@John
He is correct though, and wrong at the same time. The original ‘deal’ (as revealed to the public) was to receive one second hand SSN first because of a need to fill a RAN gap between the Collins retirements and commissioning the first new Virginia SSN (due to US shipbuilding capacity constraints and USN priorities). He is wrong to imply that more than one second-hand boat was ever optimistically envisaged at the time according to publicly available information. There is of course the possibility that Defence always knew how impossible it would be to get newly built US SSNs and #AUKUS #PlanB was to get second-hand boats if new ones could not be had (New boats to USN would release old SSNs for sale - despite calls by Congress to keep them to fill US vs China SSN balanced). Who the fuck really knows what was/is really going down between an over secretive Department of Defence and a #ChristoFascist US DoD.

That’s my plebeian take on the matter.