Botched International Submarine Deal Leaves France Feeling Betrayed - NPR

Navy's nuclear-powered submarines.

and Australia signed into a partnership last week that will provide Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines.

and Australia signed into a partnership last week that will provide Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines.

As a result, Australia said it needs a type of submarine France cannot provide.

in a trilateral security partnership, AUKUS, which lists the development of nuclear submarines for Australia as priority No.

Over the next 18 months, Australia's Department of Defense will establish a task force to guide the coalition's goal to become a "reliable steward" of nuclear technology.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said nuclear-powered marines are no just a want, but a need: They're faster, stronger and stealthier, exactly what Australia needs to protect both its interests and its people.

And though he understands the disappointment the French government is feeling, Morrison said in a press conference Sunday that he had raised submarine capability concerns with France in recent months.

"Ultimately, this was a decision about whether the submarines that were being built, at great cost to the Australian taxpayer, were going to be able to do a job that we needed it to do when they went into service," Morrison said.

In 1970, it chose to abandon any pursuits for nuclear weapons by signing the United Nation's Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The development of the new submarines will be Australia's first time utilizing nuclear technology.