiral of the Royal Australian Navy.” It was there that, for the first time, Canberra reportedly raised the possibility of crowding out France to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. In the eyes of the Australians, the United Kingdom seems to be an interesting interlocutor for two reasons: it feels indebted to the United States, which had helped it complete the construction of its own nuclear submarines. And Boris Johnson, entangled in the Brexit and the Covid pandemic, dreams of strengthening an alliance with his American allies that had lost its luster under the Obama and Trump presidencies.
In this new alliance that is taking shape, everyone thinks they will find themselves in it. The Australians will be better protected against China, the Americans will strengthen their position in the Indo-Pacific region, and the British Prime Minister hopes to restore his image by winning a diplomatic victory. “Boris Johnson was extremely pleased with what he presented as the biggest breakthrough in strategic relations for Britain in decades,” analyses Larissa Brown. He was able to strengthen his relationship with the United States after leaving the European Union.” But in this alliance called “Aukus” London hopes to do more than just make up the numbers. Barely 48 hours after the announcement of the abandonment of the French contract, the British groups BAE System and Rolls Royce have positioned themselves to equip the future submarines.
**The warning signs**
Before reaching this point, a number of warnings took place. Just after the signing of the “contract of the century”, a leak of 22,000 documents detailing the plans for the torpedo and communications systems of another French submarine model sold to India, the Scorpene, landed in the Australian press. An attempt at destabilization that, with hindsight, sounds like a first warning. In early 2020, a new warning. The Australian government was concerned that the French program was nine months behind schedule. In the middle of the pandemic, from February 6 to March 6, 2021, the new CEO of Naval Group, Pierre Éric Pommellet, went to Australia. After three weeks of quarantine, he met with his Australian counterparts and left reassured. But the secret negotiations between London, Canberra and Washington are still going on. In June 2021, while Emmanuel Macron was attending the G7 in Cornwall, neither Boris Johnson nor Joe Biden informed him of what was going on. A secret meeting was held between the Americans, the British and the Australians to seal the fate of the French contract, even though the President of the French Republic was just a stone’s throw away.
The masks finally came off on September 15, 2021, when the White House announced its new pact with the Australians and the British. It is normal that they kept the secret for a very long time,” explains Larissa Brown. The Australians didn’t want to reveal anything until they were sure of the outcome. They weren’t 100 percent sure the Americans would follow through. Once the case was made public, in Washington, Kurt Campbell’s deputy, Rush Doshi, posted a tweet that the general public would not have spotted but which spoke volumes, with these simple words: “Six months of hard work!” Tweet that he will later delete. Six months is the time it took to torpedo the French contract.
**An impression of “déjà-vu**
However, this is not the first time that France has been excluded by the United States from a contract of this type. In the 1980s, Paris hoped to sell its nuclear attack submarines to Canada. Negotiations seemed to be well underway. “The Canadian navy, as well as the political authorities, were quite convinced of the interest of this solution,” recalls Max Moulin, an atomic engineer, Capitaine de Vaisseau and co-author of the naval reference book entitled Flottes de combat. “Until the Americans stepped in with a counterproposal to lend or provide American nuclear submarines. The Canadians then dropped the French contract. Except that “they never got a return from the Americans, and they ended up having to buy used British conventional submarines that were not in good condition.” Will history repeat itself? Nothing is less certain.
can I get an encore, do you want more
when everyone thought the sub news was done, bogaloo strikes again
“Australia needs to be in a position to defend it’s trade with China from China. And if losing trade with the EU is a casualty in that then so be it”
– Scott Morrison (not really, it’s a joke)
Biden’s foreign policy gets a lot of abuse because of Afghanistan, but if I was American I’d be entirely impressed at how he’s managed to secure for decades two pliant base nations so quickly.
Pretend to be shocked. Pretend to be shocked when we will realize Australia will not even have homemade sub but some thrift shop submarines by 2040 if lucky
>Australian parliamentary hearings and reports on the project, first priced at $40 billion and more recently at $60 billion, even before construction had begun, also showed problems emerging. In June the defence secretary told parliament “contingency planning” for the programme was under way.
>”They would have to have their eyes shut not to realise the danger they were facing,” said Rex Patrick, an independent senator for South Australia, referring to France.
>Government ministers said this week Canberra had been “up front” with Paris about the problems.
>A French lawmaker also raised questions in parliament in June about Australian concerns over delays, and whether Australia might be considering submarine alternatives, French parliamentary records show.
The project was 9 months behind schedule, the price was already up 50%, the design wasn’t finalized, and they hadn’t even *started* building yet.
But the bigger problem is that Australia’s primary objective, and the reason the chose the French design over the Japanese one, was that they wanted to build them domestically. Both so they could be strategic autonomy and as a jobs program. But every time there was a review Naval Group (the French contractor) kept shifting more and more production out of Australia. To the point that Australia asked the French government to [intervene](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/18/the-nuclear-option-why-has-australia-ditched-the-french-submarine-plan-for-the-aukus-pact):
>It is understood one of the outcomes of that meeting was that France, in a bid to reassure Australia that the project would not be delayed, was going to send Australia a letter affirming their commitment to the timelines and delivery of local content.
>An Australian government source said the letter arrived, but it was late. “If they can’t deliver a letter in time, how the hell can they deliver 12 subs on time,” the source said.
Defence contractors play these games all the time and get away with it because it’s usually too expensive to pull the plug on a project a start over. But because the [AUKUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUKUS) nuclear negotiations were done in secret, Naval Group didn’t know Australia had a serious Plan B in the works. So when they tried to play the usual defence contractor games they got blindsided.
7 comments
*[automated translation]*
Donald Winter in Canberra, and Kurt Campbell in Washington. These senior officials worked behind the scenes to scupper the contract for the 12 submarines that France was to build for Australia. The secret history of a resounding failure:
**At the beginning: a honeymoon, under the blessings of America**
Between France and Australia, the story had started well. In 2015, Canberra launched a call for tenders to renew its fleet of aging diesel-electric propulsion submarines. Paris is competing with Japan and Germany to win the famous “contract of the century.” The French company Naval Group (which will be called DCNS until 2017) finally won the order for 12 submarines. “The French offer was based on the latest nuclear submarine, the Shortfin Barracuda,” the then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Radio France’s Investigative Unit. But “with hybrid diesel-electric propulsion, at the request of the Australian government,” he said.
At that time, there was no question of nuclear propulsion, for several reasons. Certainly, France was reluctant to export its know-how, but above all, Australia was not asking for it. “Australia did not have the maturity to launch a nuclear submarine program right away,” says Hervé Guillou, former CEO of Naval Group. Canberra had neither the maintenance infrastructure nor the specialists needed to handle uranium for submarines. At the time, Naval Group proposed a model that was of major interest to Australia, recalls former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull: “it was the possibility of being able to switch from conventional to nuclear propulsion while keeping essentially the same design.
To make matters worse, when the French group signed the contract with Australia, it was working hand in hand with the United States. There was even talk of a Franco-American submarine. France was to build the submarines, and the American company Lockheed Martin was to equip their weapons system. If Naval Group won,” explains Michel Cabirol, editor-in-chief of La Tribune, “it was because there was a tacit agreement between France and the United States that they had the right to bid. And that if they won, Washington would have no objection.”
**The Chinese threat**
However, the Franco-Australian contract will falter, first for geopolitical reasons, and in particular a climate of growing tension between Australia and China. For twenty years, there had been a clear understanding between Beijing and Canberra, particularly with regard to natural resources,” explains Emmanuel Veron, a professor at Inalco and the École Navale. Until the proven compromise of a number of Australian parliamentarians in corruption cases involving China.” Beijing is increasingly seen as a threat. “President Xi Jinping had promised Barack Obama that he would not build artificial islets in the China Sea. It was part of a deal,” said Philippe Le Corre, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Administration and a member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Yet Beijing is strengthening its presence in the region, and is indeed building islands that serve as military and intelligence bases. Anti-Chinese sentiment is therefore growing in Canberra, but also in Washington, where tensions are coupled with an economic confrontation. The idea of establishing a military presence in its Australian ally is gaining ground. The United States would like to develop a nuclear attack submarine base on the western flank of Australia,” explains Emmanuel Veron, an expert on the Indo-Pacific. It would be a kind of aircraft carrier, as Britain was during World War II, in view of a potential conflict with China in the next 10, 15 or 20 years.”
**Washington’s “pawns” in the Australian administration **
What will precipitate the fall of the French contract is the presence of former American top brass in Canberra. As early as 2016, the involvement of the United States in the military policy of the Australian administration is perceptible. The Australian Naval Staff has Donald Winter, the former U.S. Secretary of the Navy under Barack Obama, as an advisor. Australia’s shipbuilding advisory committee also includes a number of former U.S. Navy admirals who serve as proxies for Washington. On the other side of the Atlantic, another key man is working under the radar. This is Kurt Campbell, the former head of Naval Operations at the Pentagon under the Bush and Clinton administrations. He is now the President’s National Security Advisor, but he has been considered the main strategist of American policy in Asia for almost a decade. He has already succeeded in convincing President Biden to intensify his military presence in the Pacific, and more particularly in Australia to contain China. These are the key men who will work underhandedly to keep France out. Their work will be facilitated in 2018 by the appointment of a new Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who no longer feels committed by the promises of his predecessor.
**The trap is closing**
In March 2021, a secret meeting took place in the premises of the Australian High Commission in London, between the Australian authorities and the boss of the English navy. “Tony Radakin, the head of the British Royal Navy, was invited unexpectedly,” says Larissa Brown, a defense specialist at The Times. He had no idea what they wanted to tell him. He then met with Michael Noonan, the vice admiral of the Royal Australian Navy.” It was there that, for the first time, Canberra reportedly raised the possibility of crowding out France to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. In the eyes of the Australians, the United Kingdom seems to be an interesting interlocutor for two reasons: it feels indebted to the United States, which had helped it complete the construction of its own nuclear submarines. And Boris Johnson, entangled in the Brexit and the Covid pandemic, dreams of strengthening an alliance with his American allies that had lost its luster under the Obama and Trump presidencies.
In this new alliance that is taking shape, everyone thinks they will find themselves in it. The Australians will be better protected against China, the Americans will strengthen their position in the Indo-Pacific region, and the British Prime Minister hopes to restore his image by winning a diplomatic victory. “Boris Johnson was extremely pleased with what he presented as the biggest breakthrough in strategic relations for Britain in decades,” analyses Larissa Brown. He was able to strengthen his relationship with the United States after leaving the European Union.” But in this alliance called “Aukus” London hopes to do more than just make up the numbers. Barely 48 hours after the announcement of the abandonment of the French contract, the British groups BAE System and Rolls Royce have positioned themselves to equip the future submarines.
**The warning signs**
Before reaching this point, a number of warnings took place. Just after the signing of the “contract of the century”, a leak of 22,000 documents detailing the plans for the torpedo and communications systems of another French submarine model sold to India, the Scorpene, landed in the Australian press. An attempt at destabilization that, with hindsight, sounds like a first warning. In early 2020, a new warning. The Australian government was concerned that the French program was nine months behind schedule. In the middle of the pandemic, from February 6 to March 6, 2021, the new CEO of Naval Group, Pierre Éric Pommellet, went to Australia. After three weeks of quarantine, he met with his Australian counterparts and left reassured. But the secret negotiations between London, Canberra and Washington are still going on. In June 2021, while Emmanuel Macron was attending the G7 in Cornwall, neither Boris Johnson nor Joe Biden informed him of what was going on. A secret meeting was held between the Americans, the British and the Australians to seal the fate of the French contract, even though the President of the French Republic was just a stone’s throw away.
The masks finally came off on September 15, 2021, when the White House announced its new pact with the Australians and the British. It is normal that they kept the secret for a very long time,” explains Larissa Brown. The Australians didn’t want to reveal anything until they were sure of the outcome. They weren’t 100 percent sure the Americans would follow through. Once the case was made public, in Washington, Kurt Campbell’s deputy, Rush Doshi, posted a tweet that the general public would not have spotted but which spoke volumes, with these simple words: “Six months of hard work!” Tweet that he will later delete. Six months is the time it took to torpedo the French contract.
**An impression of “déjà-vu**
However, this is not the first time that France has been excluded by the United States from a contract of this type. In the 1980s, Paris hoped to sell its nuclear attack submarines to Canada. Negotiations seemed to be well underway. “The Canadian navy, as well as the political authorities, were quite convinced of the interest of this solution,” recalls Max Moulin, an atomic engineer, Capitaine de Vaisseau and co-author of the naval reference book entitled Flottes de combat. “Until the Americans stepped in with a counterproposal to lend or provide American nuclear submarines. The Canadians then dropped the French contract. Except that “they never got a return from the Americans, and they ended up having to buy used British conventional submarines that were not in good condition.” Will history repeat itself? Nothing is less certain.
can I get an encore, do you want more
when everyone thought the sub news was done, bogaloo strikes again
“Australia needs to be in a position to defend it’s trade with China from China. And if losing trade with the EU is a casualty in that then so be it”
– Scott Morrison (not really, it’s a joke)
Biden’s foreign policy gets a lot of abuse because of Afghanistan, but if I was American I’d be entirely impressed at how he’s managed to secure for decades two pliant base nations so quickly.
PerhAps look at this…
https://youtu.be/g2vnciriE_Q
Pretend to be shocked. Pretend to be shocked when we will realize Australia will not even have homemade sub but some thrift shop submarines by 2040 if lucky
Let it go, let it gooo….
Utter nonsense. France knew full well that the project was in trouble. This was publicly discussed in both the [French and Australian parliaments](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australian-documents-showed-french-submarine-project-was-risk-years-2021-09-21/):
>Australian parliamentary hearings and reports on the project, first priced at $40 billion and more recently at $60 billion, even before construction had begun, also showed problems emerging. In June the defence secretary told parliament “contingency planning” for the programme was under way.
>”They would have to have their eyes shut not to realise the danger they were facing,” said Rex Patrick, an independent senator for South Australia, referring to France.
>Government ministers said this week Canberra had been “up front” with Paris about the problems.
>A French lawmaker also raised questions in parliament in June about Australian concerns over delays, and whether Australia might be considering submarine alternatives, French parliamentary records show.
The project was 9 months behind schedule, the price was already up 50%, the design wasn’t finalized, and they hadn’t even *started* building yet.
But the bigger problem is that Australia’s primary objective, and the reason the chose the French design over the Japanese one, was that they wanted to build them domestically. Both so they could be strategic autonomy and as a jobs program. But every time there was a review Naval Group (the French contractor) kept shifting more and more production out of Australia. To the point that Australia asked the French government to [intervene](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/18/the-nuclear-option-why-has-australia-ditched-the-french-submarine-plan-for-the-aukus-pact):
>It is understood one of the outcomes of that meeting was that France, in a bid to reassure Australia that the project would not be delayed, was going to send Australia a letter affirming their commitment to the timelines and delivery of local content.
>An Australian government source said the letter arrived, but it was late. “If they can’t deliver a letter in time, how the hell can they deliver 12 subs on time,” the source said.
Defence contractors play these games all the time and get away with it because it’s usually too expensive to pull the plug on a project a start over. But because the [AUKUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUKUS) nuclear negotiations were done in secret, Naval Group didn’t know Australia had a serious Plan B in the works. So when they tried to play the usual defence contractor games they got blindsided.