Excellent APDR Article: Conventional Submarine Size Trends

Kym Bergmann, the Editor of Australia's Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter (APDR), has written an excellent article, dated 16 December 2020, entitled:

"Conventional submarine trends in the Asia-Pacific: size definitely matters"

Its probably the best article I've read on conventional submarines all year.  

From its introduction: "An almost universal trend in the design of diesel-electric submarines is that they are getting larger.  This can be observed in regional navies as diverse as those of Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia.  What they all have in common is a requirement for their submarines to be increasingly capable – particularly in overall combat power, range and endurance.  They are also all professionally led, high technology forces with close ties to the USN." 

The article looks in greater depth at South Korean, Australian and Japanese sub size increases, while it notes Indonesian subs have remained small.  

It then continues with a key section "Factors driving this inevitable size increase..."

The article then goes on to examine the critical outcome of sub size growth, which is rapidly rising price.

See this Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter (APDR) article on submarines here.
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As well as submarines APDR continually publishes key articles on regional-to-broader international weapons systems, support and policy subjects, on "Land, Air & Space, Sea, Joint Projects, Cyber Security, IT, Simulation & Training and Government Policy & News".

APDR also has a very useful search engine, going back many years.

Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter is my main daily reading - with its short and long articles. 

Pete