Australia should push to acquire the proven U.S. Virginia class nuclear-powered submarine rather than a pioneer British model, according to opposition leader Peter Dutton.
Dutton, previously the defence minister, made the comments just days before an expected announcement between U.S., UK, and Australian leaders on which submarine model will be acquired by the Australian Defence Force under the landmark AUKUS deal.
“The advice to me at the time was very clear; that Rolls-Royce [in the UK] didn’t have any production capability left, no headroom; Barrow-in-Furness is obviously landlocked, it didn’t have the ability to scale up; and the problem that we had with the French design, in particular, was that it was a new design,” he told reporters at the Avalon Airshow in Victoria on March 1….