AUKUS News, Views, Analysis.

BAE, Rolls Royce and Babcock, are extremely influential, an initial $85m heading their way today and 350 UK jobs supported for 3 years to design a new UK nuclear submarine…


These companies are winning, which might be the UK’s biggest motivation rather than China. If you listen carefully the UK uses quite different language from AUS or USA.

Andy1974 said:

BAE, Rolls Royce and Babcock, are extremely influential, an initial $85m heading their way today and 350 UK jobs supported for 3 years to design a new UK nuclear submarine…

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These companies are winning, which might be the UK’s biggest motivation rather than China. If you listen carefully the UK uses quite different language from AUS or USA.

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I agree. British MIC stands to win a lot from this. The downsides are negligible for this kind of benefit.

The UK's economy's becoming more and more desperate by the day.


Choice quotes:

"As , leaving families £20-a-week worse off from 6 October, and following the as food prices soar, Ms Atkinson projects more hard-hit people will join the community store, affecting food supplies even further.

She said: “It’s getting colder, and October half term is approaching. We have peaks in need, especially around the school holidays. When children are off school, it’s not just one meal they need, it’s three.

“Lot of families are facing harder times as energy bills rise. We’re wondering if families will even be able to cook hot meals if we give them the ingredients.”"

So I imagine the UK is absolutely jumping at the opportunity to sell anything to anyone right now.

Bltizo said:

Oh, I'm sure China would be interested in some of them to bolster their own SSN fleet (that is likely to expand significantly in the next decade and a half given what we see at Bohai).... but I would be very surprised if Russia was willing to sell Yasen-Ms, and the amount of infrastructure needed to support even a small fleet of those would be significant.

If this Ka-52 deal is true, one reason I think China would be willing to go with it is because the negotiations prior to the deal would have been fairly simple and quick to do, and the delivery of the aircraft themselves would be relatively fast as well.
SSNs are a whole, whole different ball game both in terms of time from negotiations to delivery, but also in terms of sophistication and complexity... relative to some attack helicopters.

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Yes, the two deals are at completely different levels. In fact, you could say they have no relationship whatsoever. Ka-52 is more transactional whereas SSN is much more strategic. The latter would take the relationship to a new level - but then again Russia has been willing to help China in EWS, and both countries claim that their relationship are better than an alliance. It's time to show that. (Btw, Iran is officially admitted into SCO now).

Also, the proposed SSN deal will not come at the expense of whatever PLAN plan to do with its SSN & SSBN fleet. I figure China would need to rival the US in its SSN fleet eventually and it'll take a while for the domestic SSN to scale. There is plenty room for a dozen Russian SSNs if a deal can be struck.

Dante80 said:

How would China proceed with this in the UN? Could you explain your rationale here?

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?? Easy, any one of the 5 permanent security counsel members can ask for the counsel to come together to discuss a resolution they want to put forward.

This is momentous occasion/aggression. Even during cold war, US did not dare to export nuclear tech. This is a danger for the whole world.

Bellum_Romanum said:

R u okay??

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No I am not. US is breaking every rule exists in international arena. This is just shy of declaring war. Export of nuclear subs to a non-nuclear nation!! It does not get more serious than this.

weig2000 said:

Yes, the two deals are at completely different levels. In fact, you could say they have no relationship whatsoever. Ka-52 is more transactional whereas SSN is much more strategic. The latter would take the relationship to a new level - but then again Russia has been willing to help China in EWS, and both countries claim that their relationship are better than an alliance. It's time to show that. (Btw, Iran is officially admitted into SCO now).

Also, the proposed SSN deal will not come at the expense of whatever PLAN plan to do with its SSN & SSBN fleet. I figure China would need to rival the US in its SSN fleet eventually and it'll take a while for the domestic SSN to scale. There is plenty room for a dozen Russian SSNs if a deal can be struck.

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I think "they have no relationship whatsoever" is a very accurate description of comparing this purchase of Ka-52s and a notional move to buy Yasen-Ms (which like you said, is a wholesale strategic level alliance with significant).


Leaving aside every other difficult aspect about the Yasen-Ms (negotiations, infrastructure, combat systems, technology exposure sensitivities), tbh I'm not even sure if the timing of when they could conceivably even arrive would be worthwhile for China.

Considering the pace with which Russia has been producing Yasen-Ms for their own navy, and the relatively large order log they have for those SSNs, but the time their production line is able to deliver submarines to China, I would've expected Bohai to be well underway with production of competitive domestic SSNs with other world leading designs (09V being the one we expect, though they'd be preceded by a run of 09IIIBs).
Also, manning for nuclear submarines is technically finite -- with the PLAN likely to exploit the production potential of the new Bohai facility (20 SSN equivalent slots in the east and south assembly halls!), I have a feeling the trained manpower and the expertise to run those submarines will be consumed quite readily, and adding a dozen Yasen-Ms on top of that, depending on timing, might be a bit much.

foxmulder said:

Export of nuclear subs to a non-nuclear nation!! It does not get more serious than this.

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You may have a point on the subs. AFAIK This is going to be the first time a non-nuclear power will have nuclear subs

Can any member confirm if that is true?

Bltizo said:

Oh, I'm sure China would be interested in some of them to bolster their own SSN fleet (that is likely to expand significantly in the next decade and a half given what we see at Bohai)....

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I'm glad you mentioned Bohai. In your article about BHSIC's first expansion (your best work) you estimated the shipyard's launch cadence at 2 SSNs and 1 SSBN per annum. Since I doubt the yard will schedule an SSBN every year - and assuming (perhaps inaccurately) that 2 SSNs could be launched in an SSBN "slot" - I guess that the schedule would be periodic, something like
...
More importantly, your 2019 analysis doesn't take into account the second expansion at Bohai. How much do you think that expansion adds to the launch rate?

Bltizo said:

SSNs are a whole, whole different ball game both in terms of time from negotiations to delivery, but also in terms of sophistication and complexity... relative to some attack helicopters.

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Moreover, those Yasens are already spoken for. I'm pretty sure the Russian navy will have booked all of Sevmash's capacity for the foreseeable future; I don't see any export potential there. In any event, in Russian hands the Yasens will be doing good work tying up American capacity away from the western Pacific.

weig2000 said:

Yes, the two deals are at completely different levels. In fact, you could say they have no relationship whatsoever. Ka-52 is more transactional whereas SSN is much more strategic. The latter would take the relationship to a new level - but then again Russia has been willing to help China in EWS, and both countries claim that their relationship are better than an alliance. It's time to show that. (Btw, Iran is officially admitted into SCO now).

Also, the proposed SSN deal will not come at the expense of whatever PLAN plan to do with its SSN & SSBN fleet. I figure China would need to rival the US in its SSN fleet eventually and it'll take a while for the domestic SSN to scale. There is plenty room for a dozen Russian SSNs if a deal can be struck.

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To have a similar deal to this, China and Russia would agree to share technology such as reactors, sonars, torpedos and don’t forget the AUKUS deal covers drones, AI and Quantum tech, so this would need to be included in the deal.

Then they would plan for 12 months before announcing a nuclear submarine program (along the lines of the CR929?) and sell that submarine widely at a much cheaper price than the new AUKUS subs.

They could invite Indonesia