What is being built at Henderson? WA’s $12 billion AUKUS submarine and frigate hub explained
Two decades after it opened to raised eyebrows, Henderson is the heart of Australia’s biggest rearmament since World War II.
It was a case of build it and they will come.
And come they did. After a while.
When the Australian Marine Complex was formally opened in 2003, members of the-then Labor WA Government’s Cabinet likely had their hearts in their mouths.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.At more than 500ha, the sprawling concrete pad dotted with docks, warehouses and fabrication halls was a forward-thinking project of the size and scale normally associated with the United Arab Emirates or China.
It was not the sort of infrastructure behemoth you expected in the southern suburbs of Perth.
Fast-forward two decades and the AMC — and wider Henderson precinct — is one of the hottest industrial properties in the southern hemisphere.
It is ground-zero for Australia’s biggest rearmament program since World War II, and an enabler of a new industry set to challenge resources as WA’s biggest economic sector within a decade.
The Henderson precinct will be the physical heart of two of the biggest defence programs the country has ever attempted — the AUKUS nuclear submarine pathway, and the $20 billion project to build eight new warships.
The scale of these initiatives is difficult to grasp.
Western Australia’s Premier, Roger Cook, has said his ambition is for the State to become “the largest naval maintenance and shipbuilding hub in the southern hemisphere”.
Seizing that industrial crown requires a lot of groundwork.
THE FRIGATE RACE
Henderson became the focal point of the nation’s defence program because the Royal Australian Navy’s ageing Anzac-class frigates needed replacing and the delayed Hunter-class program couldn’t do it alone.
In February 2024, the Federal Government’s surface fleet review recommended an out-of-the-box fix. Defence chiefs argued for a new class of vessel to be designed and 11 ships built under a program called SEA 3000.
In the months that followed, Canberra committed up to $10b for the first three ships, and by November it had shortlisted two contenders: Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Germany’s TKMS.
The contest ran for the best part of a year.
In August 2025, Defence Minister Richard Marles announced Japan’s “upgraded Mogami” design had been selected over Germany’s MEKO A-200.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy billed it as a program that would deliver “four times as many warships in the next 10 years compared to the plan inherited by the former Coalition government”.
Contracts for the first three frigates were signed with Mitsubishi in April. Construction will occur in Japan, and the first hull is due to reach the Royal Australian Navy in 2029.
The remaining eight ships are earmarked for Henderson, with construction pencilled in from 2030. It is a tight deadline to get the precinct in shape for a project that will support about 10,000 jobs.
THE SUBMARINE DEAL
As the public battle for the right to build the frigates played out, a secretive process was quietly under way.
The question of how to maintain Australia’s future fleet of nuclear-powered submarines was exercising the minds of policymakers.
Under the AUKUS program, Australia is due to receive the first of three Virginia-class submarines from the US in the early 2030s. Those boats — and the five SSN-AUKUS vessels to follow — will need somewhere to dock, refuel and undergo maintenance.
That will be Henderson’s other job.
In September 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Mr Marles announced an extra $12b for the precinct. The money would pay for “contingency docking capabilities for Australia’s future conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarine fleet from the early 2030s, and depot-level maintenance including graving docks”.
Mr Marles didn’t mince his words when he explained Henderson’s significance to the alliance with the White House and Downing Street.
“In respect of the maintenance of submarines, it is an AUKUS facility,” he said.
“Now ultimately, where the United States really will maintain their submarines is a matter for the US. But we absolutely anticipate that this will be a facility which is available for them.”
Design work on that submarine capability is now under way.
DOCKING MATTERS
Getting vessels that weigh tens of thousands of tonnes out of the water to work on them is no mean feat.
The Henderson precinct has a floating dock, named Yargan, which opened in 2010. The facility is capable of lifting up to 12,000 tonnes from the water and transferring up to 3500 tonnes on to land.
BAE Systems operates a facility with a rotary turntable and multiple berths up to 190m.
Australia currently has only one true dry dock — the Captain Cook Graving Dock in Sydney, which was built during WWII.
To fix that bottleneck, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced in 2022 $4.3b would be spent building a dry dock at Henderson.
In late July, engineering firm Leidos Gibbs & Cox Australia was selected to complete the facility’s preliminary design.
It should be ready around the same time as the first Virginia-class boat arrives from the US and the number of British and American sailors docking at HMAS Stirling jumps under the so-called Submarine Rotational Force-West program.
A LOCAL BUILDER
WA-founded Austal started out building aluminium ferries and catamarans for the Asian market. Forty years later, it is playing a central part in Australia’s security.
In mid-2025, Canberra signed a strategic shipbuilding agreement with Austal which named the firm as Australia’s “Tier 2” shipbuilder for WA. The status effectively guaranteed it a long-term pipeline of work at Henderson.
A blizzard of contracts followed.
A $1b contract to supply 18 landing craft medium vessels was inked in late 2025, and a few months later, a $4b contract for eight landing craft heavy vessels — designed with the Dutch firm Damen Naval — was signed.
Austal has committed to more than 60 per cent Australian content.
Those two landing craft projects alone are expected to support about 3000 jobs. Austal needed space to breathe so was granted access to buildings at the Australian Marine Complex’s Common User Facility, with the WA Government putting up $30 million to relocate the non-defence businesses displaced by the expansion.
THE PRICE TAG
Defence is a notoriously expensive sector, and budget blowouts are so common they’re considered a cost of business.
Even taking that into account, the amount of money being spent at Henderson is staggering.
Even the plan to spend the money is expensive — in 2024, about $130m was committed to develop a blueprint of required works.
The real money started pouring in a year later. The $12b announced in September 2025 was explicitly framed as “a significant down payment” but some observers are questioning just how significant the investment will be; the full build-out of the precinct could ultimately cost about $25b over the next decade.
It dwarfs the $3.9b being spent on rebuilding the Osborne submarine yard in South Australia, where the Australian-made AUKUS submarines will be assembled.
Layered on top of that infrastructure spend is the $20b committed to the frigate program and Austal’s $5b landing craft contracts.
WHAT’S NEXT
Bechtel Infrastructure Australia is now working on a master plan for the entire Henderson site, which Mr Conroy said would put Australia “closer to making the Henderson Defence Precinct the home of continuous naval shipbuilding and sustainment”.
Engineering firm AECOM Australia is running more than 20 environmental and marine studies across Cockburn Sound.
In August, a significant hurdle was cleared when the Federal and State Governments announced the final site for the nuclear-powered submarine maintenance zone — a parcel of land which will become one of the country’s most secure areas.
“AUKUS is full steam ahead,” Mr Albanese said after the all-important boundary was defined.
First steel for Austal’s landing craft medium vessels will be cut in the next few months.
The first Japanese-built frigate arrives in 2029.
Henderson’s new dry dock is meant to be operational in the early 2030s, around the time Australia takes delivery of its first Virginia-class submarine.
Construction of the eight “Made in Australia” frigates begins from 2030, with four expected to be in service by 2034.
Before most of that activity can happen, Bechtel must complete its master plan and have it endorsed by the State and Federal governments.
It’s an intimidatingly large body of work and comes with an eye-watering price tag, but once complete it will reshape the WA economy for generations to come.
