The submarine announcements made in Singapore show that Australia and the US are preparing to fight together should deterrence fail in the Indo-Pacific.
This is the strategic logic of AUKUS. It is also a tale of two technologies – old submarines and new unmanned vessels. We are putting more money and priority on old subs, but the new technology is potentially the war winner.
In public comments before meeting his US and British counterparts, Defence Minister Richard Marles claimed “the biggest leap in Australia’s military capability in more than a century” will be realised, if and when in the 2040s nuclear-powered submarines will be built in Adelaide.
The Defence Minister did not mention a big concession Australia has made to the US, which is that we will not, in the interim, receive newly built Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s.
One had to read deep into the AUKUS joint statement to discover that, in an effort to simplify “supply chain management, operational and maintenance requirements, and maximising cost efficiencies”, Australia will take three in-service Virginia-class subs “in lieu of a mixture of new and in-service VCS variants”.
Virginia-class submarines are designed around life-of-ship nuclear reactor cores intended to operate for roughly 33 years without refuelling.
The current plan is that Australia will receive the first Virginia submarine in 2032, the second in 2035 and third in 2038. They are meant to be so-called block IV boats, the first of which is the USS Vermont, commissioned in 2020 with an expected life to 2053. If the Vermont were to transition to the Royal Australian Navy in 2032, we could plan for at best 21 years of remaining service life.
The block IV Virginias are designed to have three major overhauls in their service lives, during which time they’ll be out of the water for an extended period. Will our boats arrive needing an extended refit or will the US have done the scheduled major overhaul before delivery? The answer to that question involves tens of billions of dollars in cost and time.
The decision to receive second-hand Virginia boats may well be the right strategy for Australia. We can at least be assured that the design is good and the boats are fit for purpose.
An even more significant announcement from the AUKUS ministers in Singapore was that of the “first AUKUS Pillar II Signature Project: developing cutting-edge payloads” for uncrewed undersea vehicles.
The joint statement said these payloads would “protect critical national seabed infrastructure; deploy cutting-edge surveillance, reconnaissance and strike capabilities; conduct logistics operations, and; bolster superiority in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, mine countermeasures, electronic warfare, and contested littoral manoeuvre”.
The most interesting force structure development in the past half decade has been the design and delivery of the greyhound bus-sized Ghost Shark UUV.
This has been a project delivered at lightning speed involving innovation driven by the private sector and produced on a greenfield factory site in Sydney, with the first Ghost Sharks already in service. The project represents everything defence procurement is not: fast, innovative, creative and relatively low-cost.
Looking at Ghost Shark, one wonders if Australia will ever again build crewed submarines. By the time Australia hopes to build SSN-AUKUS boats in the 2040s, autonomous underwater systems will be doing much of the work we now assign to crewed vessels.
If the payloads for Ghost Shark arrive as advertised in 2027, that is an important and valuable development and one that will worry the hell out of the Chinese. Australians are too distracted by Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts. In terms of defence engagement in Asia there is an impressive story to tell. The US continues to deepen and strengthen defence ties with South Korea, Japan, The Philippines and indeed Australia. A lot of focused effort is leading to important change.
Speaking at the Shangri La dialogue, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke in positive terms about America’s Asian allies “stepping up” to do more on defence.
Hegseth’s surprisingly benign comment on Australia was: “Together, we are expanding the rotational presence of US forces and collaborating to ensure our defence-industrial base build and sustain weapons required for a high-end fight. We appreciate Australia’s investment in real combat power and the commitment to integrate more deeply with the US joint force.”
Hegseth’s speech put a powerful case for closer alliances in the guise of “America First” language. Note the phrases “high-end fight” and “integrate more deeply”. Marles understands this, but he and Anthony Albanese are not coming clean with the Australian public about what this really means.
Since the announcement of the US Marine Corps deployments to northern Australia in 2011, the alliance co-operation story has been about building a shared defence-industrial base and establishing the foundations for closer American and Australian military integration.
Australia’s US alliance is not just an add-on to our defence planning, it is absolutely central to how we think about defending the country. But this is coming at a time when Australian trust of the US alliance is at its lowest, seemingly because of a dislike of President Trump. We need to set aside the emotional reactions to Trump and focus instead on a clear-eyed assessment of our security needs.
Australia has no exit strategy from its own region and no credible defence plan beyond the US alliance. It is increasingly critical for the government to explain this reality to the Australian people.
