Paris: The French group designing and building Australia's new $50 billion fleet of submarines says it will ensure that whatever caused an Argentinian submarine to vanish in the South Atlantic will not happen.
The Argentinian navy's German-built ARA San Juan reported an electrical malfunction shortly before disappearing last week with 44 crew on board.
"Whenever there's an accident we want to understand what happened and make sure this accident cannot happen on our boats," said Jean-Michel Billig, from the French Naval Group, executive director of the Australian Future Submarine program.
If it was necessary to adapt the design of Australia's submarines, due to enter service in the early 2030s, then they would, Billig told a visiting group of Australian journalists at Naval Group headquarters in Paris on Wednesday.
He said he did not know what had happened to the San Juan, but crew safety was one of the "top level requirements" for Australia's new subs, which are still on the drawing board having their basic dimensions reviewed to make sure they are the right size for the Navy's needs.
"It is too early to speculate what happened [to the San Juan]," Billig said. "But if there are any lessons to be learned we will make sure this will not happen again."
The submarines will come with a system of unmanned submersibles to rescue crews from stranded submarines.
Billig said communication from submarines was difficult, as water dampens radio signals.
But he hinted the Australian navy has top secret technologies that enable a submarine to send out an effective SOS.
The search for the San Juan went into a critical phase on Wednesday, an Argentinian navy spokesman told Reuters, as the crew may be running out of oxygen.
Around 30 planes and boats are searching for the submarine, which had enough oxygen to stay submerged for seven days.
The US, Britain, Chile and Brazil have joined the hunt, focusing on a spot 500 kms off the coast where it last transmitted its location.
There have been several false alarms, but no confirmed signal from the sub.
Billig also denied that a recently revealed delay to the French Barracuda submarine program would affect Australia's Shortfin Barracudas.
He said the estimated one-year delay to the French program was due to testing and regulatory clearance for their nuclear engines.
Australia's Shortfin Barracudas will have diesel engines, so the same issues would not apply.
Billig also hosed down rumours that Australia might change to nuclear power in future Shortfins, saying Australia's operational needs were better met by diesel.
It would be "as if you would have a Formula One [car] to drive into Paris", he said.
And he confirmed that One Nation leader Paulina Hanson was mistaken when she asked Defence Force officers at a Senate hearing in October if pump-jet propelled submarines were only able to stay underwater for 20 minutes.
Pump-jet propulsion was not linked to a submarine's time underwater, Billig said.
"I don't know where this '20 minutes' is coming from," he said.
But he declined to invite Ms Hanson for an educational tour of France's Barracuda submarines, saying they were only "inviting those of our partners we 200 per cent, 300 per cent trust", such as Australian ministers and the ambassador, who will visit next week.
He was not saying he didn't trust Ms Hanson, he added, but visits were on a "need to know basis".
The author travelled to Paris as a guest of the French government.
