Simple numbers really, With a surface asset your adversary need only deploy one asset to shadow it, two to give it a challenge and three to over whelm it where as with a submarine your adversary will have to deploy half a dozen or more assets just to try and locate it.
In regards to submarine cost's well that should all be taken with a grain of salt as there is I'd imagine a lot of worst case scenario costings mixed in with far too much unfounded media speculation (dramatization to sell papers). Historically and this applies to the Collins class too we have been able to bring down each successive ship price with long production runs, If reports are to be believed from the AWD alliance even a 3 ship run has almost seen costs halve (Though the first one probably only cost that much due to management stuff ups) between the first and last ship.
@Todjaeger, I'm not so sure your speculated 8 in commission would occur or even be practical, While batches of 3 - 4 are likely not all of them will be laid down at once but rather one every two or so years. We can only slow the build of a submarine so much so unless we plan to retire our submarines when they are 6 - 8 years old before doing a mass decommissioning and mass commissioning such a speculation isn't possible.
Ideally I'd like them to be commissioned every 18 months with a service life of 18 years, though keep some around longer and actually get the badly needed training submarine!.
In regards to submarine cost's well that should all be taken with a grain of salt as there is I'd imagine a lot of worst case scenario costings mixed in with far too much unfounded media speculation (dramatization to sell papers). Historically and this applies to the Collins class too we have been able to bring down each successive ship price with long production runs, If reports are to be believed from the AWD alliance even a 3 ship run has almost seen costs halve (Though the first one probably only cost that much due to management stuff ups) between the first and last ship.
@Todjaeger, I'm not so sure your speculated 8 in commission would occur or even be practical, While batches of 3 - 4 are likely not all of them will be laid down at once but rather one every two or so years. We can only slow the build of a submarine so much so unless we plan to retire our submarines when they are 6 - 8 years old before doing a mass decommissioning and mass commissioning such a speculation isn't possible.
Ideally I'd like them to be commissioned every 18 months with a service life of 18 years, though keep some around longer and actually get the badly needed training submarine!.