Your correspondent, Hugh Piper, holds all kinds of post-World War ll submarines to be no more than “military toys’ designed to use resources for “mateship and nothing else’ (Letters, January 25).
I’m not sure I understand Mr Piper on this; however, I know that without American nuclear-powered submarines patrolling the Pacific and Indian Oceans, we could not defend our shores from attack by unfriendly countries in those regions – especially as those countries either use or have access to nuclear-powered submarines standing off hundreds of miles off-shore to destroy, with great precision, targets on land, at sea and in the air.
This is reality, Mr Piper: it is nothing to do with resources, toys or mateship. It is to do with the strongest possible defence of our country.
Dr Paul Fidlon
