The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is preparing to make the most significant announcement since he took office, joining the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the US president, Joe Biden, to unveil the multi-decade Aukus submarine plan on Tuesday morning AEDT.
For now, many questions remain unanswered. Here are some of the main ones to look out for on Tuesday.
1. How much will this cost? Will Australian taxpayers be on the hook to subsidise the expansion of the US production line? And how on earth will we pay for it all?
None of this will be cheap. Previous non-government estimates have put the long-term submarine program cost at anywhere between $116bn and $171bn, although these numbers were crunched before the full details were known. In an interview with Guardian Australia in January, the defence minister, Richard Marles, also did not rule out Australian taxpayers subsidising the expansion of US production prior to South Australian shipbuilding being ready to ramp up domestic production. This all comes at a time when the Australian government’s budget is already under pressure from competing and growing demands on a range of fronts – and when the Coalition is opposing modest savings.
2. How will we build up the nuclear expertise and other associated jobs to make this project work? Will the Royal Australian Navy recruit the crews needed to operate these larger submarines?
The government estimates that Aukus will support some 20,000 jobs – including in the Australian Defence Force, the public service and private industry – over 30 years. This is meant to sound like a big win for Australia, but it also underlines the huge challenge looming to educate, train and recruit the specialists needed to make the plan a success. The Royal Australian Navy is expected to launch a recruitment drive soon, but it comes against a backdrop of pre-existing challenges. In a briefing to Marles last year, obtained under freedom of information laws, Defence warned: “The last year has seen lower recruiting achievement and higher separation rates, which have resulted in the ADF and [Department of Defence] workforce size being below approved levels.”
3. Will it add a layer of unnecessary complexity for Australia to potentially operate two different types of nuclear-powered submarines at once?
The Guardian reported last week that the long-term Aukus plan would likely involve a British submarine design with heavy use of American technology. But as an answer to the potential capability gap caused by the retirement of Australia’s existing Collins class conventional submarines from the late 2030s, Reuters reported Australia would buy three Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines from the US in the 2030s (with an option to buy two more). Some analysts have argued it will create complexity, duplication and cost for Australia to potentially run two classes of nuclear-powered submarines at once, so the government will be pressed to explain how these challenges can be met.
4. What are the plans for sovereign control and for how long will US or UK personnel and advisers have to travel on board the subs?
The government – and the chief of its nuclear-powered submarine taskforce – have been unequivocal that Australian submarines will be under Australian command and control. But critics such as the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull have questioned whether this control will, in practice, be tempered by the need to continue to rely on US and UK personnel for technical and other support. V Adm Jonathan Mead acknowledged last week that Australia “will have assistance” and he likened this to other major defence programs, but added that the level of this assistance could reduce over time “as we develop more and more understanding of the technology”. Keep an eye out for what the government says on this point once the details are released.
5. Will the likely extended visits by US submarines to Australia in the meantime amount to a quasi-home-porting arrangement and how does that fit in with the prime minister’s assurances about maintaining sovereign control?
Reuters reported that the US would forward-deploy some its own submarines in Western Australia by around 2027. The exact details of this arrangement between the Australian and US governments will be a key point of interest and Marles has previously played down the idea of “home-porting” foreign vessels in Australia. Canberra will likely argue the arrangement is no different from other rotational visits by US forces.
6. What assurances will the US give about loosening its export controls to actually make the Aukus plan work? Will Congress go along with it?
Stringent export controls in the US have long been identified as a key obstacle to making Aukus work – including in the second pillar, the push to collaborate on other advanced military technologies not just submarines. On the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, Joe Courtney – one of the biggest supporters of Aukus in the US Congress – expressed confidence the export controls issues could be resolved with a carveout similar to the one enjoyed by Canada.
7. When and how will construction begin on the first South Australian-built submarines and does that mean any slippage in political commitments that were made to that state?
This will be a politically important issue for South Australia. When Aukus was first unveiled in 2021, the Morrison government said its intention was to build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide. Labor reaffirmed that intention and the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, has been seeking assurances. But the timeframe for that work starting will be of interest, given that it seems an “off-the-shelf” solution has been found to plug the capability gap.
8. How will the three countries defend the nuclear non-proliferation precedent set by the deal and will any special arrangements be put in place to reassure the region?
This is going to be a critical issue, given that China has been seeking to portray the arrangement as not in keeping with the spirit of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and Indonesia and Malaysia have previously expressed concerns. The significance of the deal is that two nuclear-weapons states will be handing nuclear tech to a non-nuclear-weapons state – and some experts have raised concerns about the precedent this may set for others. Australia is firm in declaring that it is only seeking nuclear-propelled (not nuclear-armed) submarines and that the NPT does not prohibit naval nuclear propulsion. Australia is in contact with the International Atomic Energy Agency and has promised to “implement the most stringent of security protocols”. The details, however, will be important.
9. What will happen to the nuclear waste when the submarines retire from service?
The government says the reactor technology “means that future nuclear-powered submarines will not require refuelling during the service life of the boat, therefore Australia will not require a civil nuclear power industry”. But we just don’t know yet what the plans are for what happens to the nuclear waste at the end of the process.
10. How does the plan fit with future technological developments? Could they be more easily detectible by the time the new subs hit the water?
The Australian National University’s National Security College report Transparent Oceans? found that scientific and technological advancements could make it increasingly difficult to hide the presence of submarines and predicted oceans were “likely” or “very likely” to become transparent by the 2050s. This does tend to raise some questions about the comparative benefits of nuclear-powered submarines to avoid detection – although Mead says the issue has been taken into account and that the subs could serve as a base from which uncrewed underwater vehicle operate.
