James Simpson
As the dust settles on Japan’s unsuccessful bid to sell its Soryu-class submarines to Australia, Tokyo has a lot to think about. The failure in Canberra was Japan’s second strike in its politically-led push to export its homegrown weaponry.
The joint bid by the Japanese government on behalf of two defense heavyweights — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries — lost out to a conventionally-powered variant of France’s Barracuda-class nuclear submarine. Germany was also in the running with its Type 214.Australia wants 12 new long-range, non-nuclear submarines to replace its current six Collins-class boats starting around 2030. The program could cost more than $15 billion.
While Tokyo’s hopes of selling Soryus to Australia and P-1 maritime patrol aircraft to the United Kingdom have been dashed, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s dream of a healthy defense export market survives— but only if Japan can learn from its failure down under.
The Soryu is a solid, proven platform. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force has operated its fleet of — so far — eight Soryus for seven years now. The boats are a known quantity, but that didn’t really matter. Australia didn’t want an off-the-shelf submarine. Rather, Canberra demanded significant changes to whichever boat it ended up buying — whether French, German or Japanese.
Among some of the changes the future submarine project demanded were a longer service life than Tokyo’s standard 20-year requirement, greater operating range and the integration of equipment and armament than the Collins-class subs already carry.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-doesnt-australia-want-japans-submarines-some-best-the-16100
