Current Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defense Secretary Richard Marles, seen in a 2020 file photo. (Luis Ascui/Getty Images)
SYDNEY – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sought to allay concerns this weekend that the AUKUS defense pact could face headwinds in Washington, telling reporters the US, UK and Australia all remain committed to the plan – though he gave few details.
Albanese faced questions about the AUKUS deal after Breaking Defense’s exclusive report on a letter sent to US President Joe Biden from Sens. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, citing concerns that the United States could not build enough nuclear attack submarines to meet its own needs, let alone provide any to Australia.
“We are concerned that what was originally touted as a ‘do no harm’ opportunity to support Australia and the UK and build long-term competitive advantage for the US and its allies in the Pacific could become a zero-sum game for scarce, highly advanced US SSNs -er,” Reed and Inhofe, the two heads of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in the Dec. 21 letter to Biden.
The two-part letter, which appeared to signal the Senate’s disapproval of the idea of giving Australia either refitted Los Angeles-class or new Virginia-class boats, became top news in Lucky Country, where the question of how and when the Australian Navy will get its nuclear submarines is a big topic. (While Inhofe has resigned since the letter was sent, Reed remains chairman of the SASC and wants input on any plan involving US nuclear submarines.)
Under repeated questioning from reporters at his first news conference of the new year, flanked by his defense secretary, Richard Marles, Albanese refused to share any facts or new information about the program. Instead, he pointed to the many meetings he and his team have had with the Biden administration since AUKUS was first announced in September 2021.
RELATED: AUKUS in 1 year: Aussie defense brief says Navy faces ‘high risk’ in modernization race
“I have had meetings with President Biden now in Tokyo, in Madrid, in London and then in Bali. I met twice with Vice President Harris, in Tokyo and then in Bangkok, he told a reporter when asked about the letter.
Instead, Albanese stuck to the line that Australia will lay out “the optimal path we have to advance the AUKUS relationship with the US and UK, including Australia’s development of nuclear-powered submarines to ensure our national security going forward…” in the first quarter 2023.
Albanese put the decisions in the context of Australia’s Defense Strategic Review, due in March, “which is taking place to ensure that every dollar that we put into defending our country and into our national security is done in the best possible way.”
Marles’ comments highlighted what appears to be the fundamental problem that led Reed and Inhofe to write to Biden: Australia may be committed to AUKUS subs, but has provided very little detail about how it will build the fleet or how much money it can use.
Meanwhile, the US industrial base is struggling to meet domestic demand from the US Navy, with uniformed officers acknowledging that AUKUS could exacerbate a production challenge.
The letter from Reed and Inhofe clarifies their conceptual support for the AUKUS sub-plan. “Make no mistake, we recognize the strategic value that having one of our closest allies operating a world-class nuclear fleet can provide to address long-term competition with an increasingly militaristic China,” they wrote. “But it will take decades to achieve such a goal, and we cannot simply ignore modern realities in the meantime.”
The lawmakers flagged concerns about the industrial base, noting in the letter that while the Virginia-class has increased production from one to two boats per year in 2011, “only 1.2 Virginia-class SSNs have been delivered on average per year during the last. five years.”
Reed and Inhofe, as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, receive the most highly classified briefings of any member of Congress, and neither are known as bomb-throwers when it comes to national security. Their letter comes at a time when the idea that the US may have to provide submarines to Australia to fill a capability gap as its domestic nuclear industrial base is built up is being debated.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has vowed to ensure Australia does not face a gap between its aging Collins conventional submarines, due to enter service in 2039, and the deployment of Australia’s nuclear submarines. All six Collins-class submarines will have their lives extended from 2026, while the new nuclear submarines are expected to be deployed sometime in the 2030s.
“There’s been a lot of talk about well, the Australians just wanted to buy an American submarine. That’s not going to happen,” Rep. Rob Wittman, who was the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on naval power, told Breaking Defense last month. The problem, he said, is that the US can’t afford to cancel its own submarine purchase: “I just don’t see how we’re going to build a submarine and sell it to Australia in that time.”
The unequivocal statement by Wittman made clear speculation that America would sell Australia a Los Angeles- or Virginia-class submarine to tide them over until Australia can build and deploy its own nuclear-powered attack submarine would face serious headwinds in Congress. Reed and Inhofe’s letter confirms that.
Marles admitted on Saturday “there are many challenges and there is no doubt that the pressure this is putting on the industrial base in the US, including the UK, is really significant. We are very aware of that. That is why it is so important that Australia develops its own industrial capability to build nuclear-powered submarines, which we will do in Adelaide.”
Pressed three times by reporters for details on how they would address Reed and Inhofe’s concerns, Albanese and Marles said everyone will have to wait, in Marles’ words, “until we announce what the optimal path will be.”
Marle’s most specific answer to journalists’ questions about AUKUS came in relation to industrial policy. “I think this is a really exciting opportunity for Australia to develop the industrial capability to build a nuclear-powered submarine for our nation. And one of the things we’re very clear, as I said earlier, is that we need to develop that capability to could contribute to the net industrial base of the three countries of the United States, the United Kingdom and ourselves.”
So Australia will help the US and UK expand their industrial base by increasing their base. How?
“People will have to wait until we announce the optimal path, which won’t be too far off,” Marles said. “But the point we’ve made is that we need to develop an industrial base in this country to build a nuclear-powered submarine, and we’re trying to do that as quickly as we can.”
