AUKUS AT A CROSSROADS?

I know this subject doesn’t appeal to everyone, but it matters to Australians, it certainly matters to the UK and its should matter to Americans.

In the UK the subject is never likely to come up in conversation outside of a related industry field or the Navy, and some government agencies. In Australia its a massive project – one of huge national importance and involves a great deal of money.

What Australia could end up with, is a nuclear powered SSN fleet 8 strong – 66% of the size of the planned UK force. The UK is the 6th largest economy in the world and Australia 13th with less than half the UK’s population.

In America the commitments made under AUKUS to provide Australia with at least 3 Virginia Class SSN’s by around 2035 – and for which Australia has just paid another $500m towards improving shipyards and hiring workers in the US, now seem less compelling.

Eldridge Colby, the High Priest of America First in the Defence Department, sees it differently. He sees it as a distraction for America, and undermining the US ability to ever reach its own submarine building targets. He went as far as asking Australia what its role would be with the United States in the event of a war with China over Taiwan. Australia refused to commit to anything, which in his worldview is near sacrilege.

And to be fair the US has been abysmal at achieving its submarine construction and maintenance goals for over a decade. Targeted at 2 SSN’s per year by Congress, if it manages 1.2 it’s a good year. In order to meet its goals it needs to reach 2.0, and by 2029. In order to reach its goals and build one submarine every three years for the Australians, it has to get to 2.33 per year – in effect adding an entire submarine per year over and above what it cannot even do now. At that rate Australia might get one in 2033, 2036 & 2039, Just before the first UK built SSN -X for the Royal Navy and then the first for Australia is delivered.

And the US has to do this while still failing to meet its goals for a Priority One National Defence Requirement – keeping the SSBN Columbia Class on time and target (it isn’t), at the same time.

Unsurprisingly there’s a growing concern – even argument – that the whole US end of the project is doomed, because America cannot keep its end of the bargain. This was reinforced even more in the past week when the USS Ohio SSGN-726 arrived in Brisbane, Australia. I have a feeling she was the one that launched the attack on Iran and the fact USS Frank Cable AS-40 arrived with her suggests it was to reload her Tomahawks at the same time as the visit.

The visit was timed as part of the 80th Anniversary of Victory in The Pacific Day. It aroused a good deal of interest in Australia, and a particular piece on Sky News Australia, was when one of their journalists who had spoken to Admiral Caudle, the next Chief of Naval Operations for the USN. The journalist had asked questions about the viability of AUKUS, to which the Admiral replied in what could best be described as non-committal PR speak. The long and the short of the interview led the journalist to believe quite sincerely, that the US element of the AUKUS submarine deal was never going to happen.

That of course is not the official line yet. The US officially is still committed to the concept but the Colby investigation has not concluded and the reality is that it will be recommending the US backs out because it simply isn’t realistic.

The whole AUKUS program came about because the Biden Administration thought it would be a way to stimulate the submarine building sector through profit motivation selling the submarines, while unifying three key English speaking powers to a common defence and policy on the containment of Chinese ambitions.

The problem Australia faces is that it could be as long as ten years that they have no submarines at all and an exceptional weakness in their ability to defend the only one-nation island continent. The option for the Japanese submarines is that they don’t have the deep ocean capability and long reach of a nuclear submarine. The French submarines would have had the same problem and be outdated by the time they were delivered.

AUKUS was originally a UK-Australia discussion – not involving the US. Its still works as a project for both the UK and Australia – the UK will build the submarines with or without Australia, but the cost will be higher (and the projected 12 more likely 9 or 10). The UK and Australia together do not need the US shipyards for this program. It’s Australia that needs the Virginia class to fill a strategic gap in its defences.

Bearing in mind that the original idea was for the US to supply five, three seems to be the most that will ever see the light of day, and only then in a perfect world. And that in essence would give Australia just one operational nuclear submarine at any one time, if they were lucky, before SSN-X is delivered. It’s generally regarded that you need four to keep one always out at sea, with a second that could be surged at short notice.

Australia has just paid another serious deposit to the Americans, money that is supposed to be going to the shipyards to help improve their productivity, to build what Australia needs. Yet we are already hearing that staff retention is still a problem and component delays resulted in 456 shipyard workers being laid off. Its made more complex by the fact many staff from the SSN yard have been sent to the SSBN yard to prevent the Columbia Class project slipping backwards any further – as its now at the end of its margin of error. There is no margin for these to be delayed as it took so long to get the program underway, the Ohio Class SSBN’s are the end of their viable lives even before the first Columbia is deployed.

If the Americans turn around and say it’s not going to be viable, what then does Australia do? Nobody has an answer but the suggestion the US would sell them B-21 Raider’s is about as likely as Trump publishing the Epstein Files unredacted.

The Analyst

militaryanalyst@bsky.social