Transcript
WEBVTT
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Today, we'll be talking about the diplomatic fallout surrounding the AUKUS deal.
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For those of you don't know, the AUKUS deal is the Australia, UK, and US joint program of building the next generation of subs for the Australian Navy.
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And more specifically, we're going to talk about how USA betrayed her French ally, who was the original awardees of the Australian sub contract.
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To explain this disaster and the ramifications for the world I'm going to first address the common Anglo-centric, misconceptions that are currently floating around in the news.
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For this purpose I'm going to use an exchange on a recent discussion of bill Maher's"Real Time with Bill Maher" show on HBO to set the stage.
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Though, let me warn you, first, I want to delve into it with the different classifications of Naval submarines.
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So if you're already knowledgeable on the subject, or you simply don't care that much about those specifics and the engineering aspects of the submarines, feel free to skip the chapter two, because, I apologize, this is already kind of a pretty long podcast.
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So, chapter two is around the 15-ish minute mark of this podcast.
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Let's have a listen.
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And sometimes it's not bad to be America first.
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I mean, I don't understand why France is like, maybe I understand why they're mad at us, but if you don't know it, what happened was, France had a deal to sell nuclear submarines for defense to Australia.
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And at the last minute we came in and offered them cheaper and better.
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Exactly.
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And they took it.
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Hey, that's the art of the deal, bitch! You know what, I mean, sorry, we beat you at business, fair and square.
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We didn't hold a gun to Australia's head.
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Absolutely.
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And the thing is, is that France wants to sell their stuff, I'm sure Saudi would buy it.
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But at the end of the day, our stuff is far superior.
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So Australia would go with that.
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And...
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The one thing we can still do was make killing machines.
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And it also sends a message to China, and lets them know, you know, we w ere in t heir back in the woods.
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Right, so we shouldn't feel bad about that one.
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Right?
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The French ones were so bad.
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They were really loud, a loud submarine.
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It's a diesel.
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It's diesel, these are different from nuclear, there's this diesel.
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Seriously?
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Seriously.
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I feel even better about this now.
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Not a good idea of you're trying to spy.
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[..]
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Did they leave that black smoke?
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They didn't have truck nuts on it, did they?
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They can spy.
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They can do some productive things.
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So of course the French had a[inaudible]
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Ours can kill the whales so much more effectively.
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Come On, Don't Bullshit Me!
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So, in one move! This is like Trump level of diplomatic fuckery is how many allies Australia managed to piss off.
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Again, like if this wasn't real life, it would be complicated.
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Welcome to come on.
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Don't me where we peel away the messaging of talking heads to get to the crux of today's issues.
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I don't like the excessive hubris of these people.
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I mean, they're shitting on the French submarine deal or the lack of it now.
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They're like, oh, American submarines are technically superior, and that's why we won! Which completely misses the whole point of why the French are pissed off.
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Because, first off, you have to make a determination between which submarines you are talking about.
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Because most people, when they think of submarines, they think of"The Hunt for Red October", and that's a ballistic missile submarine.
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Or in the US Navy parlance, it's like SSBN.
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Without being too pedantic, there's, generally speaking, two separate classes of submarines.
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You've got attack submarines and then you basically have"Hunt for Red October" missile submarines.
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But I think the Navy community calls them boomers.
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Not like"okay, Boomer!", Like a baby boomers, but they're just ballistic missile submarines, and they call them boomers.
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If we're talking about hide and seek, the boomers are the hiders; and the attack submarines are the seekers, their whole job is to go find, find the subs, find the boomers.
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So the boomers-- their whole mission is to basically go on station, and be quiet and just sit there.
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And obviously they do...
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Because we're not under constant threat of World War III, they just go around and do things, missile drills.
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As Sean Connery said in Red October,"we will do the missile drills and enjoy the company of Havana" or something.
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And then all the Russians say like"yeah!" or"Da!", and then there was singing the Soviet Anthem.
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We will pass through the American patrols past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to that rock and roll while we conduct the missile drills.
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And when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter.
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While we sail to Havana, where the sun is warm and so is the comradeship.
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And then of course the Sam Neill from"Jurassic Park", who was captain Vasily Borodin, and he's like, Captain, the noise will attract the imperialist pig-dog Americans! And then Sean Connery's like:"Let them sing!"
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[ Singing the Soviet Anthem].
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So that's the purpose of the SSBNs.
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Their whole mission is basically to be quiet, just have a coke and smile and shut the fuck up.
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And if something happens, you know, World War III happens, and they get an order from their towed array, you got to launch the missiles.
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They're purely offensive, they're there purely to ensure MAD, right, Mutual Assured Destruction.
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If the Russians or the Chinese, or whoever, if someone launches nuclear missiles and destroys us, we have our submarines that can launch back.
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So you better not launch any missiles.
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So our nuclear triad is based off nuclear silos: our land-based ballistic missiles; and then we have our strategic bombers, that are always up in the air, so if you launch missiles, they would fire; and then you have our SSBNs missile submarines that are under water, and then they will fire.
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It's kind of like the Similarils from the Silmarillion.
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You had the three Silmarils: one would be lost into the sea, one would be in the air, and then one would be lost in the ground or fire, whatever, earth.
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So that our nuclear triad could be based off of the Silmarillion.
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Thanks J.
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R.
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R.
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Tolkien.
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So anyway, if World War III happens, you know, we detect the missiles, the orders go out to the triad, simultaneously.
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To everyone, to the silos: the strategic bombers and the nuclear submarines get the same order to launch the missiles.
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And the whole thing is, we hope that at least one out of those three entities is still alive and it can launch missiles back at the enemy, because that's part of our nuclear triad.
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And I think the Soviets, or I guess the Russians, and other countries have similar things.
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With Britain, famously, they don't really have a specific code that they're supposed to monitor for for launching missiles.
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But for them they're supposed to tune into BBC-4, and then if BBC-4 four goes static, that means that UK is destroyed, so they have to launch their missiles.
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Which doesn't really give me much confidence.
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I think the whole world is invested in making sure BBC-4 stays operational.
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Because, God forbid, some pigeons shits on antenna or something, and then the World War III happens.
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Yeah, I'm sure there's fallback protocols, but it's a nice anecdote.
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At least I hope it's a nice anecdote.
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Then you got your attack submarines.
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They're basically the apex predator of the sea.
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Their whole job is to find these extremely quiet SSBNs and take them out.
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Well, during the war take them out, during peace time it's obviously to find them and, and say,"Aha, we found you! You're not as stealthy as you think you are.
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So don't even try to think that you're going to rely on your SSBNs, because we're going to..." Well, not going to knock them out of the sky, as we say in the air force, but"we're going to take them to the Davy Jones' locker", or whatever the Navy says.
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"So don't rely on your SSBNs when we nuke the shit out of you!" Morbid discussions today.
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Anyway, under the conventional war, their whole job is to infiltrate Navy carrier groups undetected and launch their torpedoes in sink mostly carriers, because that's the most valuable asset, but also other ships.
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Because right now with current technology that humans have, nothing comes even close to the destructive power of a submarine, of an attack submarine.
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It's just unmatched.
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And obviously, I mean, the Germans figure this out and during World War II that's why the Krieg's Marine, they kind of, vested away from capital ships and put almost all their effort and focus on attack submarines and sunk ships left and right.
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So the Naval doctrine really hasn't changed that much, despite the advent of nuclear weapons.
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This is that with the attack submarines-- they're the apex predators in the sea.
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And no one even came close.
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As far as the Naval vessels are concerned, because obviously we have air assets and other things.
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But as far as the Navy is concerned, nothing comes close to attack submarines, and they can pretty much take out anyone.
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And their whole job is to be quiet enough to get close to the carriers or other Naval assets and basically torpedo the shit out of them.
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So that's their point.
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So while SSBNs can be pretty quiet because they have the luxury of just sitting completely quiet in the middle of a God knows what ocean, and just sit and wait for World War III to happen, SSNs or SSKs basically attack subs.
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They don't have that luxury because the attack submarines are the seekers, right?
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Their whole job is to go find, find the subs, find the boomers.
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So again, there's generally speaking two separate classes of submarines: there's attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines(the boomers).
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The boomers are the hiders and the attack submarines are the seekers.
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And amongst those two, there are basically four designations.
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The attacks you have the SSKs diesel electric and the SSNs(which is a nuclear submarine).
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And then with the ballistic missiles you have SSBNs and SSG; SSBNs are nuclear ballistic missile submarines.
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And SSGNs happened during the, I believe, the START treaties, where during the denuclearization between the Soviet Union, or I guess at this point the Russian Federation, and the US.
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We were required to get rid of four of our SSBNs and denuclearize them.
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Obviously we're not going to completely decommission these really nice submarines.
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These are, by the way, they are the Ohio class submarines, for anyone who wants to be specific.
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And because of the START treaty or because of the US Navy posture statement, the Navy were either forced to, or all of their own volition said, Hey, look, we have 18 ballistic missile submarines, but in order to accomplish our mission, we really only need 14.
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So what we're going to do is, we're going to denuclearize four of those submarines, those SSBNs.
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And rather than just decommission them, we're going to use them for other things.
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So they replaced the Trident ballistic missiles with Tomahawk cruise missile.
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So they're not ballistic anymore, they're cruise missiles: they cruise above the sea line and then go hit their targets.
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Which you probably know if you remember the old CNN clips of the First World War...
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Or First World War-- First Gulf War! First World War with Tomahawks, heh.
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No, the First Gulf War, because that was the first televised war.
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So four of those SSBNs were transitioned into SSGNs and used only conventional ammunitions.
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So again, that doesn't really matter, but I figured I'd be thorough here.
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And speaking of thorough, I know there's going to be some random Navy guy that's listening to this, and I'm going to get a whole bunch of angry comments, saying like,"Oh, you don't know what you're talking about! Cause we don't use SSKs anymore".
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Yes, yes, I understand.
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Okay.
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In the interest of that one random Navy guy that's listening: yes, we don't do SSKs anymore because nowadays all submarines are expected to handle the anti-submarine warfare role.
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So really we don't really have SSKs.
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It's mostly your boomers and then the attack submarines are now just SSGs.
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So they'd have those Tomahawks in there, and they are supposed to attack and destroy the Land and Naval surface assets.
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If you look at the Australian submarines right now, they're not called SSKs, they're called SSGs, right, without the"N", because they're not nuclear.
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Yes.
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They have torpedoes, but their main focus is on the cruise missiles.
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But for this podcast, I'm just going to be fast and loose with terminology, because I want to focus on nuclear propulsion versus diesel electric.
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And also by the way, the new attack submarines that the Australians wanted, the attack class submarine, I figured it's just easier and more pleasing to the ear to call them SSKs rather than SSGs.
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And technically, the contract wasn't awarded, it was canceled.
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So we don't even know what the armament is.
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So I'm being a little cheeky there, but yeah, SSGs, SSKs-- bottom line is, it's about diesel-electric.
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And this is the thing that this whole AUKUS Fracas is about.
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This panel is a classic example of people being confidently incorrect.
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And they just don't know what the hell they're talking about.
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I don't want to call them idiots, but they're being idiotic, saying things like,"oh, the French submarines are not as quiet as ours, because they're diesel".
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First off, you're a colossal moron.
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I mean, I shouldn't, I shouldn't say that.
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That's not a nice thing to say.
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But they're being, I'll just say that they're being colossally moronic, because it's not like these subs are some sort of Mack truck, big-rig out in the middle of the ocean going" Hrgrrrrrrrrrr"; and then the Russians would be like,"Captain, I hear a French sub on sonar!""Are you sure, comrade?" Like,"Yes, captain, she sounds just like my truck in Vladivostok!" No, no, it's not like that.
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They only run the diesel engines when they surface to charge up the batteries and then they submerge all quiet and run on electric.
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So if you're talking about being quiet, diesel submarines are way quieter than nuclear submarines.
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The whole point of having a nuclear submarine is not about being quiet.
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It's about endurance, power, and indiscretion rate or your indiscretion time.
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So, endurance is basically how far you can go and how long you could stay on station.
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And power, well, we can talk about power later, but that's pretty self-explanatory.
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Indiscretion rate is specific to diesel-electric submarines.
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Because the whole point of SSKs-- these diesel attack subs-- is that they use diesel generators.
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Well, they use electric motors.
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And as we know from Tesla, electric motors beat mechanical motors hands down any day of the week.
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They're more efficient.
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And part of the reason why the more efficient is that they are quieter.
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And obviously the more noise you make, the more inefficiency you have, because of phonons being generated.
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But the point is, noise is a form of inefficiency and, electric motors are way quieter than mechanical motors.
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So these electric subs in and of themselves are extremely quiet.
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Now, the reason why they get a bad rap and why this panel is specifically talking about, oh, they're not quiet submarines is not because of their operation, it's because of the fact that once the batteries are depleted in your SSK, in your diesel submarine, you have to go up to Periscope depth, put out a snorkel, and breathe in air so that your diesel engines can run.
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And then your diesel engines run and recharge your batteries.
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And that's, what's noisy.
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And this is what's called the"indiscretion rate".
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So if you can be submerged for three weeks, but then you have to come up for eight hours...
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These are not real numbers, obviously, because I don't know them, and if I did, I wouldn't be allowed to say anything, but your indiscretion rate would be okay, every three weeks, you have to be up surfaced to the eight hours.
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Which is exposing yourself to being attacked by an all manner of different Naval ships, all manner of ways from by the enemy.
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So the point is to minimize your indiscretion rate.
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So if your whole premise that all the French deserve to lose this contract is because the French submarines are inferior because they're less quiet or they're more noisy because they're diesel submarines, you're just being a colossal ignoramus because it just proves that you have no understanding of the fundamentals of submarine warfare or a submarine propulsion.
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Nuclear subs are really good, but it's not because they're quiet.
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Diesel submarines are quieter than nuclear submarines because with diesel submarines, once they're fully charged, you can shut off the engines, and the background noise is practically zero.
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Whereas with nuclear submarines you have to constantly cycle through water to cool the reactor down.
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Anyone who watched Chernobyl or anything knows that nuclear power plants, nuclear reactors, require a constant flow of water to cool the reactor down to avoid a meltdown.
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You can't shut down a nuclear reactor.
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The nuclear reactions are constantly going and it is constant heat buildup.
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So you always, you have to constantly cool a reactor down to avoid a Chernobyl in your submarine.
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So if you want to talk strictly about being quiet, well, they're just completely wrong.
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It's just a matter of physics.
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Diesel submarines are quieter than nuclear submarines.
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Now, I know, okay, yes, in the most recent Virginia class submarines they've replaced the pumping of coolant with, they call it, conventional cooling.
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But then, obviously, the details of that are classified.
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And, frankly, right now we don't know if it's quiet or not.
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If it is quieter, that's a huge, remarkable achievement that obviously is not going to be released to another country or, let alone, the public.
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And if it was the case, these talking heads wouldn't know about it.
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And if they did, well, then the FBI should be knocking on their door pretty soon.
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So, as far as we, the public, are concerned, it's a completely ludicrous statement to say, oh, the French lost because they had diesel submarines, and diesel submarines are not as quiet as nuclear submarines.
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It's just completely preposterous.
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So again, the whole point of nuclear submarines is not about being quiet.
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It's about endurance, power, and indiscretion rate.
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And one of the main points of nuclear propulsion is that it reduces your indiscretion rates to zero, because you don't have to recharge your batteries, you don't have to resurface to recharge any batteries.
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You have nuclear engines, so you have nuclear power and it's constantly on and you don't run out of energy.
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The nuclear engine can last for about 10-ish years.
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So, about 10 years, based on the fissile material, that's in it.
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And that's how most nuclear submarines operate, whether it's SSBNs or SSNs.
00:21:19.720 --> 00:21:27.640
And what the doctrine of the day was that, okay, submarines have to have a major retrofit.
00:21:27.700 --> 00:21:29.289
It's like a mid-cycle retrofit.
00:21:29.420 --> 00:21:34.779
So they do maintenance, which basically involves completely replacing the hull and rebuilding it again.
00:21:34.779 --> 00:21:38.049
Almost kind of like a Theseus ship situation.
00:21:38.559 --> 00:21:53.109
And during that time, the prevailing thought was that, okay, well, if the submarine has to come in for this major retrofit, well, then we'll just put enough fissile material in there for about a decade or so or whenever the major retrofit has to happen.
00:21:53.020 --> 00:22:00.250
And in its mid cycle retrofit it'll get upgraded systems, it'll get all the maintenance stuff, and everything like that.
00:22:00.250 --> 00:22:05.500
And then also we'll swap out the nuclear reactor or the physical material with a nuclear reactor and replace it with new one.
00:22:05.650 --> 00:22:09.579
So that could go on until the submarine gets decommissioned at the end of its life cycle.
00:22:09.849 --> 00:22:11.500
So that's the kind of like the way it was.
00:22:11.980 --> 00:22:30.190
So with nuclear propulsion, the nuclear core was sized appropriately, so that during these mid cycle retrofits you could swap out the nuclear core and put a new core in, and go on your way.
00:22:30.609 --> 00:22:43.869
For submarine nuclear reactors they use highly enriched uranium, which allows the nuclear reactor to run for the full 30+ year life cycle of the submarine.
00:22:44.200 --> 00:22:55.450
Now, this is not really a problem for the US or Russia, or China, or even the UK, because they're an established in nuclear power, when it comes to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
00:22:55.900 --> 00:23:03.160
But for other countries like, you know, cough, cough, Australia who are not nuclear powers, this is a big issue.
00:23:09.900 --> 00:23:16.779
That's just the minor point I want to make about the quietness, if you will, of the submarines, which is completely preposterous point.
00:23:17.289 --> 00:23:30.609
But more broadly speaking, the panel was referencing that the reason why the French lost the contract, the Australian submarine contract was because America came in and made a better deal.
00:23:30.940 --> 00:23:34.720
And that's just the giant gross oversimplification of the entire issue.
00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:48.319
And if we really want to get into the nuts and bolts of it, which obviously we're going to do, because that's the whole point of this podcast, we have to go back to the predecessor, to the attack class submarine, which was the Collins class submarine.
00:23:49.109 --> 00:23:52.700
The Collins class submarine was based off a Swedish design.
00:23:53.240 --> 00:23:59.869
And there was a colossal clusterfuck of an acquisitions program.
00:24:00.230 --> 00:24:12.680
There were a lot of issues with it, but in retrospect it was actually a really good program because one of the reasons why it was a huge issue was because of the prevailing doctrine for the Australian Navy.
00:24:12.681 --> 00:24:22.609
Which was that prior to the Collins, they had the Oberon class submarine, and the Oberon class submarine was built by other country.
00:24:22.759 --> 00:24:31.640
So there was no in-house experience within Australia to maintain the Oberon class submarines.
00:24:31.849 --> 00:24:42.349
So anytime they had to maintain it, which was obviously often, because submarines are notoriously difficult pieces of engineering, and they require constant maintenance.
00:24:42.559 --> 00:24:49.490
So from a supply chain standpoint, Australia basically had nothing, and it was completely reliant on the UK.
00:24:50.059 --> 00:25:01.940
And one of their points that they made in the Naval doctrine was that they didn't want to be reliant on another country for their strategic deterrence in the form of submarines.
00:25:02.119 --> 00:25:07.819
Which is a completely legitimate and wise thing to do and to believe.
00:25:08.119 --> 00:25:13.160
So with the Collins class submarines they said, okay, we don't have any experience, so we got to gain this experience.
00:25:13.490 --> 00:25:18.079
And we are not going to recreate the wheel here and try to build our own submarine from scratch.
00:25:18.319 --> 00:25:27.859
So they said, we're going to partner with another country, and we're going to learn from them and get the experience here locally in Australia.
00:25:28.220 --> 00:25:33.500
And that's exactly what they did with the Collins class submarine, with Saab, the Swedes.
00:25:33.740 --> 00:25:50.509
And there were a lot of issues with it, because obviously trying to repurpose a submarine for another country, and not only that, but also build the in-house knowledge for the Australian government to be able to maintain these ships, was a monumental undertaking.
00:25:50.539 --> 00:25:56.480
And obviously there was a whole bunch of cost overruns and a lot of things that were promised, but weren't quite delivered.
00:25:56.690 --> 00:25:58.460
But overall they worked through it.
00:25:58.609 --> 00:26:06.289
And a lot of the problems that plague the Collins class submarine, to their credit, the Navy worked on it.
00:26:06.290 --> 00:26:15.309
And to this date, the Collins submarine is probably considered the premier SSK in the world.
00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:19.609
I don't think anything quite matches it as far as the diesel submarines are concerned.
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:21.710
So they learned a lot of lessons from that.