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USUKA, buying black boxes
Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2021 11:55 pm
by spot
A nuclear attack submarine costs around US$ 3bn up front, apparently.
But you can't build your own reactor. It's a black box, you set the power output on a control panel and the system turns your power train for you. Peeking under the maintenance panel isn't allowed. I expect there's a screw under a sticky label that voids the agreement if you turn it.
You can have a cyber security module but you're not allowed to reverse engineer it. You feed stuff in at one end and it comes out different at the other but looking at the code is well out of order.
You're allowed quantum hardware but - you've got the idea, yes. No peeking.
It's a hard life south of the equator.
The price to New Zealand is $0, because New Zealand isn't so bloody stupid as to buy anything on those terms.
Just being labelled a "trusted partner" doesn't get you a lot.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-58564837
Re: USUKA, buying black boxes
Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:49 am
by spot
I think our Prime Minister just likes the adrenaline rush he gets from standing up in public and deliberately uttering drivel. I can think of no other reason for that sentence. The name of the submarine class has "attack" in it.
How about saying The South China Sea is one bit of ocean which requires nuclear attack submarines because diesel ones would be too noisy there, so Australia can only operate alongside us if we help them build a modern fleet.
A better question is why on earth Usuka thinks it has a reason to operate in the South China Sea to begin with. Just going there with any weapon is already adversarial. The South China Sea is not your home waters, gentlemen, it's China's. The clue is in the name.
Or are we pretending this nuclear-powered underwater attack battlefleet is being built to patrol the Ross Ice Shelf.
As for "we will remain clear-eyed in our view of Beijing’s efforts to undermine the established international order", who with any claim to common sense would not want to do exactly that. The established international order is a catastrophe dominated by the Pentagon. Any rational international order would start on day one by banning every citizen of the Coalition of the Willing from ever touching a weapon again, especially a nuclear attack submarine.
Re: USUKA, buying black boxes
Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2021 9:07 am
by spot
The UK's new security agreement with the US and Australia will make it safer and could create hundreds of new jobs, the new foreign secretary has said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58613195
Safer? "Will", not just "could" like the jobs claim?
I can see this thread getting bumped repeatedly as time goes on.
It will be ten years before the first of these new Australian submarines heads out on patrol.
I'm prepared to bet money that by then it will be impossible to take any submarine anywhere on earth at any depth down to one kilometer and not have its location known to the military intelligence services of several other countries. I don't think acoustic tracking will be central to the process either. It'll be interesting to see what sort of white elephant the Australians have bought into.
As for military communications monitoring, I think that's a lost battle already. It certainly should be. People have finally learned after fifty years not to buy hardware with backdoors, for one thing. Switching from Huawei to American manufacturers is jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Re: USUKA, buying black boxes
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2021 4:38 pm
by spot
spot wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 9:07 am
It will be ten years before the first of these new Australian submarines heads out on patrol.
I'm prepared to bet money that by then it will be impossible to take any submarine anywhere on earth at any depth down to one kilometer and not have its location known to the military intelligence services of several other countries. I don't think acoustic tracking will be central to the process either. It'll be interesting to see what sort of white elephant the Australians have bought into.
My word... the Guardian follows FG...
Though I concede the Guardian is somewhat more detailed.