Nuclear-powered submarine chief Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead details STEM challenge

There’s about to be some major competition in Australia for our best and brightest young minds.

An unknown 15-year-old girl studying science and maths has been pinpointed as an Australian nuclear-powered submarine commander by the chief of the $368bn project centred on Adelaide.

Declaring one of the nation’s greatest challenges was inspiring today’s STEM students to pursue a defence career, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead said future AUKUS submarine construction at Adelaide’s Osborne Naval Shipyard should be harnessed and exploited.

Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead said the future AUKUS submarine construction at Adelaide’s Osborne Naval Shipyard should be harnessed and exploited. Picture: Dean Martin

Speaking at an Adelaide business lunch on Tuesday, the Australian Submarine Agency’s director-general said US and UK nuclear submarine workers were inspired by “doing something special for (their) country and dealing with the most advanced technology in the world”.

“STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) is one of those great sort of paradoxes in Australia, that all the industries are competing for finite talent, and the system itself almost works against dragging people through,” he told the AmCham lunch.

“ … So somewhere out there right now, there is a 15-year-old student, who hopefully is studying STEM, that one day, she’ll be the commanding officer of one of our nuclear-powered submarines.

Sir Nick Hine, Managing Director AUKUS and International of Babcock, (R), greeted by Treasurer Stephen Mulligan. Picture: Dean Martin

“And her friends and peers will be either her shipmates, or work in the laboratories, or work in the sustainment yards, or will work down at Osborne in building the submarine and that. But it’s one of the big challenges that we have in Australia.”

Vice Admiral Mead said building a skilled workforce had been identified in early 2022, and remained, the biggest challenge for nuclear-powered submarine construction.

But he defended progress on implementing the AUKUS pact, first announced in September, 2021. He highlighted advances including in June sending the first of 129 skilled workers from ASC, formerly the Australian Submarine Corporation, to train on US submarines at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

Sir Nick Hine, a former UK submarine commander and Second Sea Lord who is now managing director AUKUS and international for defence firm Babcock, said building skills, industry and infrastructure were critical to success.

“Our nations are counting on us to protect them, but they have no idea of what the challenge we must meet looks like.” Sir Nick Hine said. Picture: Dean Martin

But he said there were insufficient skilled workers in any of the three AUKUS nations’ defence enterprises and tens of thousands were needed – “from PhDs to forklift drivers”.

“Our nations are counting on us to protect them, but they have no idea of what the challenge we must meet looks like. Our job here, much like my time as a submariner, is far from view or interest,” he said.

“But it’s to deliver the deterrence which will protect the economic security of our nations, and of those who have no agency to do so themselves.”

Ahead of The Advertiser’s Defending Australia summit in Canberra, Sir Nick in May, 2023, urged Australians to treat the Adelaide-based nuclear-powered submarine project like the first moon landing and aspire to have future Hollywood blockbusters made about the extraordinary venture.