The Shangri-La Dialogue, held in Singapore at the weekend, is a little bit like Christmas for security boys.

There’s lots of big talk – of great power competition, reshaping the strategic landscape, and the deteriorating strategic environment (all said with serious, knowing faces). And there are lots of weapons announcements.

For Australia, the weapons announcement came in the form of a new joint project under the second pillar of the Aukus agreement: developing “cutting-edge payloads and enabling systems” for underwater drones.

That new “signature project” was announced at a joint press conference with the Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, the US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, and the UK defence secretary, John Healey.

The same announcement also revealed that Australia would buy three secondhand Virginia-class submarines from the US under Aukus, instead of a mix of old and new, in a move to “simplify supply chain management, operational and maintenance requirements, and maximise cost efficiencies”.

Marles described the decision not to buy any new Virginia-class boats as placing “a premium on simplicity” but had to concede that there would........

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