HONOLULU, Hawaii—The first American rotational-force submarine is slated to arrive in Australia in about 36 months, and the nation will have its first sovereign submarine in roughly 100 months. There is “an awful lot to do in a relatively short period of time,” said Nick Hine, managing director of AUKUS and International for British defense company Babcock. The timeline for developments is “relatively imminent”: 2027 for the first rotational force visit, 2032 for Australia’s first Virginia-class submarine, and 2042 for the SSN-AUKUS. All that has emerged in the wake of the September 2021 announcement of the AUKUS defense-technology pact between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Earlier this month, the first three Royal Australian Navy officers graduated from the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Power Training Unit in Charleston, S.C. Their next stop is Submarine Officer Basic Course in Groton, Connecticut. A program is in place to embed Australian submariners in U.S. and UK subs to gain that crucial experience. As well, Babcock and U.S.-based HII have established an AUKUS Workforce Alliance in Australia to foster skills up to the graduate level at three Australian universities. The AUKUS agreement comes at a critical time, Hine said, when more nuclear submarines are needed in the Indo-Pacific—“the sooner the better.”
If it was me…as you disperse your nuclear submarine fleet across the Pacific, you have some in Guam, you have some in Australia, you have some in Pearl Harbor, you have some potentially in Yokosuka, you have you have submarines in different places, you have the ability to support new submarines in different places, you should be able to move your submarine forces around the Indo-Pacific seamlessly, and get the same level of services with the same…qualified people in any one of these places. That’s what makes you a truly globally interchangeable force.
