In 2016, Australia bought 12 Shortfin Barracuda-class conventional submarines from France for a whopping $69 billion. However, after five years, none of the French ships were built. The United States said it could "sell Australian nuclear submarines for a cheaper price" Australia then tore up its contract with France, which turned around and sold 42 Rafale fighter jets to Australia's neighbor Indonesia.
When it comes to Australia, the first thing that comes to mind is the Australian kangaroo, which is rich in iron ore and creates hundreds of billions of foreign exchange reserves every year. However, Australia is an island nation located in the heart of the South Pacific Ocean, adjacent to Indonesia. As a country born by the sea, its main transportation is the composition of shipping, and the safety of cargo ships that shuttle between the seas every year has become an important goal of Australia.
However, although Australia and Japan are island countries, their naval power is extremely limited. According to statistics, "the Australian Navy has only two amphibious assault ships, three destroyers, eight frigates, and 6 Corinthian conventionally powered submarines." Together, there were only about thirty ships, which was extremely limited in maintaining The sea on all sides of Australia.
In this way, Australia has been investing heavily in recent years to buy advanced naval equipment from developed countries. Subsequently, in 2015, Australia tendered foreign tenders for the purchase of advanced submarines, and at that time, the bidding was jointly participated in the bidding of Japan's Soryu-class submarines, France's Barracuda conventional submarines and Germany's unbuilt Type 216 submarines.
Later, in 2016, due to the leakage of technical information from the internal technical data of nuclear submarines in France, the possibility of Japan's Soryu-class submarine winning the bid increased. The biggest advantage of the Soryu-class submarines over French and German submarines is that they have been in service for many years and are relatively mature in technology. However, this did not make it Australia's favorite object.
In the end, Australia gave the contract to France. There are three main reasons for this, the first of which is that the French barracuda submarine has a displacement of 300 tons more than the Japanese Soryu-class submarine. The second reason is that the submarines that Australia wants to purchase this time require AIP powerplant technology, and Japanese technology has not been trusted by Australia.
The third reason is that the French barracuda submarine was designed at the beginning of the design as a nuclear-powered attack submarine, and its own structure is much larger than that of ordinary conventional powered submarines, and once possible in the future, the Australian side can directly optimize it as a "nuclear submarine".
In this way, Australia and France finally signed a one-time purchase of 12 "shortfin barracuda-class" AIP-powered submarines in 2019, with a total contract price of $35.5 billion, and the contract time stipulated that it would be delivered to the Australian side in 2030. However, after France put the shortfin barracuda-class submarine into production in 2016, not a single submarine was built until five years later, in 2021.
Even so, France has also raised the contract amount to Australia from $35.5 billion to $69 billion for various reasons. However, Australia's difference is not money, the difference is equipment, and it has not been too dissatisfied with the price increase, and has agreed to France's request. Unexpectedly, France postponed the delivery time to 2050, and the fastest of them was also completed and delivered in 2025.
This delay in delivery was completely unacceptable to Australia. Because according to the regulations of the Australian Navy, all submarines in Australia will be decommissioned in 2026. Imagine that France can deliver in 2025, but if it is postponed again, then Australia's navy will face no submarines available.
Just when Australia was desperately needing to equip its navy, the United States stepped forward and said it could export 8,000 tons of displacement to Australia of the Virginia-class nuclear submarines. And as long as the Australian money is in place, production can start immediately, and the submarine can be handed over to Australia within 2 years.
What is even more heartwarming for Australia is that the unit price of virginia-class nuclear submarines is as low as $1.8 billion, which is far cheaper than the unit price of More than $5 billion for French conventionally powered submarines. In this way, Australia did not hesitate to sign a boat purchase contract with the United States, and turned around and directly tore up the tens of billions of contracts with French submarines.
France was very dissatisfied with the collusion between Australia and the United States to break the treaty, but for some reason, it could not directly oppose it. But France is not to be outdone, and just after Australia and the United States signed a submarine contract, it also announced that it would export 42 Rafale fighter jets to Indonesia.
As a neighbor of Australia, Indonesia has purchased this batch of Rafale fighters with "stealth performance", which undoubtedly forms an invisible deterrent to Australia. What is even more distressing to Australia and the United States is that Indonesia has also announced that it will continue to purchase conventional submarines from France. The transaction between France and Indonesia undoubtedly poses a difficult problem for both the United States and Australia, and it is not known whether the transaction between France and Indonesia will proceed smoothly.
