The AUKUS nuclear submarines are not going to be delivered on time and may never arrive. Delaying the decision for a better alternative risks Australia’s future submarine capability.
Back in 2021, the then prime minister, Scott Morrison announced the AUKUS agreement with the then American president and British prime minister. The details were announced nearly two years later under the Albanese government. Australia would acquire five new nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) built to a new British design (SSN AUKUS). As these submarines would not arrive before the 2040s, the US agreed to sell us three to five of their Virginia-class nuclear submarines, starting in the early 2030s.
In return for this unprecedented transfer of its closely held submarine technology, the US Navy would gain access to Australia’s west coast submarine base, HMAS Stirling, from which it would deploy a new tri-nation submarine squadron, Submarine Rotational Force West. It is difficult to overstate the strategic value to the US of this access to the Indian Ocean, through which over 70 per cent of China’s oil imports pass.
The projected total cost of this naval package was expected to be around $A368 billion. But despite the huge cost, there was no proper process underpinning this decision. There was no analysis of the massive distortion to the defence budget implied by the acquisition of an advanced new military capability previously only contemplated by great powers. It is also not clear whether the government understood the aggressive change in Australia’s force posture towards China implied by the decision. There seemed to be little consideration of sovereignty implications. Instead, Morrison was characteristically secretive, and the decision making was confined to a small group working directly to him.
With the next election only months away, Anthony Albanese very likely felt wedged by Morrison’s announcement and, with little time for analysis, he stated the Opposition would support AUKUS. Less understandable is that after winning the subsequent election in May 2022, Albanese ignored the critics who were urging him to set up a review of this very expensive, far reaching and controversial decision.
When it became clear the British could not supply a mature submarine design, the Albanese government also rejected an attractive offer by France to provide their new, proven, in-service Suffren class SSN. Suffren would have been significantly cheaper, available sooner than the AUKUS platforms, with a crew size not much larger than Collins, and much better suited to Australia’s operational requirements.
Why we need an alternative to AUKUS
Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, a former commander of Australia’s submarine force, has demonstrated that the AUKUS submarine agreement has major defects:
- The plan, which mixes two versions of the Virginia class SSN with a third new UK design, is unworkable logistically and presents enormous difficulties in training and building up the crews’ experience in three different submarine designs.
- The submarines are far too big for Australia’s needs. Hence the cost, and the number of crew members needed is also far too big. Virginias need crews as large as 145, well over twice the size of an Australian Collins-class diesel submarine.
- Finally, a fleet of only eight SSNs will not give Australia enough available submarines to provide an effective deterrent.
In addition, there is another very important difficulty with the AUKUS deal, namely a major surrender of sovereignty to the United States. In 2023, the then US deputy secretary of State, Kurt Campbell, said “when submarines are provided from the United States to Australia, it’s not like they’re lost. They will just be deployed by the closest possible allied force”. Similarly, Elbridge Colby, just before he became deputy secretary for defence policy in the Trump administration, said that the delivery of US Virginia class submarines to Australia from US resources would be highly imprudent without “an iron-clad guarantee that they can be deployed at the will of the United States”.
The US is short of submarines and, with the ageing Los Angeles class gradually retiring, the problem is growing worse. By 2032, when the first delivery of submarines to Australia falls due, Briggs has calculated the US Navy will have 41 platforms as against a ‘safe minimum’ of 48 and the Navy’s target of 66. The sale of US Virginias to Australia was posited on an increase in the rate of production from 1.2 platforms per year to 2.3 so as not to reduce US submarine availability. That was three years ago. The dial has since remained stuck on 1.1 with very little prospect of any significant increase within the necessary timeframe.
The next US President needs to advise Australia by 2031 whether the Virginia submarines can be delivered. With production of Virginia class submarines well below the target, the legislative requirement is that the sale of the submarines to Australia will not degrade the US underwater warfare capability. The only circumstance in which the president might accede to the sale would be if the Australian SSNs were permanently committed to operate as part of the US fleet in peace or war. This should be wholly unacceptable to any sovereign state.
As for SSN AUKUS, the British submarine enterprise has fallen into disarray as a result of decades of underfunding. There is a considerable doubt SSN AUKUS will be delivered in an acceptable timeframe or even can be delivered at all. Most recently, the Chairman of a UK Parliamentary Committee said, “Without urgent infrastructure improvements…the [British] government risks finding itself unable to meet its obligations under AUKUS”.
With a net public debt of 94 per cent of GDP and this year’s estimated budget deficit at 4.3 per cent of GDP, the UK’s fiscal challenges are significantly greater than Australia’s. Its defence priority is the delivery from Britain’s single submarine shipyard of a new class of ballistic missile submarines, already years behind schedule. The British government’s ability and commitment, therefore, to provide the necessary substantial capital required for the AUKUS project in an acceptable timeframe must be in serious doubt.
The alternative to the AUKUS submarines
While some commentators argue that Australia should acquire conventional submarines instead of the AUKUS platforms, SSNs possess very considerable advantages over diesel-electric boats in terms of speed, endurance and stealth. With constant improvements in detection technologies and the duration of Australian submarines’ operations being over three times as long as those of other navies with conventionally powered boats, the level of survivability of diesel boats in areas of high threat begins to become a serious consideration.
As Admiral Briggs has suggested, the French Suffren would provide a very good alternative to the AUKUS SSNs. Suffren would be better suited to Australia’s operational requirements and, unlike the Virginias, would provide a sovereign capability. For a similar budget, we would be able to afford 12 of this class of submarines, which Briggs regards as the minimum number required to provide critical mass in an independent force. With a continent to defend and the third largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, this is also probably the minimum requirement from a strategic perspective.
The Government can and must act now
The critical problem is to persuade the Albanese Government that it can and should act now to switch from the Virginia and SSN AUKUS submarines for the reasons given above. No doubt ministers are always cautious about major alliance issues. But there is now more than sufficient doubt around the delivery of the submarines to necessitate an urgent shift to a Plan B.
Of course, Albanese will be tempted to delay a decision until the US advises us the Virginias will not be delivered. That way he will not risk upsetting them. Such a delay would be irresponsible. In addition, the government does not appear to understand that the AUKUS agreement offers greater benefits to the US than Australia. Provided it can retain the base at Stirling, the US Navy would like nothing better than to maintain America’s perfect record of never providing an SSN platform – its defence crown jewels – to any other country.
The reality is that America is heavily dependent on Australia, both for its intelligence facility at Pine Gap, and its bases near Perth and Darwin. The main problem for the US would be the effect of Australia’s withdrawal on Britain’s ongoing submarine capability, which is important to the US for combined operations against Russia in the north Atlantic. But there is no reason for the US to put the alliance in jeopardy because of a problem that is not Australia’s to resolve.
Conclusion: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”
Only this week, Australia’s foreign minister categorically rejected calls to look at alternatives to the AUKUS submarines. Her colleagues in the Lodge and on Russell Hill have repeatedly done the same.
Ministers should be reminded of Lord Keynes’s aphorism that “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” The facts have changed substantially, both in terms of likely delivery and Australia’s strategic environment.
The prospects of an increase in production of Virginia submarines that underpinned the US agreement to supply them to Australia are now very low. At the same time, since Vice Admiral Mead told the Senate a month after the AUKUS announcement that Australia would acquire a “mature, in-production” submarine, probably British, the UK submarine enterprise has plunged into ever deeper crisis with a final design for SSN AUKUS still nowhere in sight. There is now a clear likelihood that the delivery of AUKUS submarines to Australia will be seriously delayed and a material possibility that they will not be delivered at all.
Strategically, the AUKUS submarine deal was the ultimate expression of Scott Morrison’s policy of integrating Australia’s armed forces with those of the United States. This may have been consistent with our traditional reliance on the US to defend Australia, but there is no case at all to sacrifice our sovereignty now. Under President Trump, the US has become an unstable and unreliable ally that is more likely to drag us into a conflict in the Indo-Pacific than defend Australia in the event of one. We cannot plan our military strategy and future force structure on the basis of always fighting in a coalition alongside the United States, which is what the AUKUS submarines are primarily designed to do.
The need to move to Plan a B is urgent, and we can afford to wait no longer. By 2031, which is the deadline for the US to cancel the supply of Virginia submarines to Australia, it will be too late to take alternative action. With the Collins class submarines almost certainly unable to be sent into harm’s way by the early 2030s, the current situation with AUKUS has created an existential threat to the RAN’s future submarine capability. We cannot afford that risk to the defence of Australia in the 2030s and beyond.
Michael Keating is a former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance and Employment, and Industrial Relations. He is presently a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.