Category: Armed Forces

On Friday 13 May, five representatives from the Australian Ministry of Defence and 11 German representatives from TKMS, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Federal Foreign Office met in Kiel for a debriefing on the outcome of the Australian submarine deal. At the debriefing, the Australian delegation wanted to explain the Australians' decision-making process to the representatives of the German bid. In April, it was announced that the French state-owned shipyard DCNS would be awarded the contract worth around 35 billion euros. The Japanese bid had already been eliminated at the beginning of the year. Citing sources, The Australian newspaper reports that the meeting was rather frosty and that the Australian delegation was not particularly convincing in its reasoning: "The Germans were told that the "critical issue'' was that their submarine was too noisy. Specifically they were told, with deliberate vagueness, that the boat would be too noisy at a particular frequency that was very important to the Royal Australian Navy - an apparent reference to the submarine's ability to collect close-to-shore intelligence without detection. The Germans countered by asking what the frequency was and why it was not emphasised in the bidding process. The Australians responded that this information was classified, but that they were not convinced TKMS understood the significance of this issue for Australia. They said the problems with stealth meant that the German proposal could never have delivered a...