Australia needs nuclear submarines – but not AUKUS

Australia needs a larger, self-reliant nuclear-powered submarine force, but AUKUS is too costly, too dependent on the US and too uncertain to deliver it.

AUKUS was always a very bad deal, secretly negotiated without expert input. Instead of waiting for its inevitable failure to deliver, we should pursue a better alternative source of nuclear submarines now.

There have been numerous articles on P&I setting out what is wrong with the AUKUS agreement, including a two-part article by us (P&I, 18 and 19 August).

In brief there is:

• The loss of sovereignty to America, which will not sell us their Virginia-class SSNs (nuclear-powered attack submarines) unless we agree to totally integrate them with the American fleet, and there is also the lack of Australian control over the US use of the bases that we have made available in Australia.
• The AUKUS SSNs cost too much and so we cannot afford to buy a sufficient number to properly defend Australia.
• The mix of different types of submarines and their very large crews will create further management problems.
• All the AUKUS SSNs that Australia proposes to buy are powered by highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, and that will create major management challenges during their life and perhaps insuperable dismantling and disposal problems for Australia after the submarines have been decommissioned.

In addition, capacity problems in both the US and UK shipyards mean that the AUKUS submarines are unlikely to ever be delivered, or certainly only years late.

The first reaction of some readers may be to say that non-delivery is a good thing. It would save a lot of money, and some may want to believe that we don’t really need SSNs.

But realistically Australia does need nuclear submarines for its defence. And unfortunately, while what is wrong with AUKUS has received lots of attention, the possible alternatives have not. However, there is a good and viable alternative to AUKUS.

Our starting point is that while we strongly support Paul Keating’s famous conclusion that Australia must find its security in Asia and not from it, this is best achieved by a combination of active diplomacy and a strong, self-reliant military capability.

The focus of our diplomacy must be on fostering good relations with our Asian neighbours, including China. But our security is also enhanced where our military capability to retaliate is sufficient to deter any aggression.

However, the AUKUS deal, where we integrate our forces with the US, effectively means that we are seeking Australia’s security from Asia.

In addition, we have adopted an inappropriate force structure. Whereas, for a nation with the world’s third largest exclusive economic zone and whose home is a massive continent ‘girt by sea’, Australia needs a maritime-based defence strategy.

Indeed, in 2022, the principal conclusion of the Defence Strategic Review that the Albanese government commissioned shortly after it was elected was that Australia needed a maritime strategy. But we haven’t got a maritime strategy because Defence has never believed in self-reliance and doesn’t want to disrupt their preference for the existing ‘balanced force’.

In particular, a maritime defence strategy would have required the army to be cut back significantly to provide more resources for the navy and the RAAF, but the army survived unscathed. It even saved its precious main battle tanks, an expensive strategically useless capability for a middle power in the Indo-Pacific with a very limited expeditionary capacity. These tanks only make any sense should we want to join the US in another invasion of a Middle Eastern country, and even then Russia’s experience in Ukraine suggests an unexpected vulnerability to attacks by cheap drones and precision missiles.

Now under AUKUS we are basing our strategy, as always, on forward defence fighting in coalition with our great power protector. However, the aim of the AUKUS strategy of integrated deterrence is to deter an attack on Taiwan, not Australia.

Under this model, we do not acquire a sufficient quantity of any particular asset to provide a self-reliant deterrent. Instead, we acquire a smaller number of different assets to contribute to an American-led coalition force.

Hence the massive investment required for Australia to acquire eight SSNs that are interchangeable with US platforms will only provide, at best, two submarines available for deployment at any time. This is a useful contribution to a larger US force but one that will not provide a credible deterrent under a strategy of self-reliance.

As Trump has made abundantly clear, however, Australia cannot rely on the US for our defence. Instead, Australia should therefore aim to be self-reliant in our defence based on a strategy of deterrence by denial. While we can never expect to defeat a major power like China, if we have a sufficient number of nuclear submarines their offensive capability would be the best way to deter any aggression.

Rear Admiral Briggs, a former commander of Australia’s submarine fleet, has argued persuasively that the minimum number of submarines required to sustain a viable submarine force is 12. This is sufficient to have four available for deployment at any time and also provides sufficient at-sea time for uniformed personnel to maintain a sustainable submarine force.

On the other hand, clearly affordability is a problem, and that has led some commentators to propose that we should stick with conventional diesel-electric submarines but buy a larger number of them.

The problem with this option is, however, that Australian submarines are most likely to be deployed north of the Indonesian archipelago, which involves long transit journeys.

The SSNs are capable of doing this transit at three times the speed of a conventional submarine with far less chance of being detected en route. Consequently, the SSNs are much more productive, spending a lot more time on station. This also gives them substantial mobility and a much greater ability than conventional submarines to pursue and maintain a sustained attack on a surface fleet that has approached Australia from an unexpected direction. In addition, SSNs are so much less likely to be detected, as they do not need to ‘snort’ regularly to recharge their batteries, while, if they are detected, their superior sustainable speed gives them a better chance of escaping.

In a new, genuinely self-reliant strategy, Australia’s future submarine capability should therefore be based on SSNs. But we also need a larger number of smaller and cheaper platforms, which would be more manageable than the AUKUS deal could ever deliver.

Fortunately, there is strong potential for Australia to acquire 12 significantly cheaper SSNs from France or South Korea that use low-enriched uranium, are better suited to Australia’s requirements and whose delivery would be more reliable.

Finally, based on advice from an expert, and work by the Parliamentary Budget Office, we have estimated that the through-life cost of the three submarine options, at constant 2025 prices and with no contingency allowance, are as follows:

• Eight AUKUS SSNs $260 billion
• 24 Attack-class diesel-electric submarines $240 billion
• 12 Suffren-class SSNs $180 billion

In short, Australia could acquire 12 smaller but highly capable SSNs, which can be readily crewed and use low-enriched uranium fuel, for 70 per cent of the cost of eight large AUKUS submarines using highly enriched uranium fuel.

A second point to be made regarding the submarines’ cost is that we would be able to afford 12 smaller SSNs more easily, and with less chance of distorting the ADF’s order of battle, if we made a significant and long overdue change to Australia’s force structure.

In sum, it is difficult to understand why, in the face of all the risks involved with AUKUS, the government does not immediately begin a serious evaluation of a Plan B.