Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently revealed an "unashamedly nationalistic" warship building program intended to significantly boost the fighting capability of the Royal Australian Navy against the ever increasing naval challenge from China.
Turnbull said the $89 billion Naval Shipbuilding Plan also helps secure Australia's economic future by boosting job-creation. The Naval Shipbuilding Plan spells out how the government will create a local industry that can build warships worth billions of dollars over the coming decades, a capability currently absent.
The plan describes the naval shipbuilding program as "larger and more complex than the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme and the National Broadband Network," which are among Australia's most massive and costly infrastructure projects.
The plan envisions the building of 12 diesel-electric submarines; nine frigates and 12 offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) for the RAN until the middle of the century. It will also produce 19 Pacific patrol boats to be given to neighboring countries.
It sets aside $1.3 billion to upgrade the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide and the plant at Henderson in Western Australia. Some $25 million will go to organizing a naval shipbuilding college in Adelaide to train workers.
The boost in naval construction is expected to triple the workforce in Southern Australia to 5,000 persons by 2026.
"This is truly nation-building, a great national enterprise and it brings with it that enormous employment boost" boasted Turnbull.
"It is unashamedly nationalistic."
He said his government believes "it is not only in the interests of securing the capabilities that our defense forces, but also it secures our economic future, our industrial future.
"This is about national security and it's about economic security."
The plan claims the shipbuilding enterprise will also "generate significant economic growth across Australia, revitalize Australia's heavy-engineering and advance-manufacturing industrial capability and capacity, and grow and sustain thousands of Australian jobs."
The plan gives teeth to the government's "continuous build" strategy for surface warships. This strategy is a perpetual production timetable in which the first ships of the next generation are ready for construction just as the oldest vessels of the current generation are getting ready for retirement.