A defence industry body has raised concerns that Australia could have to foot the bill for a new Japanese shipyard to build submarines which will last only half as long as their predecessors.
The Defence Teaming Centre, the defence industry association of South Australia, also rejected claims that hulls of Australia's future submarines could be built in Japan and fitted out in Australia.
Most fitout is performed during construction and once the hull was complete, there was little capacity for fitout.
Teaming Centre chief executive Chris Burns said industry believed the sovereignty, security and economic benefits of building submarines in Australia far outweighed whatever benefits were perceived in building offshore.
"If there is an emotive argument in this debate, it is the incredulous disbelief within industry that the government would consider sending tens of billions of Australian taxpayers' dollars to develop a new shipyard and workforce in Japan when we have very capable shipyards with highly skilled workers here in Australia," he said in a statement.
Australia is looking to acquire up to a dozen new subs to replace the six Collins boats which start retiring from the middle of next decade.
This will be Australia's biggest ever defence procurement, costing $20-40 billion. The government is considering foreign designs, with the Japanese Soryu-class tipped as favourite.
There's now a vigorous debate about the process of selecting the new vessels and whether they'll be built in Australia.
Mr Burns said the problem was that little was known about Japanese submarines.
One concern is that Japan produces one sub a year from two yards which were fully committed to vessels for the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force.
"Will Australia have to pay for the development of a new shipyard and workforce in Japan to build its submarines," Mr Burns said in a statement.
He said industry had advised that Japan only built submarines to last about 15 years, compared with 25-30 years for Australian navy vessels.
"This means the Japanese do not factor major upgrades or overhauls into their design philosophy, which greatly limits the through life deeper level sustainment work available to be done by Australian industry," he said.
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