https://www.scmp.com/news/china/dipl...s-other-allies

South Korea brings hypersonic tech to the AUKUS table in a sign Seoul is moving closer to the US and its other allies

South Korean Defence Minister Shin Won-sik has confirmed Seoul is in talks to take part in Pillar 2 of the defence alliance

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/20...some-may-help/

US Navy’s submarine fleet is too small. Here’s how selling some may help.

This is the first story of a two-part series on how the U.S. submarine force is participating in the trilateral AUKUS alliance. Click here to read the second story.

That re-enforces my earlier post to you. Where I said:
"No one has ever accused the US of being altruistic. The US wants to forward deploy to Australia. They need nuke sub infrastructure and manpower. It is better for the US, to have Australia with a few of their nuke subs. The main sub is going to be the UK/AU. It's actually a disadvantage to Australia to run 2 types of attack subs. There will be more articles with FUD headlines than I could count over the next 10 years. Congress will also play their games. At the end of the day the primes are going to make money and let's face it. That's all that matters."

Australia:

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal...0240526-p5jgom

Questions surface over fast-tracked $10b warships

Answer given and clickbait continues.

Asked what changes would be allowed, a Defence Department spokesman said: “The General Purpose Frigate program is now in an evaluation process and Defence will not comment while the process is being conducted to protect commercial, procurement and probity processes.”

so much whinning about how fast they are doing, so much whinning about how slow hunter and most other procurements are

The TLDR what the govt wants in order of importanceThey announced that its got to be in build by 2026 for 2029 delivery

transfer of design for onshore build

effective sustainment and maintainence systems in AUS

compliance with regulatory,legislative and class regulation

interoperabolity with AUS and allied systems

So AUS wants a complete or nearly complete design that the builder can start building next year with a delivery no later than 2029, Meko A210 is a design they have been working on for 18+ months so should be completed, Mogami is complete, **** but complete, Daegu (know nothing about the design) is, tasman / alpha 3000 is concept as is the baby constellation

The odd thing is they are not including Arrow 140, which would seem an excellent option. Possibly they don't think it can be built in timeframe.
However RAN procurement has a checkered history, to say the least. That combined with Marles means probably end up a shambles.
Little or no prospect of the 7 - 11 hulls eventuating on past performance.

Allegedly 5 companies, considering Gibbs and Cox with the baby constellation are only design / engineering and zero ship building maybe BAE with arrowhead was the 5th and not gibbs and cox

Cant be worse than pretty much every LNP defense minister. Every defence minister since nelson and fitzgibbon has sucked at their job, Dutton, Payne and reynolds being the stand out worst