Republicans warn AUKUS will ‘unacceptably weaken’ America’s submarine fleet

Senior Republicans have told Joe Biden that selling nuclear submarines to Australia will “unacceptably weaken the US fleet”, in the latest hurdle for the pact.

The Republican rebellion over selling American nuclear submarines to Australia has intensified, with two dozen members warning Joe Biden the plan will “unacceptably weaken the US fleet”.

Last week, Republican senator Roger Wicker vowed to block new laws to sell at least three nuclear-powered boats to Australia, unless the President offered new money to speed up production.

He and a group of Republican colleagues – including the party’s powerful Senate leader Mitch McConnell – have now written to Mr Biden to sound the alarm about the lack of “a clear plan for replacing these submarines” to be sold to Australia in the 2030s.

“This plan, if implemented without change, would unacceptably weaken the U.S. fleet even as China seeks to expand its military power and influence,” they said.

The Republicans said the US industrial base was producing an average of 1.2 new nuclear submarines a year, rather than up to 2.5 a year needed to “avoid further shrinking our fleet’s operational capacity” once Australia took ownership of its Virginia-class boats.

While the US Navy requires 66 nuclear attack submarines, the Republicans said there were only 49 in the fleet, a number that would fall to 46 by 2030 without accelerating production.

“This is a risk we should not take,” they told Mr Biden.

“The AUKUS agreement is vitally important, but we must simultaneously protect US national security … It is time to make generational investments in US submarine production capacity.”

Democrat congressman Joe Courtney, a co-founder of the congressional AUKUS caucus, said he was “clear-eyed about the urgent need to address the challenges in our submarine industrial base”.

Kevin Rudd with Joe Biden upon starting as Australia's US ambassador in March. Picture: Supplied

But he sought to reassure colleagues by pointing to the Biden administration’s $US2.4bn investment over five years, adding that analysis from the Navy showed they would be consistently producing two Virginia-class boats a year by 2028.

Australian government officials remain confident an agreement can be stitched together between the House and the Senate as well as the Biden administration.

Earlier this week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee agreed on their version of laws to sell at least two Virginia-class submarines to Australia, before competing congressional proposals are debated in coming weeks as part of talks on an annual defence spending bill.

Ashley Townshend, a senior fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment, said the Senate Republicans opposing the submarine sale to Australia would be “in the minority” in negotiations for the final AUKUS laws.

But he said it would be a “highwire act”, given House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was already facing a revolt from other Republicans over the need to cut spending.

Australia has already agreed to invest $3bn in the US submarine industrial base as part of the $368bn nuclear submarine plan announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese alongside Mr Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in San Diego in March.

Further negotiations will also take place on reforms to US arms export control regulations – which could otherwise hamper technology-sharing under the AUKUS pact – after House Democrats opposed Republican-designed legislation to rip up that red tape for Australia.