Sceptics of AUKUS Pillar 1, the nuclear-submarine element of the Australian-UK-US defence technology partnership, have called on the Australian government to go for a Plan B. Proposed alternatives have included buying nuclear submarines of French design instead or shifting resources for submarine procurement to critical technology development under AUKUS Pillar 2. These sceptics raise a basic question: if Canberra were not to go ahead with AUKUS Pillar 1, what else could it spend its money on? What if it cancelled just its second phase, SSN-AUKUS, the class of submarines of British design intended for delivery to Australia beginning in the 2040s?
What else we could do with the money: AUKUS Plan Bs from a CSBA exercise | The Strategist
