“Full steam ahead” is the new Aukus catchcry, the Trump-inspired mantra for nuclear-powered boats.
Certainly, the money is powering on, flowing freely in the direction of the United States, with Australia set to hand over its third cheque – this one for $US1bn – to assist America to build its submarines.
But the “full steam ahead” rhetoric can’t mask the reality of a US shipbuilding industry that is chronically falling behind the needs of its own navy, let alone any additional boats for Australia.
The reality of Aukus, from Australia’s perspective, is that it is not, fundamentally, an agreement that will deliver this country nuclear-powered submarines. It is a plan that will further enmesh Australia into US defence strategy, with more US assets stationed on Australian soil (including warplanes and helicopters), more troops and more rotations.
It is a plan to keep an increasingly self-interested US locked in to this part of the world, engaged in this region, and committed to a security alliance by demonstrating what’s in it for America.
The US Pentagon officials who wrote the initial review of the Aukus arrangement have made careers of clear-eyed assessments of military capabilities: lives depend on their prognostications being accurate.
It’s an open secret across Washington that their first review draft was far more sceptical, even scathing, of Pillar One of Aukus, doubtful that the nuclear-powered submarine deal could ever become reality.
Their review was ordered to be rewritten, and (on some accounts) rewritten again, to reflect the political enthusiasm for Aukus, specifically to accord with Trump’s support for the deal.
The details of the review have not been made public, only the refrain.
“Consistent with President Trump’s guidance that Aukus should move ‘full steam ahead’, the review identified opportunities to put Aukus on the strongest possible footing,” the Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said.
The US government’s own numbers strike a glaringly different tone.
The latest Government Accountability Office report, issued to Congress earlier this year, is damning. Between 2019 and 2023, the US navy forecast it would build 11 Virginia-class submarines. It delivered just four.
And just pouring more money into boat-building won’t help, the GAO said. A forecast that construction backlogs will be eliminated and future craft built “on time and within budget” is “an assumption not grounded in historical trends”, its report read.
“Navy officials with responsibility for the shipbuilding plan stated that they made this assumption because they expect their investments in the shipbuilding industrial base will enable improvements. However, our prior work has shown that Navy shipbuilding has regularly fallen short of schedule and cost goals, and current performance is consistent with these trends.”
Nor is the Aukus agreement a case where political will for it to succeed can override the practical realities.
The US legislation that underpins Aukus makes it law that Australia can receive no boats unless those are surplus to American requirements.
The president of the day (which, should the US constitution’s 22nd amendment hold, cannot be Trump) can only certify the transfer of a submarine to Australia if that transfer “will not degrade the United States’ undersea capabilities”.
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