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| DCNS: Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A |
Nigel Pittaway, Pierre Tran and Christopher P. Cavas
Australia’s choice of French shipbuilding giant DCNS to lead the country’s ambitious 12-ship submarine construction program caught most observers by surprise. The quasi-government-owned DCNS — which often competes in international naval programs but rarely scores a major win — had been seen as an also-ran in competition with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) and the Japanese government for the lucrative, Australian $50 billion (US $38 billion, €33.2 billion) Future Submarine contract.
But Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s April 26 announcement that the decision was “unequivocally” in favor of the French design set champagne corks popping in Paris even as Australian politicians and commentators debated the choice.
“This was the absolutely unambiguous recommendation from the Department of Defence that came through the competitive evaluation process,” Turnbull said, adding that all three bids were of a “very high quality.”
The decision came as a disappointment to the Japanese, who had personally been invited to compete by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott in what Australian media referred to as a “Captain’s pick.” Some political analysts now predict a temporary cooling of relations between the two countries.
Turnbull, asked by reporters April 26 about the impact on Australian-Japanese relations, said his government remained committed to the regional alliance with Japan and the US.
“Both [Japanese] Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe and I — and our respective governments and, I believe, our respective nations — are thoroughly committed to the special strategic partnership between Australia and Japan which gets stronger all the time,” Turnbull said. “It gets stronger day by day and we're committed to that. And we are committed to our strong trilateral strategic engagement between Australia, Japan and the United States.”
Andrew Davies, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, noted that while “our prime minister has said that he has been on the telephone to Prime Minister Abe … I expect this will cause a bit of a cooling in the Australia-Japan relationship for a while.”
All three contenders, Davies said, offered a good product.
“I don’t think there was a bad decision on the table,” he said. “I think that whatever we did, we would have ended up with a capable submarine. We were actually in a pretty happy circumstance, with three experienced submarine designers and builders competing.”
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