The Royal Australian Navy admiral in charge of readying military facilities for a key port call by nuclear-powered submarines, including the future SSN AUKUS boat, warned this week that Australia’s generational effort to buy and deploy nuclear powered submarines is “at risk” if the government does not take quick, decisive action on infrastructure.
The military and government needed to “get going” on crucial work to ready Western Australia for AUKUS submarines or risk falling behind, Rear Adm. Wendy Malcolm said at the Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference in Perth August 1, 2024.
The single largest risk comes from the failure of the government to fund or plan for a multi-billion dollar dry dock on the Western Austalian coast.
“It’s a dedicated team that is totally focused on this and getting the options right for us to go to government for decisions. So that’s critical,” Malcolm said. “We don’t know all the answers, but we know there are very important decisions that we must decide on right now. Or we really are going to be at risk of not meeting the optimal pathway milestones.
“So we’ve got to get going on approvals and planning and access and how we’re going to do this. We can’t solve everything just yet. But we already know there are certain decisions we need right now,” she said.
Speaking later in the day, Adm. Jonathan Mead the head of the Australian Submarine Agency, was less specific but also raised the rare acknowledgement that “setbacks” are likely as the SSN AUKUS program spins up.
“We have a long road ahead. We do need strategic patience — developing these high-end apex capabilities necessary for effective deterrence is not easy, is not quick, nor is it cheap,” Mead said. “There will be setbacks, but we need to have the confidence to see this through a generational commitment.”
Malcolm and Mead’s comments came one day after Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles acknowledged the need for a new dry dock on the western coast, but dodged when pressed on when such an endeavor might be completed.
“Good question. I’m not going to answer your question, but I count on the fact I’m a politician,” Marles said in reply to a question from Australia’s Seven News, to much laughter from the audience Wednesday. “But … the important point to make is this. Western Australia must have the ability to maintain and sustain all the major platforms that we operate. That is a clear proposition coming out of the Defense Strategic Review. In order to achieve that, a dry dock is going to be essential.”
Marles noted that this vast island continent has one dry dock, the Captain Cook Graving Dock in Sydney at the RAN’s Garden Island facility, some 2,000 miles from here.
“We need that infrastructure on the west coast and so it’s going to be really important to put that in place,” Marles said. “We have some time in order to do it, but not a lot of time.”
He said the government has been focused on consolidating the town of Henderson, where Australia will build and maintain its general purpose frigates, its medium and heavy landing craft, the Hunter class frigate and, eventually, the Virginia- and AUKUS class nuclear-powered submarines.
The Captain Cook dry dock, originally constructed during the Second World War, will be out of commission in the next few years as it is rebuilt and repaired. To give some idea of the scale of building what sounds like a simple structure, the dock took four years to build during the war. A dry dock for a nuclear sub would take roughly a decade from conception to finished product, one defense industry expert said here. The expert asked not to be identified due to the political sensitivity of the issue.
Marles said the government’s “number one goal” in Henderson has been “to achieve a physical consolidation” of the military naval facilities at Henderson before a dry dock is built, he said.
In the meantime, the Virginia-class boats, to be bought beginning in 2032, “will have been serviced,” and thus aren’t likely to “have an immediate need” for the sort of depot level maintenance that a dry dock offers. That gives the government more time to build the dock and to lease a floating dock or use other facilities, such as those in Guam.
The defense minister, pressed as to when work might begin in Henderson, refused to “put a timer on it.” Asked if there was money in the budget for the dry dock, he pointed to the Morrison government. There was a plan to build a smaller dry dock here in Western Australia, one suited to smaller and less complex conventionally-powered submarines. No money was budgeted, he said. Then Marles waffled when asked if there was money in the 10-year budget plan known as the IIP.
Industry sources here were critical of the government’s approach, noting that it takes the UK and the US a decade to plan for, pay for and build a dry dock capable of handling the unique requirements of a nuclear-powered submarine.
