AUKUS subs warning ‘inaccurate portrayal’: Sea Power committee member

One of Washington’s strongest AUKUS supporters says warnings US shipyards won’t be able to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines are wrong.

A US nuclear submarine during military exercises. Picture: AFP.

One of the strongest supporters of the AUKUS security pact in the US congress has urged “everyone to take a deep breath”, amid growing fears US shipyards won’t have the capacity to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines before the nation has the capacity to build them itself.

Democrat congressman Joe Courtney, a senior member of the House of Representatives Sea Power committee, told The Australian on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) that a leaked letter from two US senators to President Joe Biden, which argued building submarines for Australia could “stress the US submarine industrial base to breaking point”, was inaccurate.

“The impression being conveyed in the letter was that a production slowdown was somehow an immutable dynamic and I think that’s a very inaccurate portrayal of what’s actually happening out there,” Mr Courtney, whose Connecticut seat encompasses a big chunk of US submarine building, said.

“It was not a letter that the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee were aware of until really about 24 hours before it was leaked,” he told The Australian, adding that the letter was likely “done in isolation by the two senators and their staff”.

The letter in question, by Democratic Senator Jack Reed and outgoing Republican Senator James Inhofe, the two most senior figures on the Senate Armed Services Committee, emerged last week in a US trade publication, prompting the Prime Minister and Defence Minister to insist the submarines were on track.

“There really is a shared sense of mission between the US and UK and Australia in seeing Australia acquire this capability,” said Defence Minister Richard Marles, who visited Washington DC and US shipyards late last year.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin promised Mr Marles the US would not leave Australia exposed to a looming capability gap as navy’s ageing Collins class diesel-powered submarines become obsolete.

“We’re still three months away from the big reveal … everyone should take a deep breath and let them finish the process,” Mr Courtney said, adding that recent legislation in congress to allow Australian sailors to train on US submarines should be cause for celebration of AUKUS progress so far.

A group of supporters of AUKUS in Congress, both Republican and Democrat, would shortly issue a statement reiterating their confidence in the AUKUS process, he added.

“There’s no question that the Covid impact on defence manufacturing has slowed production down, but having said that the submarine industry delivered two submarines 2022 and is slated to deliver two this year,” Mr Courtney said.

The cost and production schedule of the eight nuclear powered submarines promised to Australia under AUKUS in the September 2021 agreement remain unclear ahead of the government’s promised release of the details early this year.

Former prime minster Malcolm Turnbull later chimed on the submarines debate, arguing acquisition of US nuclear submarine technology would undermine Australian sovereignty, a claim dismissed as “complete nonsense” retired admiral Peter Clarke, as reported in The Australian.

“It will take a decade to get this sorted out,” Mr Clarke told The Australian. “It’s just absolute nonsense to say it would adversely affect Australian sovereignty.”