Australia s Attack Class submarine project faces criticism over rising costs and milestone delays
WedWednesday 20
updated
WedWednesday 20
JanJanuary 2021 at 7:17am
Twelve new submarines are being constructed in Adelaide by French shipbuilder, Naval Group, but there are concerns.
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Concerns about the cost, delivery schedule and strategic value of Australia s future submarine fleet are growing, despite Federal Government assurances the most expensive defence project in the nation s history is on track.
Key points:
A former US Navy Intelligence Officer says Australia should have chosen the Japanese rather than the French to build our future submarines
It comes amid concerns around the cost of the Attack Class project, which has increased by almost $40 billion from its initial sum of $50 billion
Jonathan Pollard, the U.S. Navy Intelligence analyst who spent three decades in jail as a spy for passing classified intelligence to Israel, has arrived in the Jewish state where he has long said he wanted to live
Pollard and his wife, Esther, landed at Ben Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv in the early hours of Wednesday morning on a private jet provided by American Jewish casino-magnate and philanthropist, Sheldon Adelson.
A video shows Pollard kissing the ground upon his arrival in the holy land, a common Jewish custom practiced by new Immigrants to Israel, before being greeted on the tarmac by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The fight was actually a rare British vs French engagement during World War II.
Key point: London made a tough and ruthless call. France had fallend and the British decided they would rather sink the French fleet rather than risk their surrender or cooperation with Berlin.
It was the night of July 2, 1940. In May Hitler had overrun the Low Countries and driven the British Army to the English Channel. In June German armies had completed the rout of the British, pressing them out to sea at Dunkirk, and then swept down to finish off the French. Winston Churchill, practically a lone voice in the 1930s against the danger of Hitlerism, had been appointed prime minister on May 10, yet had presided over little except disaster, and knew it. “Wars are not won with evacuations,” he had said of the Dunkirk retreat, but even in those dark hours believed the French armies would stiffen and halt the Wehrmacht short of Paris, or at least along some line to which the British could return. He s