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Australia, the United States, and Britain announced in 2021 that they would transfer nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, and two years later detailed an ambitious pathway that would bolster US efforts to counter China’s naval ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
US President Donald Trump’s administration is reviewing the deal struck before he returned to power and has pressed Australia to increase defence spending.
AUKUS is projected to span three decades, beginning with a rotating force of four US-commanded Virginia-class submarines and one British submarine hosted at Western Australia’s HMAS Stirling from 2027, to help train Australian crew.
The US will sell three Virginia-class submarines to Australian command from 2032, before Australia and Britain build a new class of nuclear-powered submarine.
Around 50 to 80 US Navy personnel will arrive in 2025 at HMAS Stirling base, which is undergoing a $5 billion upgrade, to prepare for the arrival of the US-commanded submarines.
In preparation for Australia operating nuclear-powered submarines, several hundred Australians are training in the US nuclear navy training pipeline and nuclear submarine maintenance yard at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Britain will take the first delivery of a new class of AUKUS submarine — built in Britain — in the late 2030s, an important part of the expansion of the Royal Navy fleet, with an Australian-built submarine due in the early 2040s.
Australia, the United States, and Britain removed significant barriers on defence trade between their countries in 2024.
Australia’s biggest-ever defence project, Canberra is committing A$368 billion ($239.02 billion) over three decades to AUKUS, including billions of dollars of investment in British and US production bases.
In 2025, Australia will pay the United States $2 billion of the $3 billion it pledged to assist with improving US submarine shipyards, to help speed up production rates.
Whether the United States can boost submarine production to meet the US Navy’s own targets is key to whether Australia can buy the Virginia-class submarines, Pentagon officials have previously said.
The Pentagon’s top policy adviser Elbridge Colby last year said that submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and US industry could not produce enough to meet American demand.
Placing US-commanded Virginia submarines in Western Australia from 2027 is seen as highly favourable to the US Navy, however. This positions the US submarine fleet closer to the strategic Indian Ocean than its forward operating base of Guam.
Only six countries operate nuclear-powered submarines: the US, the UK, Russia, China, France, and India. As an island continent, Australia says a submarine fleet is crucial to securing its vast coastline, protecting the shipping lanes to its north that it relies on for trade and intelligence gathering.
Canberra wants to see an Australian-flagged nuclear-powered submarine in the water in the early 2030s to avoid a capability gap as its existing Collins-class diesel-electric fleet retires. It says nuclear-powered submarines have greater stealth and range than conventionally powered subs.
A “pillar two” of the pact commits members to jointly developing quantum computing, undersea, hypersonic, artificial intelligence, and cyber technology.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
