US Navy official dismisses suggestion AUKUS pact would stall

The AUKUS deal that would deliver Australian nuclear submarines could be in trouble after an unexpected major development in the US. See why.

The AUKUS submarine plan has hit a major roadblock in the US Congress, with senior Republicans refusing to sell three nuclear-powered boats to Australia unless the US rapidly bolsters its production line.

In what a top defence expert says is a “highly regrettable state of affairs”, Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee moved on Friday to block legislation required to enable the sale in the 2030s.

Senator Roger Wicker told US news outlet Politico that President Joe Biden needed to put more money on the table “to be sure we have enough submarines for our own security needs before we endorse that pillar of the agreement”.

Democrat Bob Menendez – the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which had drawn up the legislation with bipartisan support – blasted his position as “foolish”.

“There seems to be an element of [Republicans] that has a problem transferring submarines to the Australians,” he told Politico.

Artist's impression of the future SSN-AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine to be built in Australia using a hybrid UK and US design. Picture: Defence/Supplied,

It is understood Australian officials remain confident the hurdle can be overcome, given the Biden administration has already been working to strengthen the US industrial base.

“I know the business of making sausages can sometimes be untidy, messy, prolonged, but ultimately there’s a sausage at the end, and so it is with the passage of legislation,” Australia’s US ambassador Kevin Rudd said last week.

The US industrial base is currently delivering 1.2 Virginia-class submarines each year, rather than the two boats which are supposed to be produced annually.

But securing extra funding for submarine maintenance and manufacturing is complicated by strict spending limits agreed by Mr Biden and House Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy last month in a deal to lift the US debt limit.

Ashley Townsend, a senior fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment, said the submarine program “now finds itself in the middle of a very political three-way tussle between the (administration), defence hawks and deficit hawks”.

“This is a highly regrettable state of affairs and a terrible signal on the eve of AUSMIN,” he said, referring to next week’s talks in Queensland involving the Australian and American defence and foreign ministers.

“All parties should have expected (submarine) industrial base concerns to be a big issue – and had a concrete plan to address them. Sovereignty concerns on both sides require it now and fast.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden, and UK PM Rishi Sunak.

Senator Wicker, writing in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, said AUKUS was a “vital” agreement with bipartisan support, but that the US needed to double submarine production.

He warned the US Navy required 66 nuclear attack submarines but currently had only 49, a number that was expected to decline to 46 by 2030 as older boats retired faster than they could be replaced.

While Australian taxpayers will pump $3bn into US shipyards over the next four years, Senator Wicker told Politico that was not enough.

“Australian investment in US shipyards will also help. But we can’t afford to shrink the overworked US submarine fleet at a dangerous moment,” he said.

He was backed by Senate Armed Services Committee chair Jack Reed, who had sounded the alarm in January about AUKUS turning into a “zero sum game” for nuclear submarines, prior to Mr Biden agreeing to sell at least three boats to Australia.

“We have capacity issues in our yards, and we’ve been trying to get help over the last several years, starting in 2017, by creating funding for the submarine industrial base, so they’re in much better shape than they would be – but still there’s a gap,” he told Politico.

The AUKUS pact will deliver Australian nuclear powered submarines. Picture: Defence/Supplied,

US Secretary of Navy Carlos del Toro, visiting Australia for the Australia-US led Talisman Sabre 2023 military exercise, dismissed suggestions the AUKUS pact would stall.

“This is complicated legislation that always goes before Congress. There are three legislative proposals that come from the department of defense, one from the Department of State and actually from my experience, having dealt with many of these legislative proposals, it’s actually moving along quite nicely,” he said.

He added it was hoped Congress would pass the legislation soon.

Defence Minister Richard Marles also said he too was not concerned and had been briefed by Ambassador Kevin Rudd.

“Obviously, the Congress has its own processes and they can be complex and we’ll let the American process play its way out. But we’re actually very confident and encouraged by the way in which that’s occurring,” he said.

Mr Marles said in terms of the industrial capability and Australia acquiring a nuclear powered submarine capability, it would happen.

“We get the pressure which is on the industrial bases around the three countries and that’s actually why those in Adelaide and at the rest of the country should have a sense of real comfort that the way in which this will play out is the ability for us to build a nuclear powered submarine in this country because we simply have to make our own contribution to this industrial base.

“But we are confident that the arrangement that we have arrived at with the United States and with the United Kingdom is going to deliver Australia this really important capability.”