SECDEF Austin confident submarine industrial base can meet AUKUS promises
USNI News
By John Grady
26 September 2024
Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin expressed confidence in the Pentagon’s actions to expand its submarine-building capacity despite existing delays in production during a press conference with his counterparts in the U.S.-Australia-U.K. submarine agreement.
Speaking Thursday, following a meeting on AUKUS, the defense secretary noted the concerns about delays in the U.S.’s submarine production, but he felt good about what Washington is doing to build Virginia-class submarines to meet national defense requirements and the American commitment to Australia.
The Navy and industry partners are working to increase the production rate of the Virginia-class submarines to 2 boats per year by 2028, with an increase to 2.33 planned, in order to meet the needs of the U.S. and its agreement as part of AUKUS, according to a July Congressional Research Service report.
General Dynamics’ Electric Boat shipyard and HII Newport News Shipbuilding yard are delivering about 1.3 Virginia-class boats annually.
The meeting of defense ministers is the third since the signing of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States agreement almost three years ago. The first pillar of the agreement is to provide Australia with the technology and training to operate, repair and eventually build nuclear-powered but conventionally-armed submarines.
Austin, U.K. Secretary of State for Defense John Healey and Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles highlighted the important strides made in training Royal Australian Navy officers in nuclear-powered operations in naval classrooms and placing them aboard boats to learn by observing and doing in their joint press conference and communique.
The same training and hands-on experience is true for the Australian shipyard workforce abroad at Pearl Harbor and in Australia in maintaining nuclear-powered submarines and projected stepped up U.S. submarine calls at Perth, according to the communique.
When AUKUS was signed, Australia did not have a nuclear industry. The agreement is only the second time in 60 years, the United States has agreed to share critical military high technology with an ally.
The first was with the United Kingdom, where this ministerial meeting was held.
Austin said all three nations understood that this would be a long process, but they are hitting the benchmarks needed to have Canberra fielding its nuclear-powered submarines by the late 2030s or early 2040s.
“We understood the level of complexity, the hard work that would go into” flushing out the agreement’s words into nuclear-powered submarines with trained officers, crews and shipyard workers and breaking down barriers on technological exchanges in areas like nuclear propulsion, Austin said.
The technological exchanges are the second pillar in the agreement.
“It’s well worth the investment” by all three nations to ensure global security and stability in a violent word, Austin said. The defense leaders all mentioned the escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and the continuing war in Gaza, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Healey announced at the beginning of the press conference that London and Canberra have opened talks “to bind the AUKUS agreement into law” through a formal treaty that would encompass both the nuclear-powered submarine construction and technology exchanges.
Marles provided an example of technological exchanges already being made that have broad security implications. He said the three are “developing classified, advanced algorithms for the use of AI” to process huge quantities of sonobuoy data on undersea activity.
Operational plans that are the result of the AUKUS agreement are being executed, Marles said.
At the press conference, Marles defended Canberra’s long-term financial commitment to AUKUS, calling it a strategic imperative. “Diesel-electric subs will become increasingly detectable” in coming decades.
He said the AUKUS program translates into Australia maintaining the submarine capability that existed when it first fielded the Collins-class in the mid-1990s. There are six Collins-class subs in the Royal Australian Navy.
The U.K. Sting Ray torpedoes will be provided to Australia and the United States for their P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, Healey said, opening the press conference.