Trump has indicated the US will proceed with AUKUS. Good news for the US, serious consequences for Australia. Former submariner Rex Patrick reports.
“Submarines in our time!” He didn’t say it, but Anthony Albanese might as well have, as he returned triumphantly from his meeting with Donald Trump this week.
AUKUS is indeed a fantastic deal. For the Americans, at least.
“Trump is not going to cancel AUKUS”, a well-connected industry source told MWM two weeks ago.
“AUKUS is so good for US industry – Australia is spending billions on their shipyards, and then there’s the purchase of the submarines themselves. General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries will see tens of billions of Australian dollars flow their way, as will Lockheed Martin and Raytheon”, said the source.
“And assuming things go well, the shipyard mess in the UK will see us going from three US Virginia-class subs to five, and then likely eight. Australia will abandon the UK AUKUS-designed subs, and even more Australian money will flow into the bank accounts of US companies.”
They’ll be lobbying the White House to ensure this cash keeps on flowing.
And clearly, the lobbying has worked so far. Trump has endorsed AUKUS. It’s the sort of deal he likes.
As former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated in the lead-up to the meeting, it wasn’t going to be in Trump’s interest to withdraw, “The AUKUS deal is a fantastic deal for the Americans, a terrible deal for Australia, so there is no way Donald Trump will walk away from it because what does he get?” he said.
Turnbull was right. He was also right in his analysis after the meeting, “warm words don’t build submarines”.
Submarine woes
The United States is not building enough Virginia-class subs. They’re not building enough for their own Navy, let alone ours. That is the determining fact sitting in the middle of the AUKUS slipway.
For more than a decade, the US Government has been trying to build two Virginia subs per year. But they haven’t been able to move the shipbuilding dial. They’re currently struggling along at 1.1 submarines per annum, not enough to meet their own demand, let alone the 2.3 boats per annum they need to hit to be able to spare a submarine or three for Australia.
The spin from US and Australian politicians is turning in the opposite direction to the analysis of the United States Congressional Research Service, the US Government Audit Office and the US Chief of Naval Operations. No matter the spin from politicians, they can’t cause a change in the engineering and construction taking place at Groton, Connecticut and Newport News, Virginia.
Trump needn’t be worried though; he won’t be the President in the early 2030s when the first Virginia Class sub can’t be delivered because doing so,
will have a detrimental effect on the US Navy’s undersea warfare capability.
The US Congress has enshrined that “America First” requirement in their AUKUS legislation, and the crunch point is already less than a decade away – too little time for the US submarine industrial base to make the enormous strides that are so easily spruiked but so difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
Rudd talking the AUKUS talk in Washington, but is the US walking?
Eroding our sovereignty
Meanwhile, MWM’s industry source has foreshadowed the closing down of some Australian Defence companies struggling to make ends meet after Defence has cancelled a range of local programs, and is not initiating replacement work, so that they can meet the almost $10B in payments to both the US and UK governments to invest in their industry.
AUKUS is sending Australia into a sovereignty-eroding spiral.
We are already tightly integrated into the US military with common hardware, common ordinance and common tactics. As the US turns its eye towards its superpower competitor, China (incidentally, our biggest trading partner), we are also seeing an expanding US military footprint on Australian soil, including:
- the long-standing Pine Gap joint communications and intelligence facility at Alice Springs,
- the critical submarine very low frequency communications station at WA’s North West Cape,
- a new mission briefing/intelligence centre and aircraft parking aprons at RAAF Darwin,
- fuel storage at Darwin Port, infrastructure at RAAF Tindal near Katherine,
- and logistics storage in both Victoria and Queensland.
And there’ll be a forward staging base for US Navy Virginia-class subs out of HMAS Stirling near Perth from 2027.
US nuclear-powered, and by the early 2030s likely nuclear-armed, submarines will be using Western Australia as a strategic base for operations extending from the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, to the South China Sea and the East China Sea and beyond.
All this is about strategic competition with China.
The Australian Defence Force, as it diverts money to AUKUS, will suffer in terms of independent capability. Industry will suffer. The taxpayer will suffer.
Best deal in history
Trump must be rubbing his hands together. This will play out well for the US.
Billions of Australian dollars will flow into the continental US to contribute to its submarine industry – this is a certainty. In contrast, the US will almost certainly not deliver. There is no clawback of expended money for non-delivery.
Australia’s Collins Class submarine capability will atrophy further, as will the general capabilities of the Australian Defence Force, starved of funds. More reliance on the US will see the US Navy station more subs in WA, the US Air Force stationing and staging additional air capabilities in our north, and an increase in the number of US Marines rotating through Darwin.
More than ever, Australia will be reduced to being “a suitable piece of real estate” in US war planning (to adopt the words of one of Australia’s most insightful strategic critics, the late Professor Des Ball).
Australia will have little choice but to let the US do this … and we might be pressured into much more.
There will be no choice but to follow the US into conflict with China.
We will have limited capabilities and will be left totally reliant on red, white and blue military capabilities. When Richard Marles talks of sovereign capabilities and decision-making, it’s just a political con job.
Trump will, in retirement, post on Truth Social his genius and how he suckered retired Prime Minister Albanese into what Paul Keating would call, in the view from the White House and Pentagon, the best deal in all of history.
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the "Transparency Warrior."