Subs to the Aussies: Impact of the AUKUS Partnership​

By Nicholas Weising

On March 13, 2023 President Biden announced the deal enabling Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines alongside British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as a part of the AUKUS military pact. Australia will buy 3 Virginia class submarines with the option to buy 2 more for use in the 2030s while the U.K. is set to design, build, and deploy their own class of submarines for Australian use in the 2040s. This timeline could be fast tracked, as the Australian government weighs the costly price tag, AU $10 billion, of maintaining the current fleet. This news came one day after Prime Minister Sunak announced a £5 billion increase in defense spending to modernize the U.K.’s submarine fleet and “fund the next phase” of AUKUS. The deal requires unprecedented sharing of defense technologies and increased cooperation between each country’s industrial base, but does not give Australia access to nuclear weapons, only a nuclear-powered propulsion system.

Strengthening Naval Power

This plan aligns with the natural phasing-out of the current Collins class of diesel-electric submarines already planned by the Australian government. Collins subs are armed with conventional submarine weapons such as torpedoes, Stonefish MKIII mines, and anti-ship missiles. The six submarines in this class are slow, however, and need to recharge batteries via brief resurfaces. This is a liability; such instances can be detected by new artificial intelligence. This means diesel-electric submarines can lose stealth, the unique edge of fielding submarines over other vessels. Virginia subs, meanwhile, can stay underwater for months at a time, limited by supplies for the submerged crew and possible required repairs, and can travel 25 knots. Virginia class subs are equipped with the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) which consists of four additional vertical launch tubes for firing or storing torpedo-sized weapons such as Tomahawk missiles. VPMs increases the Virginia sub’s storage of such weapons by 76%. The latest production model of Virginia submarines additionally come with a greatly-expanded platform, which can be used for transporting special forces troops or carrying hypersonic missiles.

Transitioning from the diesel-electric Collins to the nuclear-powered Virginia is a massive upgrade. They can go years without refueling and move at maximum speeds for longer periods of time. Alongside aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines are among the most strategically significant components of modern navies, because they can deliver such massive firepower while maintaining impressive stealth. President Biden appropriately called them the “vanguard of U.S. naval power.” Australia has historically had a green-water navy that which on a limited scale provides security to some island nations in Oceania. Now, the Royal Australian Navy will go from serving on a strictly regional basis to having the capability to covertly operate and conduct surveillance in far-off places. The United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, and India are the only countries on Earth with operational nuclear submarines, meaning Australia would be joining an exclusive club of military powers. Australia, however, seeks more than just long-range strike ability. That the Australian government wants Virginia subs indicates that they want the ability to attack forces on land, which indicates they think such a threat from China is plausible and needs to be deterred against.

Pacific NATO?

China has slammed AUKUS as working against global non-proliferation efforts and raising tensions in the region, whilst China increasingly conducts aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region. This has motivated Australia, who has historically taken a more neutral stance in geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and China, to firmly support the former. For many years, the country sought to maintain strong economic ties with China with a strategic military partnership with the U.S. This trilateral security pact would’ve been unthinkable even one decade ago, and would still be were it not for China’s posturing in the South China Sea and aggression toward Taiwan. This has raised security concerns from many countries in the region, outside of Australia. Japan ordered 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the U.S. to meet its defensive needs against China.

AUKUS, however, is not comparable to NATO; there is no collective defense mechanism in the agreement, and Australia only gets the Virginia-class (which might deter Chinese aggression) in 2030. U.S. policymakers suggest a program in which older model nuclear subs are lent to the Australian Navy until 2023, but this is not set in stone. Thus, in leaning on other members of the faraway Anglosphere, Australia is defensively vulnerable presently. There are other issues with the initiative. Many scholars point out that the Royal Australian Navy and Australian industry must expand to accommodate these new vessels, including by hiring more technically-trained sailors and building infrastructure to maintain nuclear-powered subs. However, AUKUS achieves many strategic objectives for the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, including expanding access, basing, and overflight permissions in the region, as well as improved interoperability amongst the three nations’ militaries.

AUKUS is an ambitious endeavor to ordain Australia as a reliable maritime player that supports the United States and United Kingdom in the Indo-Pacific. With China becoming emboldened and disregarding international norms, it now finds itself surrounded by countries protecting their own sovereignty and pursuing integrated deterrence with the United States.

Nicholas Weising is an intern at the Center for Maritime Strategy. An undergraduate in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, his primary research interests include national security, defense industrial policy, and labor relations.

The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.