Aukus had a less than immaculate conception. It was conceived in secrecy and born in haste, a tribute to political opportunism and a travesty of disciplined planning. The enthusiasm of theatrical announcements notwithstanding, it was in trouble from the beginning. The US Navy had serious doubts about both the ability of US shipbuilders to deliver submarines in any workable timeframe and the ability of the Royal Australian Navy to integrate and operate them. That was not a question of trust but of capacity – on both sides.
And, of course, experienced and well-informed Australian defence planners rang the warning bells from the beginning.
Now reality has caught up with us. The Pentagon has announced a review of the Aukus agreement to ensure that it meets President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy. The US submarine construction program is in trouble. Australia’s US$500m contribution to its submarine building industry will have no impact on the production rate, which needs to double if our ambitions are to be met. There’s no money back offer here.
But injury is sure to follow insult. The US review will be led by Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense. He is a clever Trump acolyte who signalled his scepticism well before Trump won the presidency. The passage of Trump’s “big beautiful bill” through the Congress, and the looming prospect of a massive debt blowout, can only have reinforced his doubts.
These doubts are well grounded. In several reports dealing with Aukus, the Congressional Research Service identified critical bottlenecks in the US production line for both the Virginia-class and the new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. And it is just as concerned about Australia’s ability to absorb the new technologies. It should be.
The defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s can-rattling at the Shangri-La conference in Singapore further diminished Aukus’s chances. Hegseth told the defence minister, Richard Marles, that Australia needed to up its defence spending target to 3.5% of GDP. Of course, there was no suggestion on how the money should be spent. Spending for its own sake fits the bill, which is more or less what Aukus has been about from the beginning.
Quite properly, the prime minister’s response was textbook: Australia will decide on its defence spending for itself. And perhaps now is the time for Albanese to institute a parliamentary inquiry into Aukus.
So, where does all of this leave the pact? Far from being in the deep oceans, it is further up the proverbial creek. The best that Australia might have hoped for was the homeporting of a few US Virginia-class submarines on rotation at Fremantle in Western Australia, stretching out over the next several decades. Even that does not really meet US needs for forward positioning of attack submarines in the northern Pacific – the entire reason, it would seem, for the former prime minister Scott Morrison’s precipitate and unadvised decision in the first place.
From the beginning, the Labor team has been reluctant to call the ambulance or the undertaker. The Albanese government has no other submarine plan – Aukus is it. Or at least, Aukus was it. The Elbridge review is a circuit breaker. It forces the Albanese government to address Australia’s submarine needs and capabilities in a considered and disciplined way for the first time in more than 20 years.
Thinking about the last things encourages some of us to think about resurrection and the next life. Just as Australia could marshal the engineering and technological skills to plan and build the Collins-class submarines, so it can do it again. The Americans have effectively made the decision for us. It’s time for plan A – where “A” is Australia, not Aukus. We have to get on with it – now.
