Washington: Above anything else, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will want to use his White House visit to extract a commitment from US President Donald Trump to honour the AUKUS defence pact and the plan for Australia to buy at least three nuclear-powered submarines from the US before making our own.
It seems that’s where things are heading. Despite the Pentagon undertaking a thorough review of the deal, all the messaging suggests the US will broadly stick with it, perhaps with some alterations to put an “America First” stamp on a policy inked under former US president Joe Biden.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leaves for Washington to meet with Donald Trump.Credit: AAP
And why wouldn’t they? AUKUS is a great deal for the US and its lagging submarine industrial base, which is producing far fewer boats than required. To that end, Australia has so far handed over two cheques, each for about $800 million, to support American shipbuilding. It will “shortly” produce the next scheduled payment of $US1 billion ($1.54 billion), and is due to pay a further $US1 billion at a later date.
At the end of the day, the agreement does not bind the US to give Australia the submarines it helped build. In the 2030s, the president of the day can veto the sale if it’s determined that the US needs them for its own security interests.
This is openly acknowledged in Washington by those who understand the agreement. Bryan Clark, senior fellow and director of the Centre for Defence Concepts and Technology at the right-wing Hudson Institute think tank, who is close to the Trump administration, told this masthead in August: “There are plenty of off-ramps for the US down the road.”
The US is currently producing about 1.2 Virginia-class submarines a year – a rate that needs to climb to 2.33 to fulfil AUKUS obligations to Australia. Recent budgets have given Congress appropriate extra funds for the Navy to start turning the ship around, so to speak, but it is a slow process with a big gap to close.
Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Minnesota docked at HMAS Stirling in Rockingham, WA, in February.Credit: Getty Images
Then there is the sleeper problem for AUKUS – the Columbia-class submarine. This is the US’s next-generation ballistic missile submarine to replace the Ohio class, with 12 due to be built. Since 2013, the Navy has said the Columbia program is its top priority. Both vessels are built in the same two shipyards.
In a report to Congress late last month, the Congressional Research Service’s long-serving shipbuilding expert, Ronald O’Rourke, again brought this to the attention of members. He wrote: “In a situation of industrial base constraints, the Columbia-class program will have first call on resources to minimise the chances of schedule delays in building Columbia-class boats.”
In light of those constraints, O’Rourke said, “some observers are concerned that giving priority to the Columbia-class program could add to challenges currently faced by the Navy and industry in increasing the Virginia-class attack submarine construction rate to a desired rate of at least 2.0 Virginia-class boats per year”.
Furthermore, “the increase in the planned Columbia-class procurement to a rate of one boat per year starting in FY2026 could reinforce these concerns”.
In other words, at a time when the Navy needs to ramp up production of the boats Australia needs, it is ramping up procurement of the other boats, which will take priority. That is, after all, “America First”.
Like previous administrations, Trump wants to improve and increase American shipbuilding; this is an issue of bipartisan agreement. But it butts up against a harsh reality – the workforce simply isn’t there.
US Navy Secretary John Phelan supports AUKUS but has been forthright about the “mess” of the Navy’s boat-building programs. In July, he told the Reindustrialize 2.0 summit that the US would need to hire 250,000 new skilled workers over the next decade to meet the demand for new construction and repair in public shipyards.
“Our programs are performing at unacceptable levels, with infrastructure either in decay or insufficient to meet capacity and demand needs,” Phelan said. “Nearly every ship class is behind in construction … with large cost overruns.”
Well-meaning supporters of AUKUS tend to gloss over this underperformance or assert the gap will be closed despite the lack of evidence. Even delivery of the first Columbia-class submarine – the Navy’s top priority – has been delayed by 17 months until March 2029.
It will be easy for Trump and the Pentagon to commit to AUKUS, and easy for Albanese to chalk that up as a win. On current plans, the first boat is not due to be sold to Australia until 2032. Almost certainly, neither Trump nor Albanese will be in office by then.
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