Australia could get the world’s most expensive anti-submarine warship, but the numbers are as complex as shipbuilding

On Tuesday, a sudden downpour at Sydney’s Garden Island Naval base forced Defence Minister Richard Marles to hurriedly relocate inside HMAS Canberra for the long-awaited public release of Labor’s Surface Combatant Review (SCR), commissioned 10 months ago. The irony of launching a policy that would reshape the navy with a greater number of smaller but more lethal warships, while sheltering in a 27,000-tonne Landing Helicopter Dock, was not lost on others who had hastily gathered on board to hear the details. In an era where large Russian warships have been sunk by Ukraine’s innovative military, and Houthi rebels, using crudely…