AUKUS is sold as a sovereign Australian defence capability. But its strategic logic and dependence on US systems raise a harder question: whose homeland is it really designed to defend?
It is not to defend Australia. It is primarily to defend the US homeland.
It is my understanding that the AUKUS heads of agreement were agreed at a meeting between Andrew Shearer, the head of our Office of National Intelligence, and Kurt Campbell in Washington in April 2021. Campbell was National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific. The stitch-up was before Australia’s Cabinet became involved. The basic deal was that the US would agree to Australia acquiring SSN submarines in return for a substantial enhancement of the US Force Posture Initiative (USFPI), an existing agreement between the US and Australia to allow US forces to rotate through ADF bases in Australia.
Campbell later boasted that the great benefit of AUKUS was “getting Australia off the fence” and “locking [it] in for 40 years”. It proved very easy to push open the Australian door.
Mike Gilligan on P&I on 12 June this year raised for the first time, at least as far as I can recall, that AUKUS is “for high priority underwater operations defending the United States, not for Australian defence”.
He further elaborated on 7 October that “the purpose of our mind-boggling expenditure to acquire nuclear submarines is not to defend the continent of Australia but the American homeland. By acquiring hunter-killer nuclear submarines, Australia will be equipped to join critical US naval operations in Asian and Pacific waters to counter China’s growing submarines launched strategic nuclear missile capability. Our new submarines will track and destroy, if commanded, Chinese submarines meant to deter US nuclear first strike on the China homeland.”
China’s SSBN submarines, which are armed with retaliatory missiles, patrol in the South China Sea to protect China from a US attack. With the ability to strike back at the American homeland, China sees its submarines in the South China Sea as the means to deter any American attack.
China has recently been testing its ballistic missiles that are launched from SSBNs. In a recent test, one of these missiles was launched from China’s submarines, travelling roughly 7300 kilometres from the South China Sea into the South Pacific. Not surprisingly, this drew the usual anti-China knee-jerk reaction from Australia for limited notice of the test, even though the US regularly test-fires unarmed ICBMs from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. These missiles routinely fly thousands of miles across the Pacific to strike targets in the Marshall Islands. Recent US tests were completed in March and May 2026.
Importantly, the test confirmed that China, if attacked, has a second-strike capability to attack the homeland of the US with missiles launched from its submarines in the South China Sea.
Locating and tracking these Chinese submarines is a primary intelligence and operational mission for the US Navy. AUKUS is designed to assist the US in this, to deny China a second-strike capability to protect its own mainland.
As Mike Gilligan pointed out, “Australia’s nuclear submarine project is a gargantuan Australian subsidy for America’s own defence. This has been hidden from Australians, deliberately”.
Secrecy is the hallmark of AUKUS. At no stage in the negotiations was the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade involved. It was deliberately excluded. Not only was DFAT excluded, but the Department of Defence was also largely excluded. A former deputy secretary of Defence, Hugh White, said that AUKUS is “barking mad, this won’t work”.
Neither the Morrison nor Albanese governments have been truthful or frank with us about AUKUS. The Australian Parliament has not held a comprehensive, open debate or full vote on joining the AUKUS security pact itself, though federal MPs have discussed aspects of it during debates on related legislative bills and committee motions. There is a multi-party Parliamentary Friends of AUKUS fan group in the Australian Parliament, but no real parliamentary debate about AUKUS.
The major parties have colluded to establish a new committee to monitor and scrutinise AUKUS. This committee shifts broader defence review responsibilities away from the existing Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. The new Parliamentary Defence Committee deliberately excludes the Greens and Independents, who are presumably not patriotic or trustworthy. The minister for defence, Richard Marles, told the Nationals’ Michael McCormack “that committee members must firstly support the ADF and increased resourcing for defence… And secondly, they must support AUKUS”. So shut up, the government knows best!!
But US commentators are not so reticent about telling the truth. For example, Jamie Kwong, Fellow, Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: “A submarine operated by a state without nuclear weapons may still be perceived by a nuclear-armed adversary as a threat to its ballistic missile submarines, and therefore to its second-strike capability. This strategic implication has been under-examined in both the Australian and South Korean debates.”
The Australian government also misleads us that Australia will retain legal command over our AUKUS fleet. Nuclear submarines are technologically complex machines. We do not have the domestic-industrial base to maintain them alone. If we were to assert Australian control, contrary to US wishes, Washington could simply withhold critical spare parts and specialised software. Without US logistical support, the AUKUS fleet would be inoperable. Furthermore, to track Chinese submarines, the RAN would have to rely on highly classified US satellite networks, undersea sensor grids, and data relay systems. If Australia chose to act against US strategic interests, the US would immediately cut off all that support. Our AUKUS submarines would become dead assets.
As part of the betrayal, the Australian government asks us to believe that the US naval base at Perth to support AUKUS is not an American base at all, that US submarines are merely “rotating” through Perth. In a crisis, legal niceties will count for nothing. If the United States decides to go to war, it will not ask our permission on the use of military bases in Australia.
Richard Marles is digging us deeper and deeper into this quagmire. He glories in photographs taken with himself and the weirdo secretary of war, Hegseth, in the Pentagon. These are dark days for the assertion of our national interest. And very dark days if you are a friend or ally of the United States.
And all the legacy media, without exception, have failed to seriously examine AUKUS.
Given the timid behaviour of the Albanese Government on almost everything, I cannot see a way out of the AUKUS imbroglio, even though the longer AUKUS continues the more damage will result. And on a very wide front. AUKUS is just plain “barking mad”.
The Garrett Review could provide an opportunity for the government to commission its own follow-up review. But that will need courage!
A useful first step would be to shift the foolish minister for defence, Richard Marles, with his all-in love affair with the US.
Perhaps the best hope is that the Americans decide after all that they cannot supply the AUKUS submarines. In these crazy days, that may be our only way out.
John Menadue is the Founder of Pearls and Irritations and a board member. He was formerly the Editor-in-Chief. John was the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.