This is part of a series on AUKUS. Click here to read the full series.
“Nuclear submarines are the apex predator of the oceans.”
So said Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Malcolm Davis to The Australian Financial Review back in March, responding to news that the federal government would help fund and develop new naval production capability for nuclear submarine models, known as SSNs, as part of the AUKUS deal.
Apex predator. The two words capture it all. Think power. Invincibility. Triumph.
Admirals speak in awe of the submarine’s ability to move fast, travel vast distances undetected by the enemy and stay “on station”, as the jargon has it, for months at a time.
The swagger of it is infectious, driven as it is by the defence professionals whose stock in trade is to sell, sell, sell in the name of keeping us safe.
Yet behind the marketing lies a vastly different reality.
As Davis put it in that same interview: “What we will have to do, in order to make this a reality, is contribute to a third production line in the US, because the existing two production lines for the Virginia class cannot keep up with the US Navy’s requirements for SSNs, let alone Australia’s requirements.”
As Crikey reveals in a new investigative series, America’s nuclear-powered submarine industry — the fundamental driver of the AUKUS agreement — is in a state of shambles.
Some key facts tell the story:
- close to 40% of the US Virginia class submarine fleet is out of service and undergoing repairs
- US shipyards face a workforce crisis, with tens of thousands of jobs needing to be filled
- key components of US Virginia class submarines have worn out well before their promised 33-year life expectancy
- there is a spare parts shortage, such that US shipyards have been forced to cannibalise other ships.
At the same time the US Congress is yet to vote on legislation to enable key elements of AUKUS to proceed.
The serious concern for Australia is that it will be relying on used Virginia class submarines from the US Navy to bridge its so-called capability gap. There’s also the question of why — if nuclear-powered submarines are as indispensable as defence says — the US has allowed its fleet to dwindle to its lowest level in decades.
The president reacts to a crisis
The dire state of the US nuclear fleet is not new. The years-long decline has been chronicled in a series of reports produced by the US Congressional Research Service, a valuable source of independent information used by members of the US Congress.
By 2021 the position had reached something of a crisis for US national security. In December that year President Joe Biden issued three presidential determinations. Without this exceptional action, according to the determinations, “United States industry could not be reasonably expected” to provide the capability to produce nuclear-powered submarines “in a timely manner” to maintain its maritime superiority.
The December 2021 determination was aimed specifically at overcoming problems with domestic supply chains as well as chronic workforce shortages that had long plagued the naval shipyards and inhibited submarine construction and repairs.
The president’s directives came three months after Scott Morrison sprung the AUKUS agreement on an unsuspecting Australia. Australian workers have since begun arriving at US shipyards, though no-one from the Australian government has ever made it clear when Australia agreed to supply workers — or to send $3 billion to the US government for the building of US shipbuilding facilities.
A friend in need is a friend indeed
Did the US need Australia? Did Australia need the US? Or is AUKUS a meeting of the needy?
The marketing of the Scott Morrison story has it that Australia’s then-prime minister somehow managed to convince the forever reluctant US administration to allow Australia to enter the elite club of global powers with nuclear-powered submarines and thereby come to share the US’ ultimate nuclear jewels. Under this narrative, Morrison had shown extraordinary foresight and leadership as he expertly managed a super-secret international operation, without a word eking out.
It has always appeared fishy.
Now, as details emerge of how dire the US position had become, Morrison stands to look less the strategic maestro and more the provider of much-needed workers and money — as well as Australian facilities — to a once powerful friend.
The AUKUS-led economy — for some
Meanwhile the AUKUS dollars have begun to flow, as the United States and Australia see a joint interest in cementing the security alliance ahead of any possible Trump interference come the 2024 US election.
Shamefully for Australia’s big media operators, the sleuths who have revealed the AUKUS money trail are (largely) unpaid researchers with access to social media.
The researcher who uses the social media identity “Jommy Tee” has revealed that the Australian Defence Department has provided $172,000 to the US-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS) for strategic policy advice. That award was made in March this year. In May this year the CNAS appointed Scott Morrison to an unpaid advisory role.
This is on top of the $8.5 million contract awarded to Ernst & Young by the defence department for “future nuclear regulatory office design”. (Jommy Tee revealed this on August 10. It was then reported by the SMH/The Age 11 days later.)
Former senator Rex Patrick has also revealed the bonanza for consulting firms, publishing details of a dozen contracts worth millions of dollars as the new Australian submarine agency cranks up. One of the contracts was awarded to a former deputy secretary of defence.
That’s all before Australia prepares to transfer the billions of dollars it has pledged to the US as part of the price of entry.
After all, apex predators don’t come cheap.
As has been widely reported, Albanese, Wong and Marles decided to support the AUKUS idea essentially to avoid being wedged on national security by the devious Morrison. That Albanese signed on in only 24 hours after consulting whom, certainly not his Caucus or party rank and file members, gave that game away.
I line up behind Gareth Evans, Bob Carr and Sam Rogeveen on the issue. I find it extraordinary that three years ago the idea of Australia having nuclear submarines was not even considered, and now all the strategic and defence players agree they are essential. Talk about herd thinking by self-interested parties.
Mark Beeson’s piece in Menadue the other day, about the UWA talk-fest about how wonderful it will be for Australia to have the nuclear subs and all the benefits that will accrue, is worth reading. https://johnmenadue.com/inside-the-aukus-bubble/
Labor’s efforts to sell the idea on the back of some sort of domestic manufacturing renaissance is tawdry and pathetic. Basing the national manufacturing rebirth on making stuff whose only purpose is to kill people – what exactly is the economic benefit of that? Who’s going to want to buy them? To whom would the US let us sell them? How does that make Australia a better, healthier or wealthier country other than adding a few percentage points to the GDP and cutting a few thousand jobs from the unemployment figures. In that context, Mark Beeson’s piece in Menadue is worth reading – https://johnmenadue.com/inside-the-aukus-bubble/
The nuclear subs are not for patrolling Australia’s littoral waters – Rex Patrick has made that point very clearly, as has Brian Toohey. They are for patrolling the East Asian waters and monitoring Chinese submarine activity, on behalf of the US. We don’t need deep water submarines for our coastline.
All Crikey readers will be aware of the arguments about Australia becoming a US base, surrendering sovereignty under the Forces Posture Agreement, and making ourselves a target if and when the US decides it has a pretext for attacking Chinese assets.
We are told by Marles (who refuses to say who sponsored him for a game of golf at a prestigious course in the US, leading to suspicions that it was the CIA or somesuch in the US national security population) that we need to participate in the East Asian arms race because China is building its armed forces. The unspoken dog-whistling implication is that China will invade Australia – as if we wouldn’t see 100,000 Chinese troops sailing down the South China Sea, past Singapore, and through Indonesia, or via some circuitous route through the Solomon Islands.
China has no reason to invade and occupy Australia, or even attack us, unless we give them reason to do so, such as hosting US forces. Dutton, as Defence MInister, saying we would be at war with China in three years was so implausible as to be laughable, yet the media reported it as though it had some validity or basis.
With regard to Obama’s visit to Australia in 2012, the schoolgirl swooning at him by the foreign affairs neophyte Gillard, and his announcement of the US “Pivot to Asia”, other than Michelle Grattan (https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/gillard-goes-all-the-way-with-obamas-big-regional-push-20111117-1nl15.html) I don’t recall any of the various commentators at the time explaining that it was about containing China. The sales pitch was all about securing peace and stability in East Asia and the Pacific. Does anyone know what exactly was the state of the Chinese military buildup at that time and in the period leading to it? What came first – the Pivot to Asia (Contain China Strategy) or the Chinese military buildup, has the rate of growth of the Chinese military increased in response to the US Pivot?
Something else bothers me. Everything China does is described in the mainstream media by commentators and so-called analysts like Hartcher, Sheridan and Andrew Greene (all of whom seem to hot-desk at Russell Hill) as aggressive or offensive, and everything the US does is described as defensive or a deterrent.
Does anybody look at the situation from a Chinese perspective, and consider the possibility that they see all the US activity as aggressive and offensive, while everything they do is a defensive action, a deterrent? Xi spoke of a “wall of steel”, but walls are for defence, not aggression. Was the militarisation of the South China Sea islands an act of aggression or was it in response to secret US Navy activities in the South China Sea and off the Chinese coast? Was the militarisation of the islands in fact a defensive action, to protect Chinese trade routes, to prevent a US blockade in the event of hostile acts?
Remember how the US told us it “had our back” when China imposed trade restrictions on Australia in response to Marise Payne’s ill-considered call for Virus Inspectors into Wuhan? Recall that she, and Dutton, had just returned from AUSMIN talks with anti-China hawk Pompeo, the evangelical Christian. I wondered if Pompeo (and Ivanka, who she also met) had revved her up and she was essentially doing their bidding. (It was the only thing of note that she did as Foreign Minister.)
Marles speaks of the necessity to protect Australia’s trade routes. We’ve all seen the clip from Utopia in which Rob Sitch concludes his national security are saying that we need to protect our trade routes from attack by our major trading partner. Interestingly, while the US said it had our backs when the trade restrictions were imposed, in fact it increased its exports of coal and barley to fill the shortfall in China created by the bans imposed on us. In short, the US does not care in the least about Australia’s trade routes, since they are the same as China’s. The US, quite rightly, pursues its own interests above all else and for Albanese, Wong and Marles (and Dutton) to pretend our interests are aligned is either wilful blindness or dangerously ignorant.
Finally, do the military and intell people really think China will invade Taiwan? Do they really think China would risk its economic and business interests, and waste blood and treasure on a messy invasion and occupation, and the sanctions it would bring down on itself? There have been claims that the Ukraine war is a proxy war being fought by the Ukraine people on behalf of the US, whose promises by GHW Bush to Gorbachev about the non-expansion of NATO were broken by Clinton? While there can be no excuse for what Putin has done, it could nonetheless be seen as the Kremlin signalling to the White House to stay out of Russia’s sphere of influence, or away from its defensive barriers – whichever term you wish to use. It would not be difficult to imagine Xi, seeing how the US goaded Putin, deciding that if the US wants to push, then he can push back.
And if push came to shove, those countries hosting US bases, ie Japan, ROK, Guam, Philippines and Australia would most probably be the first to be targeted by China. China would not, however, target the US mainland because it saw what happened the last time that happened, on 7 December 1941.
Malcolm Fraser said the reason we need an alliance with the US is because we have an alliance with the US. We have more than an alliance now – we are in the process of becoming de facto US territory for military purposes, and can expect to be treated as such if the US gets the war it seems to be angling for. None of this would be in Australia’s national interest. We would be just another proxy target for the enemies of the US.
The US took over all our agri trade with China – great allies.
Agree, suspiciously sudden need for nuclear subs, while DoD, politicians, media etc. are neither able to nor interested in explaining what our long term defence and security interests and strategy are; classic short term opportunism and naivety.
Exceptional summery DF.
Well done.
This is a fine summary of the issues, which elegantly complements Hardaker’s.
Taken together they remind me of Christoper Clark’s 2012 book “The Sleepwalkers” which argued (controversially I assume) that the Great War was caused by collective national failures rather than single-country malevolence. As he asserts “…the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.” I was aware as I read it that “public opinion” had replaced “God” as the unseen mover behind all things on earth. Just not in a good way, as the cliché has it.
Separately, I do wonder about 7 December 1941. Germany invaded Russia (“Soviet Union”) 129 years (almost to the day) after France attempted the same thing. Despots routinely think that stupid ideas were actually great ideas executed badly by inferior predecessors. Given the east’s, and the west’s, demonstrable inability to run their countries in a way that continuously satisfies “public opinion”, a good military crisis will have much to recommend it to imagination-challenged misanthropes like Dutton.
Excellent analysis, 20 upvotes sir!
I’d say we make more money from trade with China than we do with the USA. So we’d be stupid to risk that trade by becoming a defacto State of the USA.
Australia does not need nuclear boats to defend Australia and its coastal waters, as you say these nuclear boats are there to help the US in force projection away from Australia.
The US, UK, the former USSR, now RFR, China and France have nuclear powered boats for use with their so called nuclear deterrent. They also have other nuclear boats as hunter killers for dealing with such missile carrying boats.
Back in 2005, USS Ronald Reagan newly USN constructed $6.2 billion dollar aircraft carrier, sank after being hit by multiple torpedoes.
This did not occur in actual combat, but was a war game simulation, as the USN had concerns about its ability to deal with non nuclear boats in defending its fleet with its then current anti submarine assets.
This was a carrier task force including numerous antisubmarine escorts against a single non nuclear boat, HSMS Gotland, a small Swedish AIP diesel boat displacing 1,600 tons. cheap boat costing around $100 million—less than the cost of one F-35 Joint Strife Fighter.
Yet despite making multiple attacks runs on USS Ronald Reagan HSMS Gotland was never detected. HSMS Gotland was able to evade the Reagan’s elaborate antisubmarine defenses involving multiple ships/hunter killer boats as well as aircraft and helicopters employing a multitude of sensors
Gotland-class boats, introduced in 1996, were the first with Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) systems using a Stirling engine.
The Stirling engine charges the submarine’s seventy-five-kilowatt battery running on liquid oxygen. A conventional diesel engine is used for operation on the surface or with a snorkel. The Gotland-class can remain undersea for up to two weeks sustaining an average speed of 8-10 KPH or speed up to 40KPH using batteries.
Stirling-powered AIP Gotland class run more quietly than nuclear-powered boats, which need their noise making coolant pumps always running in the reactor system. Shutting the pumps down can be done but then the heat has to be vented externally making them detectable by other means.
This outcome was replicated time and time again over two years of war games, with opposing destroyers and nuclear attack submarines succumbing to the stealthy Swedish boat.
Naval analyst Norman Polmar said the Gotland “ran rings” around the American carrier task force.
Another source claimed that the US antisubmarine specialists were “demoralised” by the experience.
The likely target country or resources such nuclear-powered boats that they would be used to attack is China. China is surrounded by shallow waters filled with sophisticated sensor systems which will expose large boats however they are powered.
Non nuclear boats are far cheaper and quicker to build with the capability of being much quieter and harder to find. Large nuclear submarines will be hard to operate in the shallow Timor and Arafura Seas which like the seas around China are not deep enough to provide anything in the way of thermoclines which could be used to evade detection
The main advantage of nuclear power is that a submarine can be faster and larger than fuel-cell submarines. Endurance is still limited by food supplies and is therefore somewhat greater than an an AIP/ fuel-cell boat. The larger and faster a boat is the easier it is to detect – all other technology being equal. SSN’s emit both heat and noise making them more detectable in shallow waters
I suspect the real endgame of AUKUS, is to have Australia used as a dumping ground for all that nuclear waste lying around in the US and UK.
The reactors are supposedly sealed for the life of the vessels, so Australia shouldn’t need a nuclear industry to service them. In the event they are actually received. So yes, probably.
The promised subs can be dropped as soon as the high-level nuclear waste dumps are signed off and ready to accept their first shipments.
It’s too expensive anyway. No capacity to build them. USA wouldn’t want anyone else running them – especially a country with a history of Russian moles in its security organisations, etc.
Here’s a token payment for taking the radioactive shit that no one else would want.
What great pals!
And the preplanned, under the LNP, AUKUS PR stunt gives the LNP and media a negative PR gift with a ‘radioactive half life’ of a generation+ to beat ALP over the head with continually.
One would like to be optimistic and think that there is much wriggle room if a clear case can be presented against AUKUS vs. media and influencer noise happy to ‘wedge’ in ALP.
If the Virginia Class subs are the apex predator of the oceans why did a top Swedish Gotland diesel/electric sub sink the US nuclear aircraft Carrier “Ronald Reagan” in war games and slink away undetected, much to the embarrassment of the Yanks. That was despite the Reagan being surrounded by the normal protecting fleet?
Possibly because the Swedish sub was very quiet running on quiet electric motors and being smaller. Nuclear subs are enormous lumps of detectable metal and need many noisy cooling water pumps to stop reactor meltdown. That cooling water leaves a massive plume behind , indicating the route and possible destination to the enemy.
The days of the massive capital class ship ended ( or should have ended) when Churchill lost five capital ships in his adventure at Gallipoli. Drones (many, cheap, expendable & deadly) are the future. In any case , we are unlikely to ever seen the Virginia class subs under Australian command.
Yep, I am still wondering why this country went for subs that are noisy, cost and arm and two legs, may never ever arrive, can’t be used in our shallow waters tgat would be necessary if they were meant as defense when the swedish subs are so much better and so much cheaper and can be here in our shallow waters within a year or so, of course we could get a couple of used ones immediatelly for, I believe the money we are sending to the US to help them build the subs for their own needs.
Why is Austrzlia so bloody backward?
If you truly want to compete with the Tory Brits in becoming the 51st State of Division, then you must get on with the total privatisation of health and direct the ‘savings’ into financing an aggressive defence capability.
The reward of being patted on the head will be guaranteed and delivered with alacrity.
That is really something to look forward to.
That was always Johnny’s plan. I could never understand why it seemed to be accepted by the media.
the thing is, apex predators can be taken down by small things like parasites – or in the case of a nuclear sub in 2043, some angry Fijian kid and the submersible drone he built in his garage
Waterworld 2.
Looking at what is going on in the Black Sea, one can expect drones to supplant submarines. Anyway, if AUKUS ever happens, it would be a bit like wrapping barbed wire round a few posts and pretending is is a barbed wire fence. The ramifications of climate disruption seem likely to kill AUKUS off before any submarines get into Australian hands.