AUKUS SUBMERGED

Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, head of the Australian Submarine Agency, said AUKUS remained "on track" despite a litany of challenges to its realisation.

Jul 02, 2024

Subs plan's future rests on belief alone

By James Curran (AFR)

Last week, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, the head of the Australian Submarine Agency, told a defence industry event in Canberra that Australia remained "on track" to deliver on the AUKUS "optimal pathway" the Albanese government announced in May last year.

Mead's comments typify the brimming confidence in government circles regarding the future of AUKUS, despite a litany of challenges to its realisation. This week The Australian Financial Review published an investigation into the hurdles and risks the AUKUS submarine plan faces.

Mead said "many people are working day and night, shoulder to the wheel, to deliver the capability Australia needs to safeguard our future and protect our region".

Secret deal drew navy into nuclear subs

Exclusive

By James Curran (AFR)

Former prime minister Scott Morrison was so worried Emmanuel Macron would kill the $368 billion AUKUS deal that he kept all options in play and only informed the French president by text message just the night before.

In an exclusive interview, Mr Morrison told The Australian Financial Review he was "running down two paths" until the deal was sealed in September 2021. Those two tracks were the existing contract with France for conventional submarines, and the plan with the UK and the US to acquire nuclear submarine options. "I had to keep both tracks going in case we were left unserviced," Mr Morrison said.

An investigation based on interviews with multiple reveals the secrecy surrounding the AUKUS negotiations excluded both Treasury and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The secrecy meant that serious risk and feasibility studies into whether the project was achievable were largely sacrificed in the name of securing a politically symbolic deal. Labor’s acquiescence to AUKUS was assumed, correctly as it turns out, given the proximity of an election.

The investigation also reveals that Australia's pathway to a nuclear submarine capability was originally intended to be an exclusively British one. But in May 2021, senior figures in the Biden White House, principally National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Indo-Pacific policy chief Kurt Camp-bell, intervened. They believed Washington could be supplier of submarines to Australia, not just a technology partner.

So was born the tortuous pathway on which Canberra has now embarked to deliver Australia a nuclear submarine capability.

For Washington, the agreement locks a willing Australia into its China containment strategy, while Britain gains a fiscal lifeline to its ailing submarine construction industry. Both the US and UK gain a critical nuclear submarine base in Western Australia.

But the risks to the project are so pressing and serious that Australia may be left with no submarine capability at all in the late 2030s.

Mr Morrison also revealed his concerns that the US would not, for one reason or another, proceed with the agreement.

And he was right to be worried.

Questioning AUKUS 2

By James Curran (AFR)

Australia's nuclear submarine project, its fundamental construction and strategic weaknesses, demands an urgent whole-of-government review. The reporting in The Australian Financial Review's "Questioning AUKUS" series reveals the Albanese government may very likely be committing Australia to a tragically expensive failure.

The concerns of a group of defence experts over the "optimal pathway" for Australia's future nuclear submarine capability, which were raised with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in early May, have not been passed to either Anthony Albanese or his office.

Perhaps most alarming is the unwillingness, so far, of both Coalition and Labor politicians, along with policymakers, to acknowledge the genuine risk that Australia could be left with no submarine capability at all by the end of the 2030s.