The leaders of the US, Australia and the UK will announce plans for a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines Monday as they deepen the Aukus defense partnership aimed at countering China in the Pacific. Upgrading Australia’s aging sub fleet is a lynchpin of that effort.
(Bloomberg) — The leaders of the US, Australia and the UK will announce plans for a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines Monday as they deepen the Aukus defense partnership aimed at countering China in the Pacific. Upgrading Australia’s aging sub fleet is a lynchpin of that effort.
Yet Australia may not get its first submarine for at least 10 years, and even then the deal is fraught with potential delays and uncertainty. It calls for Australia to get a new type of submarine jointly built with the UK that doesn’t yet exist. In the meantime, the US would offer its Virginia-class submarine, whose production has been plagued by billions of dollars of cost overruns.
There’s also the matter of Australian defense spending. A single Virginia-class sub costs about $3.5 billion, which is more than 10% of Australia’s annual $30 billion defense budget. Australian officials say the pricey upgrade from its current diesel-powered subs is needed in order to drive the US-led agreement in the years to come.
An Ambitious Announcement
President Joe Biden will meet in San Diego on Monday with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to unveil plans to develop the new submarine. It will be a milestone in the young partnership, which was established in 2021 to counter growing Chinese naval might in the Asia-Pacific region.
Under Aukus, the three nations share classified military capabilities, including technology for nuclear-powered subs, as well as cooperation in a range of areas including hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks called Aukus a “generational opportunity to strengthen our combined security. She also said that the pact will help to strengthen the US defense industry and bolster America’s security partnerships.
Officials hope the Aukus deal’s rocky start won’t be an omen for the future. As part of the 2021 deal, Australia canceled a submarine contract with France, a move that the French foreign minister said was like being “stabbed in the back.”
But already there are questions. Why, for example, develop an entirely new submarine for Australia while also selling it US submarines?
“I suspect that the most likely ultimate outcome would be Australia going ahead and increasing its purchase of Virginia-class submarines and eventually forgoing the new design due to cost concerns,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official. “This could become a Frankenstein project.
The announcement is meant to show the deepening defense bond between the US, the UK and Australia for decades to come, and to put China on notice that it will face significant hard-power resistance should it press ahead with aggressive actions in the South China Sea and potentially an eventual invasion of Taiwan.
‘Too Late’
In a February speech, Albanese called the security arrangement the “biggest leap in our defense capability in our history.” He described the Australia-UK-US accord as the “future,” saying Australia has long known that “partnerships and alliances are key to our security.”
But there’s a timeline gap. Australia might have to wait a decade to get its own fleet of Virginias. China has already been reclaiming land on disputed atolls across the South China Sea for several years and could invade Taiwan if it so chose well before then.
“The threat is in the second half of this decade, and the Virginia is going to come too late for that,” said Malcolm Davis, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “The nuclear subs would turn up too late to deal with the challenges we’re going to face this decade.”
US Production Woes
A key concern is whether the US will be able to provide Virginia-class submarines in the time allotted.
Work on existing orders of Virginia-class subs have fallen further behind schedule and costs have continued to grow. Part of the problem is that the companies making the submarine, General Dynamics Corp. and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., have poached construction crews to make the next-generation submarine, the Columbia class.
In a report in January, the Government Accountability Office said building the Columbia “comes at the expense of the Navy’s other shipbuilding priorities,” including the Virginia. The last year has “brought to light gaps in planning and weaknesses in the Navy’s ability to simultaneously execute the Columbia and Virginia-class programs.”
(Updates with deputy defense secretary comment in 6th paragraph.)
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