Speaking of "out to the horizon", the project to acquire a land-based ASM (Sea 4100 Phase 2) has a program timeline of 2018-2037! As I understand it the systems themselves will be acquired in the mid-2020s, so why then have a 19-year program if that's the case!
So it would seem that it would be practically impossible for Australia to get Nukes even if they wanted them.
It's just not an exportable capability, those industries are so strategic that they are most likely sized, supported and funded specifically for national requirements, anything else is a massive spanner in the works.
2037 would be the anticipated service life of the system.
Indicative life of type, I believe is the phrase used for the outer years of project timelines, wih a missile based system, I guess they are using rough shelf life figures for the missiles themselves?
You both might have a point re missile shelf life but normally the LOT of a system/platform is not what the acquisition program timeline indicates. Generally, it indicates the equipment acquisition schedule, i.e the period between first approvals and introduction into service or FOC.
The timeline and project costs are quoted for the indicative lifetime of the asset, including sustainment. For instance, the MRTT and Wedgetail have time lines out to the mid to late 30s.
The vast majority of project timelines listed in the DIIP have the second year/date as the likely date of introduction into service or FOC, but it might be different where projects acquire missiles, not sure. The extended timeframe examples you list there I expect refer to planned upgrades over LOT.
The link to that article is The deterrent value of submarines | The Strategist and within that there is a further link to the full speech delivered on Nov 15.
And given it is likely to be something like this, once our North American friends acquire it, acquiring it ourselves would not necessarily take long (particularly if it was felt we really needed it):
I wonder what the optimal size for the current fleet of six Collins class subs would be if we chose to multi crew the fleet to bring up numbers as we transition to a future larger submarine fleet. Three crew to two boats may have merit as Collins availability rates increase.
In theory sounds good, In practice not garaunteed t work. If memory serves me a similar system was implemented with the ACPB's and didn't end up working so well. I'd also wonder if we would be pushing the boat's out into too many deployed ays between docking cycles.
The Collins were planned to have two crews per boat, not sure when this fell over, but it believe it was before Collins was Launched. Again I am not sure but believe it may have been dropped in the mid 90s due to the leaning (gutting) of defence to save money (first Keating then Howard), were anything seen as "tail" (as opposed to "teeth") was cut.
RFT is scheduled for release in early 2017, with Second Pass Approval (source selection) in Q3 2017. A very tight schedule!