AUKUS faces a reckoning as US submarine crisis deepens and Australian risks mount

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Australia’s AUKUS submarine program is coming under pressure on two fronts, with new evidence of a worsening crisis in the United States submarine fleet coinciding with increasingly forceful scrutiny of the project’s costs, safety arrangements, employment claims and implications for Australian sovereignty.

The immediate practical threat is emerging from the United States, where Australia is relying on the transfer of at least three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the early 2030s to prevent a capability gap between the retirement of the Collins-class fleet and the eventual arrival of Australian-built SSN-AUKUS submarines.

That bridging plan depends on the United States having submarines to spare. The latest assessment presented by retired Australian submariner Peter Briggs suggests that prospect is becoming progressively less credible.

More than 18 of the US Navy’s 48 in-service nuclear-powered attack submarines are reportedly unavailable while undergoing or awaiting maintenance. This would mean that at least 37 per cent of the American fast-attack fleet is not operational, almost twice the US Navy’s preferred limit of 20 per cent.

The problem is not simply a temporary scheduling disruption. The United States has accumulated a structural maintenance and construction crisis after decades of shipyard contraction, workforce reductions and inadequate investment in industrial capacity.

Its four public naval shipyards face large maintenance backlogs and shortages of experienced tradespeople, nuclear-qualified technicians and inspectors. Private shipyards cannot readily absorb the excess work because they are already struggling to construct Virginia-class attack submarines while simultaneously delivering the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program, which has higher strategic priority.

Virginia-class production is currently estimated at only about 1.1 to 1.2 submarines a year. To replace retiring American boats, meet US Navy requirements and provide submarines to Australia, production would need to rise to approximately 2.33 boats annually. The US Navy has reportedly told Congress that even reaching two submarines a year has slipped to 2032.

America’s submarine industry cannot meet its own navy’s needs, yet Australia is relying on it to deliver ours.

Australia is contributing billions of dollars to the American submarine industrial base, while Australian personnel are working in US shipyards to acquire maintenance and nuclear stewardship experience. The Australian government maintains that this assistance will increase the number of operational Virginia-class submarines sufficiently to permit the first transfer in the early 2030s.

Yet the eventual sale is not automatic. Under the US legislative framework authorising the AUKUS transfers, the American president must certify that transferring a submarine to Australia would not diminish US undersea capabilities. With more than a third of the fleet reportedly unavailable and new construction failing to keep pace with demand, that certification could become politically and strategically difficult.

The submarines offered to Australia are also expected to be used vessels approaching major maintenance periods, with only part of their reactor life remaining. If the US fleet continues to shrink in effective operational terms, Washington will face a stark choice between retaining scarce submarines for its own navy or fulfilling its political commitment to Canberra.

The Australian government continues to describe the pathway as achievable. Its published plan remains for American and British submarines to rotate through HMAS Stirling from as early as 2027, followed by Australian acquisition of Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s and the delivery of Australian-built SSN-AUKUS boats from the early 2040s.

But the worsening American industrial position raises the prospect that the central bridge within this carefully sequenced program may not materialise. Without the Virginia-class transfers, Australia could retire its Collins-class boats without a sovereign replacement ready to enter service.

These delivery risks are emerging as an independently organised public inquiry into AUKUS hears evidence challenging the project on broader grounds.

The inquiry, which is supported by the Australian Peace and Security Forum but is not a statutory government inquiry, has held public hearings examining nuclear safety, emergency planning, employment, radioactive waste, strategic dependence and the growing presence of American forces and infrastructure in Australia.

AUKUS commits Australia to vast costs and strategic dependence without a credible fallback plan.

At a Fremantle hearing, former defence minister Linda Reynolds reportedly agreed that basing nuclear-powered submarines near the city would increase its significance as a potential military target. Public-health witnesses also raised concerns about whether Western Australian authorities possess adequate evacuation, hospital and environmental-response plans for a severe nuclear or conventional accident involving a submarine.

Some of the accident scenarios presented to the inquiry represent worst-case projections rather than official risk assessments. Nevertheless, they expose an unresolved public-policy issue: Australia is constructing the infrastructure required to host, maintain and eventually operate nuclear-powered submarines while many detailed emergency, environmental and waste-management arrangements remain either incomplete or unavailable for public scrutiny.

The government has committed substantial funding to expand HMAS Stirling and associated facilities in Western Australia. From 2027, the planned Submarine Rotational Force-West will involve regular deployments of US and British nuclear-powered submarines, supported by Australian personnel and infrastructure. The government says these arrangements will prepare Australia to operate and sustain its own fleet.

Critics see a different strategic transformation. They argue that AUKUS is turning Western Australia into an increasingly important American submarine logistics and operational hub, making Australia more deeply integrated into US military planning and reducing Canberra’s practical freedom to remain outside a future American conflict.

Former defence minister Christopher Pyne reportedly told the inquiry that one of AUKUS’s major strategic advantages was the creation of a new American submarine base in the Indian Ocean. Although Australia formally retains sovereignty over its facilities, the remark reinforced fears that the project is serving American force-projection requirements as much as, or more than, an independently determined Australian defence strategy.

Pyne also reportedly acknowledged that AUKUS was unlikely to be delivered on time or within budget, while arguing that national security outweighed those concerns.

Employment claims are receiving similar scrutiny. The government promotes AUKUS as a generational industrial program that will create thousands of skilled jobs in South Australia and Western Australia. Union and policy witnesses appearing before the inquiry argue that these figures obscure the work lost when Australia cancelled the French-designed Attack-class submarine project in 2021.

The central risk is no longer theoretical: the promised Virginia-class bridge may never arrive on schedule.

That program was intended to build 12 conventionally powered submarines in Australia with substantial local industrial participation. Critics contend that SSN-AUKUS will contain a lower proportion of Australian work, while many of the most technically advanced components, systems and intellectual property will remain controlled in the United States and Britain.

The waste question is equally unresolved. Australia has accepted responsibility for managing radioactive waste generated by its nuclear-powered submarine program, including the eventual disposal of spent reactor units. The location of a permanent high-level waste facility has not been announced, and critics say affected communities and First Nations custodians have not been meaningfully consulted.

Together, the shipyard crisis and the inquiry evidence expose the central contradiction within AUKUS.

Australia is committing hundreds of billions of dollars, restructuring its defence force and aligning its strategic infrastructure with the United States around a submarine pathway whose crucial first stage depends on an American industrial system already unable to meet its own navy’s requirements.

At the same time, the Australian public is being asked to accept profound changes in nuclear stewardship, military targeting risk, radioactive-waste responsibility and foreign-force access without having been given a comprehensive public assessment of the alternatives.

None of this proves that AUKUS will collapse. The United States could expand production, reduce its maintenance backlog and conclude that transferring submarines to Australia strengthens the combined allied force. Australia could also develop the workforce, infrastructure and regulatory system required to sustain nuclear-powered submarines safely.

But each of those outcomes now depends on overcoming structural problems that cannot be solved through political reassurance alone.

The most immediate question is no longer whether AUKUS carries risk. It plainly does. The question is whether the Australian government has a credible alternative if the United States cannot release the promised Virginia-class submarines, the British-designed SSN-AUKUS is delayed, or the financial and strategic costs continue to escalate.

So far, no such alternative has been publicly presented.

Australia is therefore proceeding with the largest and most consequential defence acquisition in its history while the operational bridge at the centre of the program grows less certain, its costs remain open-ended and its effects on national sovereignty are becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss.

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