Australia optimistic after US sub production cut causes AUKUS concerns

Australia has doubled down on its support for the United States and the plan to acquire US-built nuclear submarines after concerns a dwindling production rate could jeopardise the superpower’s defences.

A Virginia-class submarine has been cut from the 2025 proposed US defence budget.

America is set to sell Australia at least three, and possibly five, second-hand Virginia-class subs in the early 2030s, raising concerns that cuts to its production could hamper Canberra’s planned acquisition.

But Australia, Britain and America remained committed to the AUKUS pact under which they would be delivered, Defence Minister Richard Marles said.

“All three AUKUS partners are working at pace to integrate our industrial bases and to realise this historic initiative between our countries,” he said.

US President Joe Biden’s budget request for 2025 also includes US$11 billion for additional investment over the next five years for the domestic submarine industry.

Australia will also contribute $3 billion to the US submarine industry to help increase production rates.

Australia was completely dependent on Washington to acquire the submarine and America would always back their own navy if there was a shortage in production, former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said.

“The reality is the Americans are not going to make their submarine deficit worse than it is already by giving or selling submarines to Australia and the AUKUS legislation actually sets that up,” he told ABC radio on Wednesday.

“We are bobbing along as a cork in the maelstrom of American politics.

“The reality is, unless the Americans are able to dramatically change the pace at which they’re producing submarines, and there’s no reason to believe they will be able to do so, we will not ever get the submarines that were promised.”

Virginia-class submarines supposed to be delivered this year in America were running an average of more than 30 months late, US defence under secretary comptroller and chief financial officer Michael McCord said.

There are more than a dozen on order that remain in production.

“We’ve already had some beginnings of submarine industrial base investments ... It was a priority in last year’s budget, which, again, we don’t have that money yet, so that’s a problem,” Mr McCord said.

Spending money to prop up industry rather than spending it on another submarine was a smarter investment, he added as America pushed to boost the production rate to two submarines a year.

“We thought that going a different direction was our best move in that,” Mr McCord said.

Rank and file Labor members have come out against the AUKUS agreement, questioning why Australia would send billions of dollars to prop up the US production line.

Labor Against War branded the US budget cut to the Virginia-class a “potential lethal blow to AUKUS”.