By Euan Graham*
Nervous AUKUS-watchers in Australia probably felt a mix of emotions when the defence technologies initiative was raised in public during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to Washington this month. President Donald Trump’s ‘full steam ahead’ endorsement has allayed fears that the review by the US Department of Defense into AUKUS would trigger a US abandonment or significant truncation of the partnership. (From: The Strategist. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute.)
Australian observers also picked up on Navy Secretary John Phelan’s remark that ‘ambiguities’ in AUKUS still needed to be addressed. An impromptu comment shouldn’t be over-interpreted, and Albanese appeared to take it in his stride. ‘Don’t look for something that’s not there,’ warned the prime minister. Yet the very mention of ambiguities was itself ambiguous, guaranteed to feed Australia’s ever-present angst around AUKUS. And while the US review has not halted progress on the submarine project, AUKUS Pillar One, no new tripartite major initiatives under Pillar Two can move forward while it remains ongoing.
Filling the void of information about the substance of the US review with blind speculation would, indeed, be a fool’s errand. But with a few pointers, it is possible to make some educated guesses about the potential issues it has flagged.
There has already been some press speculation that the planned rotational US–British submarine presence in Western Australia from 2027 may become more permanent as a consequence of the US review. Submarine Rotational Force–West (SRF-West) commits the US and British navies to forward deploy up to five attack submarines (four US and one British) from HMAS Stirling and to receive repair and maintenance support from the Henderson Defence Precinct facility opposite the submarine base. Laid out as part of the Optimal Pathway of AUKUS Pillar One, this has always been one of the most strategic and immediately deliverable elements within AUKUS, though the public debate has tended to focus more on the industrial collaboration.
The two-fold attraction of SRF-West is that it firstly delivers an upfront, gap-filling deterrent submarine presence to Australia several years before the Royal Australian Navy will be ready to operate nuclear boats of its own. Secondly, the US Navy and Royal Navy will benefit by regularising operational access to and from Australia, translating into more time on patrol in a key theatre for deterring China. The advantages of basing allied submarines near Perth have a proven history.
Turning SRF-West into a more open-ended arrangement would make sense, notwithstanding political sensitivities in Australia around sovereignty and basing. Any Australian government would be likely to want a stabilising US presence—as the most irreducible advantage of AUKUS—to continue into the long term.
It is also possible that the US review has identified concerns around workforce and skills availability in Australia and to a lesser extent in Britain. This should come as no surprise, as it was identified as a bottleneck soon after AUKUS’s inception in 2021. It’s a particular concern for Australia, with its smaller population and hollowed-out submarine industry.
There has been talk about creating an AUKUS ‘passport’—mutual recognition of skills and security clearances by the three countries. This would apply across both pillars to increase specialist labour mobility among the AUKUS partners. But, disappointingly, nothing has been formalised on this front.
Both the Australian and British governments have failed to follow through on AUKUS’s original framing as a cross-government, whole-of-nation endeavour; instead, they’ve ring-fenced it as a defence-owned, defence-resourced responsibility. That was never a recipe for a sustainable approach, given the entirely predictable strain that AUKUS would place on the shallow pool of science and technology graduates and skilled tradespeople. Again, that labour issue is especially acute for Australia, a nuclear novice taking on the onerous and unfamiliar responsibilities of nuclear stewardship. Resetting AUKUS to be an expressly whole-of-nation undertaking would help to unlock wider sources of funding to grow the national skills base. That challenge is bigger than any defence bureaucracy alone can solve. Industry, as well as government, must be part of the remedy.
Another potential unresolved issue for the US could be the transfer of technology from the US Virginia-class submarine program to Britain and Australia. This does not mean that the planned sale and transfer of Virginia-class submarines to Australia, under the Optimal Pathway, has fundamentally hit a snag—though this concern is widespread, as is the fear that the US would push to retain operational control over these boats after they are transferred into Australian service.
The US Navy’s planned successor to the Virginia-class, SSN-X, has been delayed, owing to the priority requirement to direct resources to the Columbia-class SSBN program. So the Virginia class, now in its seventh version (‘block’), will need to remain under construction for substantially longer than planned. This has implications not only for Australia’s planned Virginia purchase but also for the design of SSN-AUKUS, the joint British-Australian project to deliver the next nuclear attack submarine class for both countries, for delivery from 2037. Importantly, SSN-AUKUS will incorporate design elements that will be common to all three AUKUS partners.
The US review will need to work through these details. Time is of the essence. However, the prize of developing a tripartite undersea warfare capability that is greater than the sum of its parts, is still worth it.
