AUKUS: Nuclear subs venture will transform Australia, for better or worse

Historic as it is to get this all lined up diplomatically, the big test for our nation now is actually to deliver the project. Destiny calls.

We desperately need nuclear-powered subs. The problem historically was we couldn’t get them, writes Greg Sheridan.

Australia’s AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal, conceived by Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, brought to extraordinary fruition by Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles, in partnership with Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak, will transform our nation forever, strategically, militarily, politically and perhaps economically. Its effects will be irreversible if it succeeds, and even more irreversible if it fails.

The status quo is no longer an option. This transformation isn’t a repudiation of our past. It’s a reassertion of Australia’s core national identity in today’s circumstances. Nuclear subs will not only empower and enable Australia – they will subject us to a searching, national interrogation.

Can we defend ourselves?

Can we cope with history placing us at the heart of the central strategic contradiction of our time?

Can our closest allies trust us with nuclear propulsion technology?

Can we build the military and industrial infrastructure to bring this off successfully?

Are we still a nation that can do big things over long-time horizons?

The answer to all these questions was once yes (except for nuclear, which hasn’t been asked previously). How will we go today?

Already, the AUKUS achievement is extraordinary. The Americans have agreed to sell us three, and perhaps five, Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines. Second only to their ballistic missile submarines and their nuclear weapons, these are the most important military technology the US possesses.

Simultaneously, the British have agreed to change the design of their new sub, successor to the Astute-class, to incorporate US combat systems, weapons, US-style reactor and US propulsion system, to co-design the boat with us and to build it, the SSN-AUKUS, jointly between Adelaide and Barrow-in-Furness.

Make no mistake. This is real history. Some Australian leaders claim ownership of events or trends in which they weren’t decisive actors. If Australia gets nuclear-powered submarines, history will credit Albanese. The basic decision to continue with AUKUS required from Albanese a rare mixture of pragmatism and courage, a combination that recalls John Howard.

That AUKUS enjoys bipartisan support increases its chance of success. But you can already see the danger of the relentless negativity that dominates Western politics, which in the US has even national security Republicans opposing aid to Ukraine because Democrat Biden dispenses that aid. The anti-AUKUS front will involve the Greens, anti-nuclear groups, the vast and well-funded China lobby, indeed the efforts of the Chinese government itself, professional anti-Americans, those who dislike robust defence capabilities, those who can’t bear any association with Morrison, those who don’t like Albanese, conspiracy theorists of all kinds and those just perennially against any big project.

The Albanese government, especially Marles, will need to lead a sustained, nationwide effort to make the nuclear subs a reality. It must also lead constant communication with the public to explain progress, occasional setbacks and the continuing strategic and economic rationale.

Incidentally, our federal agencies fully expect Chinese government agencies to generate social media and other political interference actions to foster as much opposition to AUKUS as possible. That the Chinese Communist Party so hates AUKUS ought to be the first big clue as to how consequential and beneficial it is.

Because of the complexity of everything to do with nuclear submarines, combined with disinformation from some actors, there are already a range of myths and misunderstandings about AUKUS and nuclear subs

Here are six emerging AUKUS myths: we don’t need nuclear subs; they’ll be obsolete before we get them; we shouldn’t try to build any in Adelaide; they’re too expensive; they will compromise our sovereignty and upset the region; it’s a mistake to get into such an intimate partnership with the Brits.

Let’s take them one by one. Myth one, we don’t need them. In fact, we desperately need nuclear-powered subs. The problem historically was we couldn’t get them, or couldn’t get them in a reasonable time. Chinese satellite and other surveillance technology is already so pervasive it can probably detect our conventional subs when they rise close to the surface to “snort”; that is, to take in air to run the diesel motors to charge the batteries. They snort for only a short period every few days, then submerge again. The boffins’ consensus is that by the mid-2030s Beijing will be able to hit the sub with a missile while it’s snorting.

You can lengthen a conventional sub’s time underwater with air-independent propulsion but that doesn’t last indefinitely. Conventional subs are infinitely better than nothing, but they will become increasingly vulnerable.

Nuclear-powered subs can stay underwater for months. Having trained our sailors on US boats, we’ll buy a mid-life Virginia in about 2032, just after it has completed a maintenance cycle so that we know for sure it will run perfectly and won’t need serious maintenance for years.

A nuclear-powered sub is an asymmetric weapon. It can destroy ships, mine harbours, destroy other subs, travel vast distances, attack land targets, be unknowable to a potential enemy, gather critical intelligence, insert special forces and much more. The later Virginias (and the subs we’ll build with the Brits) have big vertical launch capabilities from which they can fire almost any missile at almost any target. Australia has not had long-range strike capability since the F-111 fighter bomber. Virginia subs are much more powerful than F-111s.

Our having such subs would be a massively complicating, and deterring, factor for any adversary. Our numbers would be significant. If the US by then has 65 nuclear subs and China several dozen, then eight makes a considerable difference.

Myth two, that subs will be obsolete by the time we get them, is the type of nonsense argument some pundits go in for.

A nuclear-powered sub is an asymmetric weapon, writes Greg Sheridan.

One day subs may become obsolete. Certainly over the decades their roles may change to operate in a more stand-off fashion or as the mother ship of many unmanned underwater vehicles. By tying ourselves to the US and Britain, we will be part of such developments.

But every serious navy in the world, including the US and China, is invest­ing heavily in building sub­marines. Look not at what pundits say but what world-leading militaries do.

Myth three, that we should never make subs in Adelaide, is more complicated. If we had to wait to design a wholly new sub and build it in Adelaide before we received even our first one, this argument would be powerful.

But the genius in the Albanese government’s plan is that we de-risk this process by acquiring three to five Virginias first. There’s no way we could get nuclear boats any quicker. Why then make them in Adelaide ever? A diplomatic secret is we wouldn’t have got them at all if we hadn’t committed to increasing the overall allied submarine industrial capacity by creating a production line in Adelaide. This deal is a huge commitment for the US and Britain too. A critical part of our contribution is to enlarge total allied capability.

Not only that, it’s good for our economy. We shouldn’t run defence primarily as industry policy. But it’s unsustainable in a democracy to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and not get any benefit in your domestic economy. Aus­tralian defence industry can be capable and internationally competitive. Its chief handicaps have been two – a lack of scale and, even more important, governments that constantly change their minds and delay projects.

Once the AUKUS subs get going in Adelaide the plan is to build one every three years. We’ll ultimately build eight AUKUS subs and probably eventually retire the Virginias we get. By then, the mid or late 2050s, Australia will be much bigger. We might decide we want more than eight nuclear-powered subs. This could create a submarine culture of continuous build. We were crazy to let the car industry go. We are the least complex economy in the OECD with one of the smallest manufacturing sectors. We’ve got to pull ourselves back. This is a big part of that.

How we handle the Collins in the meantime is criticalto our mil­­itary capability over the next decade and to our technical reput­a­tion. If we don’t do the life-of-type extension of the six Collins boats successfully, the Americans will never trust us with nuclear boats.

Myth four is that the subs are too expensive. This myth is partly the government’s fault. It provided the estimate that the total, cumulative cost of the nuclear submarine program in the 32 years out to 2055 might be between $268bn and $368bn. Naturally, all the focus is on the larger figure. While it’s a lot of money, in fact it is in the fictional currency of “out-turn dollars”. That means a notional rate of inflation has been factored in for all of those 32 years. We don’t know what the rate of inflation will actually be, nor indeed how much it will finally cost to design and build AUKUS subs in Australia.

The Coalition government first started exaggerating the cost of the future submarine, even when it was a conventional sub, to convince everyone it was a big project. But then the size of the dollars scared people. Much of the so-called cost blowout for the French submarine was just converting today’s dollars into out-turn dollars. For the AUKUS subs the amount of money over 32 years includes training and paying the crew, sustaining the boats, and all manner of other expenses.

Any big program, estimated over more than 30 years, yields a scary amount of money. The NDIS costs $33bn. If it didn’t rise by a dollar, and there was no inflation, in 32 years that’s $1 trillion. Given its trend to increase markedly each year, and calculating out-turn dollars as the government has for the subs, the NDIS to 2055 is surely more than $2 trillion, perhaps closer to $3 trillion.

I presume the government wanted a great big figure out in public in advance so the Senate estimates process doesn’t have a nervous breakdown every time there’s a currency fluctuation or the like. No other country calculates submarine costs this way. Fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of the government’s figures leads to absurd claims, like that by Paul Keating, that you could build and run 50 conventional submarines for the cost of eight nuclear subs. This is utter nonsense. All subs are expensive. We’ll get the Virginias cheap because they are not brand-new. We’re certainly wealthy enough to afford eight nuclear-powered submarines.

Myth five – the subs will upset the region and compromise our sovereignty. Southeast Asian hesitation about AUKUS has quickly dissipated. Numerous regional diplomats assure me they’re delighted there’s an alternative to Chinese power but don’t like to say so publicly. Beijing’s objections, given how rapidly it’s building its own nuclear submarines, and nuclear weapons, is the definition of hypocrisy. Why is it OK for China to have nuclear-powered submarines but not for Australia? The idea that Australia, spending barely 2 per cent of GDP on defence, is causing an arms race is ludicrous.

There is no issue regarding sovereignty. Once a boat carries an Australian flag it does whatever the Australian government tells it to, writes Greg Sheridan.

Similarly, there is no issue regarding sovereignty. Once a boat carries an Australian flag it does whatever the Australian government tells it to. The Americans build the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It’s entirely US technology. No Australian could replicate its eight million lines of computer code. But an RAAF F-35 is an Australian sovereign military capability.

Myth six, that there’s something wrong with getting so close to the Brits, is the silliest of all, a ridiculous return of cultural cringe. Britain is a close friend and ally of Australia, and a close friend and ally of the US. Our military and intelligence co-operation is already intimate. Our influence with the Americans, and to a lesser extent with the Brits, is part of our influence in Asia. Britain is a nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the sixth biggest economy. Our friendship with Britain is a national asset and doesn’t remotely diminish us as a regional power.

Nuclear-powered submarines will help us defend ourselves, assist our neighbours and contribute to a stable system of deterrence and balance in the Indo-Pacific. The project helps reinforce American involvement with us and our region, which is overwhelmingly in our national interest and has been an object of national policy since Alfred Deakin. The nuclear subs also challenge us economically and industrially. They are a superb nation-building project.

Historic as it is to get this all lined up diplomatically, the big test for our nation now is actually to deliver the project. Destiny calls.