WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
(Pixabay)
Micaela Burrow
Daily Caller News Foundation
The U.S. and Australia plan to massively invest in American defense companies amid pressure to accelerate production of long-promised nuclear-powered submarines for Canberra, The Wall Street Journal reported.
President Joe Biden is set to reveal the final arrangements of a plan to provide Australia with five U.S.-made Virginia class attack submarines by the mid-2030s on Monday, according to Reuters. As the main U.S. submarine contractors struggle to keep up with domestic demand, Australia might make a contribution toward shoring up U.S. production capacity as well, the WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the plan.
“The Biden administration has never asked Congress for the type of generational investment of resources, authorities, and political capital in our submarine industrial base to meet our own Navy’s submarine requirements, let alone additional requirements,” Republican Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker told the WSJ.
The first few of Australia’s new submarines will be produced in the U.S., according to the WSJ, citing the people familiar with the plan. Australia and the United Kingdom will eventually assume full responsibility for building Canberra’s fleet, using a new design that incorporates elements of U.S. technology.
The people also said the plan involves aligning infrastructure and logistics to allow U.S. attack submarines rotational access to Australian ports, according to the WSJ.
Plans to build up U.S. and Australian submarine production capacity are just part of a larger agreement between Washington, Downing Street and Canberra to deepen cooperation on artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, hypersonic missiles and undersea technologies, the people told the WSJ. Known as Aukus, the scheme harnesses U.S. defense and technological expertise to bolster Australian and British submarine fleets.
It emerged out of a growing sense of China’s military threat in the Pacific and could enhance the West’s advantage over China in undersea military capabilities, U.S. officials said, according to the WSJ.
Australia already operates a fleet of diesel-powered conventional submarines, the WSJ reported. However, the nuclear-powered versions can travel further distances and have a stealth advantage.
Australia is considering purchasing up to eight nuclear-powered Virginia submarines, both new ones from scratch and those already operating under the U.S. military.
“I think it is a force multiplier,” Democratic Rep. Joe Courtney, of Connecticut, whose district includes a top submarine supplier owned by General Dynamics, told the WSJ. “Don’t count out the U.S. industrial base to grow and take on more work.”
However, the U.S. industrial base has lagged in fulfilling orders from the U.S. Navy, sparking concern among other lawmakers that the Aukus deal could damage America’s undersea defenses, according to the WSJ. While the Navy budgeted for two new submarines each year, the main manufacturers have produced at a rate of 1.5 annually.
“If the Aukus announcement isn’t matched by a generational investment in our submarine industrial base, it’s nearly pointless,” a congressional aide told the WSJ.
The White House and the Australian Embassy to the U.S. declined to comment to the WSJ.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Long the world’s most Christian nation, America today is being taken over by a new “official” national religion, one being imposed on the entire populace by every major societal institution, from government, media and big tech, to academia, entertainment and business.
This new state religion is Wokeism. “Going woke” conjures up visions of someone claiming to be acutely sensitive (“awake”) to “systemic social and political injustice.” And not just alleged bigotry against blacks, but toward every other “minority” as well, from LGBT folk – especially everything transgender and “nonbinary” – to “undocumented immigrants.” All of them, being VICTIMS, intrinsically more virtuous than the shameful oppressor class: primarily heterosexual white males.
This new “woke” consciousness has turned America upside-down – from the nationwide Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, to tearing down of historic monuments, to demanding multi-million-dollar reparation payments for blacks, to appointing transgenders as top government officials, to rampant reverse discrimination in every area of life, to the U.S. military imposing mandatory “diversity training” and transgender pronoun use on all personnel, causing recruitment to disastrously plummet.
Yet there is hope. Being “saved” – which in Wokeism is called being “woke” – is largely a matter of worshipping victimhood by becoming an “ally” and “defender” of all the many victim classes, and a determined enemy of the straight white male oppressor class. Thus, “joining the righteous” as an ally – even if one is cursed to be a straight white male – opens the door mercifully for salvation, even to the most wretched.
That is the power of the religion of Wokeism. And it’s explored as never before in the February 2023 issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine. If you’ve ever wondered, for example, exactly how the most radical elements in American society are successfully pressuring the biggest corporations into adopting the most outrageous and immoral policies imaginable, even when doing so permanently damages and devalues the company, the stunning answers are in this issue of Whistleblower, titled “WOKEISM: AMERICA’S OFFICIAL STATE RELIGION.”
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
The post U.S.-Australia submarine pact promises to be windfall for defense contractors appeared first on WND.
