CDR Salamander - AUKUS--too Important to Balk on

On Sunday’s Midrats Podcast, our guest Liz Buchanan mentioned an article out of Australia by Laura Tingle, China's parade of military might raises big questions about the AUKUS muddle. I gave it a read and thought it would be a good move to start the week with it. Yes, it is Tuesday and not Monday, but I’m having “a moment.” Bear with me for the next 10 days or so.

Tingle covers a lot of ground here, and she suffers a bit of a foreigner’s incomplete understanding of Trump World, but I’d like to put that to the side and focus on a welcome Australian view of the present state of play WRT AUKUS. For an island nation roughly the size of the continental USA with a population between Texas and Florida, I can think of fewer force multipliers that fit her requirements better than SSN, but she can’t get there on her own with a GDP just a bit more than Florida.

For the new readers and to refresh things for the regulars, let’s go back almost exactly four years ago (a period of time longer than the USA’s participation in WWII) when this kicked off. Here is what I had to say back in September of 2021, and my opinion has not changed.

One thing I hope so much for is that we make this as affordable as possible for Australia. I would hope we give it to them at cost. No reason to try to get any of the development cost whichever direction the build goes.

Helping build the infrastructure to support nuclear submarines will benefit everyone, and especially Australia - a nation that is a natural to go nuclear power for both green energy and other reasons - something this military effort could help kickstart.

As I outlined at the time, with my math, the floor was four boats with a HMAS stamp on them, and a ceiling of eight.

I’ve also stated repeatedly that the serious people at The Pentagon need to tell the people in the submarine community to shut up and color. There are more important things on the line than the number of operational Commander Command slots in play.

For a whole host of reasons, sooner more than later we simply need to take out non-FIVE EYES equipment from an “USS” and spot-weld “HMAS” on the damn thing. Should everything go pear-shaped in the Pacific, a HMAS SSN will be 90% as useful to the USA as an USS SSN.

The greater utility, however, is the peacetime messaging of partnership with our closest allies by remembering something our fathers—well at least my father—taught us all, “Your word is your bond, especially with your friends.”

Our friends, fairly, are not that confident.

Peter Briggs is a former submariner and commander of the Royal Australian Submarine Squadron.

He also believes Australia should have nuclear-powered submarines, so is not against the idea in principle. But he has been increasingly critical of the whole AUKUS submarine proposal.

In a devastating analysis this week, he says the AUKUS plan "is now a threat to both the US and Australia's submarine capabilities".

He says the US Navy's attack submarine force "is shrinking faster than anticipated" and notes that the US has other priorities in its submarine building program than the Virginia Class subs we are supposed to be getting.

Building 12 new Columbia class submarines is the US's top priority, he says, and plans to build larger versions of the Virginia will only slow things down further.

He’s not wrong. That dozen number is problematic. Here’s what I wrote on that fifteen and a half (yes, 15.5) years ago,

I'll call it now, we will be lucky if we get 10 SSBN(X). Make that a planning assumption.

If you need more SSN than your resources can deliver, then take the risk with your number of SSBN. There are not that many other options.

To get to the number 10, I didn’t even weigh in on the developing critical issues with our shipbuilding and repair capabilities for our submarine industry, a problem appreciated for a long time without adequate action…and here we are.

The target of building "a Columbia each year and two of the larger Virginias would require at least a threefold increase in submarine construction tonnage compared with annual average build of 1.14 smaller versions of the Virginia actually achieved over the last 21 years", he says.

Everyone I talk to will ID the problem, but we have yet to see movement to solve it anytime soon.

The target of building "a Columbia each year and two of the larger Virginias would require at least a threefold increase in submarine construction tonnage compared with annual average build of 1.14 smaller versions of the Virginia actually achieved over the last 21 years", he says.

"Compared to the US Navy's target of delivering two Virginias each year over this period, that is a cumulative shortfall of 18 [nuclear powered submarines]."

Add in Australia's demands and it gets even worse.

Instead of its target of having 66 attack submarines, the US "has 47 or less now and is heading towards 41 or less in my estimate", Briggs says.

"With luck, the current Pentagon [Colby] review of AUKUS will reach this obvious conclusion and withdraw from this plan. Failing that we will continue until reality hits, when the next president declares the US national interest outweighs the 'best endeavours' we are now relying on."

This is where the narrowly blinkered submarine community’s priorities not to share its toys, that have too many ears taking in their points unchallenged, are merging—or appearing to merge—with a foundational undercurrent in the Trump Administration.

It would be a strategic mistake of profound proportions for the USA to not follow through with AUKUS’s SSNs. If we did make that mind-numbing error, the Australians don’t really have the mother country to fall back on. Her problems sound familiar.

Briggs is almost more pessimistic about the UK submarines we are supposed to eventually get ever leaving the design board.

Plan B, he says, should be just one class of submarine, a mature design which will have to be built in Australia simply because neither the UK nor US has the capacity to build them.

If the UK isn’t a valid “Plan-B”—then what is?

Of course.

"There are two obvious options," he says, "a Virginia derivative or [wait for it] the French Suffren."

Of course, the French sub would be able to come as it is already configured — as a nuclear-powered vessel — not having to go through all the contortions of turning it into a diesel powered one as had been originally suggested.

Briggs dismisses the idea that changing at this late stage would inject further delay: "It will mostly likely be quicker."

Nobody wants that. The French would be insufferable.

Tingle does not end on a happy note. I hope a concerted effort is made to make her wrong.

Whatever the actual strategic vulnerabilities, and money wasted, White says the failure of process involved in the AUKUS muddle is likely to have scholars shaking their heads for years in terms of how this could have been allowed to happen.

A failure, he says, which makes Robodebt — and government ministers' failure to take corrective steps — look like leadership in action by comparison.

Instead, Australia plods along, trying to convince itself that all will be well. And without one leader prepared to say that we now have little choice but to take our own independent strategic path.

Let’s give Laura Tingle a pleasant surprise, and the People’s Republic of China a headache, and make AUKUS happen, sooner rather than later.

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