[mrmistoffelees]

Originally Posted by Chris

There is going to be a massive exercise in whataboutery in the courts over this. These sorts of contracts do usually have escape clauses in them which the Australians will no doubt attempt to use. The French for their part will argue that unreasonable demands, or failure on the Australian side to meet their own obligations are to blame for any apparent shortcomings on the French side. It would appear these arguments are already being marshalled and briefed to friendly journalists.

I suspect the Australians probably were being a pain in the neck. Military procurement is famously fraught with continuing changes to specification and poor project management. I think it also very likely the French were not being at all accommodating, reasoning that Canberra was so deeply invested in the project it ultimately had nowhere else to go and would have to take what it was given. If so, they miscalculated badly.

Pretty much any major contract will be staged in that way, workday, SAP & Oracle have all been hit by similar things in the past couple of years

Workday ~shudders~

---------- Post added at 22:30 ---------- Previous post was at 22:29 ----------

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Well, of course my attitude is coloured by my total dislike of the perfidious Macron, who issued the diplomatic orders to his ministers.

But I really do like the idea of the three English speaking countries, with whom we do not have a fractious relationship, getting together to improve our defence capability.

I've made no comparison in this thread to the UK/EU situation. You're way off there.

You’ve made no direct comparison I’ll grant you but the inclination was there