Australia is confident that the US would follow through with the sale of nuclear-powered submarines as part of the AUKUS deal, Australian Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said yesterday, after mooted cuts to the US program sparked concerns that deliveries could be delayed or scrapped.
Under the AUKUS partnership signed in 2021, the US is to sell Australia three to five Virginia-class attack submarines from the early 2030s as a stopgap while Australia and Britain build a new SSN-AUKUS class due about a decade later.
Fears that backlogs at US shipyards and a shrinking submarine fleet could undercut willingness for the sales boiled over this week when the administration of US President Joe Biden cut its funding request for the Virginia class.
Photo: Reuters
Conroy said that Australia had total confidence in the AUKUS deal and that the US was making good progress upgrading its shipyards so they could produce the Virginia class for both navies.
“I see a lot of hyperbolic headlines about the death of AUKUS. I think it’s the fourth time AUKUS has died in the last year,” he told reporters by telephone. “We remain very confident that we’ll be in a position for the Virginia class to be sold to Australia on the timeframes articulated.”
The US Navy is building an average of slightly more than one Virginia-class submarine a year, well short of the estimated 2.33 needed to grow its fleet and sell boats to Canberra.
At a budget briefing on Monday, US Undersecretary of the Navy Erik Raven said that the submarine industrial base was stressed, but an US$11.1 billion, five-year investment in the budget request plus a promised US$3 billion from Australia as part of AUKUS would lift production to target.
However, by the time the sales near in 2030, the number of attack submarines in the US Navy is set to fall to a historic low of 46 versus a target of 66, said Michael Shoebridge, founder of Strategic Analysis Australia and a former defense official.
“It’s going to get harder for a commander of the US submarine force to say: ‘No, I can get by with less submarines, I’m happy to sell three to my Australian friends,’” Shoebridge said. “A US president will come under more pressure to say: ‘I need to look after my own security first.’”
Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said that the US was unlikely to make its own deficit worse by sending submarines to Australia.
“This is really a case of us being mugged by reality,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
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