Australia and the AUKUS Submarine Agreement

Ever since the announcement of the AUKUS partnership and the Australian nuclear submarine program for which it would allow there has been speculation about just how Australia would actually be supplied with such submarines--or at least, what at least the initial plan for such supply would be. In the wake of a joint statement by U.S. President Joseph Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego the period of speculation is over.

Simply going by the official transcript of the statement by the three figures--if also distilling these speakers' all too characteristically rambling, repetitive and public relations-laden rhetoric into hard fact--one gets the following:

Australia will buy three Virginia-class nuclear-powered (but conventionally-armed) boats starting in the early 2030s, with an option on two more. These acquisitions will then be followed by a British-designed next generation of likewise nuclear-powered but conventionally-armed boats incorporating British, Australian and U.S. technology that both Britain and Australia will use, and which will "share components and parts with the U.S. Navy," to the point of communicating "with the same equipment"--the "AUKUS SSN." Australia will build its copies of those AUKUS boats domestically, and sustain them domestically. They will also be commanded by the Australian Navy as a "sovereign capability"--apart from Australia's reliance on imported nuclear fuel, as it will not produce its own (that capacity, of course, necessarily entailing the capacity to produce fissile material, which would be a breach of its non-proliferation commitments). The first of those boats will be delivered in 2042, with new deliveries every three years on, and an ultimate goal of eight boats.

In the meantime Australian personnel have been undergoing "nuclear power training" in the U.S., while "[b]eginning this year, Australian personnel will embed with U.S. and UK crews on boats and at bases in our schools and our shipyards," and U.S., and British, nuclear submarines will make more port visits to Australia, on the way to the establishment of "a rotational presence of U.S. and UK nuclear-powered subs in Australia to help develop the work force Australia is going to need to build and maintain its fleet" later in the decade.

Rounding out the vision of tri-national cooperation there is also the expectation that, Britain and Australia's sovereign but identically equipped and closely collaborating fleets ("[o]ur submarine crews will train together, patrol together . . . maintain their boats together"), and the similarly linked U.S. fleet, will go a long way to realizing that ideal not only of partnership, but efficiency-achieving homogeneity even as each retains control of its assets.

One may add to this that these figures, particularly Australian PM Albanese, also made much of the submarine program from an "industrial policy" standpoint, claiming that "[t]he scale, complexity, and economic significance of this investment is akin to the creation of the Australian automotive industry in the post-World War Two period."

Of course, what we are hearing reported in the press now is not limited to what was presented in the official statement. There are, of course, questions about just how "sovereign" the Australian boats really will be. (As things stand, Australia's nuclear industry is virtually nonexistent--the capacity to build and service such boats as yet nonexistent, and its actual establishment yet to be seen.) There is also the matter of the immensity of the resources invested. Were the cost of the program over the longer haul is concerned we are hearing figures in the $250 billion (U.S. dollars) range for the next three decades. This sum is about equal to 15 percent of Australian GDP today (circa $1.6 trillion), and equal to some $4 trillion in the case of an economy the size of that of the U.S.--exceeding any comparable expenditure the U.S. has made--and even if spread out over three decades, with the tendency of price tags like these to rise set aside, and generous allowance for the possibility of economic growth aided by the "stimulus" of the program, there is no getting away from the sheer size of the bill relative to the country's resources, with that this implies. (Even those who are supportive of such high military expenditure may, in fact, wonder if this is really the best way of getting "value for the money.") And of course there is the geopolitical rationale for the program. The sole reference in the entire transcript to China was mention of the U.S. having "safeguarded stability in the Indo-Pacific for decades to the enormous benefits of nations throughout the region, from ASEAN to Pacific Islanders to the People’s Republic of China." Yet there would be no discussion of such a project at all were it not for the concern among the country's policymakers, and the governments of its allies, about the possibility of conflict with China --and not all are sanguine about a militarized course. (Indeed, many in Australia, and elsewhere, are convinced that confrontation is the wrong path--however much news outlets like the Sydney Morning Herald, with its "Red Alert" series, insist otherwise.)

The result is that if the joint statement answered some questions a great many others remain to be decided--the more in as a very great deal can happen over the very long time frame assumed in this program, which, even if going entirely as planned and scheduled, will not deliver the first Australian-built AUKUS sub to the country's navy for two decades.

After all, just how much resemblance does the world of 2023 bear to the expectations of two decades prior?