With Australia's release of its defense white paper last week, the race to build the country's next generation of submarines enters the home stretch — and some experts say the Japanese bid appears to hold an insurmountable lead.
"The DWP (Defense White Paper) strongly stresses the importance of further strengthening U.S.-Japanese defense relations and is also quite vocal about China's challenge to the rules-based order in maritime Asia," Ben Schreer, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, said.
"In my view, it's highly likely that the Turnbull government will choose the Japanese design for strategic and technological reasons, and the DWP has added weight to this," he said, referring to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.