“We’re sharing that learning with Australia so they can build their own equivalent.”
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Holt addressed the committee in Westminster alongside Rolls-Royce Submarines president Steve Carlier and BAE Systems Submarines managing director Steve Timms.
As MPs asked about the pressures in Australia to find more workers to deliver the project, Carlier acknowledged the challenge.
“I think there are some questions to be answered on that over time,” he told the committee. “I don’t think we know how that is going to work yet. I think the Australians have got to reach their own decisions on how they want that to operate.
“It’s a pretty dramatic challenge.”
Rolls-Royce has several Australians already at its Nuclear Skills Academy in England, while Babcock has a similar skills centre that appears to be willing to take Australian trainees.
The AUKUS pact gained a significant boost this week when US President Donald Trump backed the plan in his meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, although doubts remain about practical details of the ambitious program.
Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese at the White House this week.Credit: Bloomberg
Australia is seeking to buy three Virginia-class submarines from the United States in the 2030s, subject to whether the US has enough vessels to sell any to an ally. Australia aims to build five newer vessels, known as the SSN-AUKUS, with BAE in Australia. Britain has hired BAE to make 12 in the UK to the same design.
Australia will be expected to have enough engineering workers by 2027 to maintain a Virginia-class submarine that visits from the US, and by 2033 it is meant to have enough to maintain its own Virginia-class submarines.
Timms told the committee that BAE was confident the new vessels would be delivered on time, but he also made it clear this would mean finishing one new vessel every 18 months in Britain – half the time it has taken in the past.
“I think we’re doing well on the schedule,” he said. “We’ve prioritised getting the design right, and it’s important that we take the time to do that.
“I think the area where we’re very focused now is around the infrastructure uplift and the development of the supply chain to move the enterprise from, broadly, one every 36 months delivery cadence to … one every 18 months.”
Critics of the program believe the submarines may never arrive, given that a future US president may choose not to sell them to Australia if the US does not have any spare, and given that there is no design for the SSN-AUKUS at this stage.
Australian Submarine Agency director-general Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead said on Monday that he believed the new shipyard being built at Osborne in South Australia would be the most advanced in the world and would build the most advanced submarine in the world.
Richard Marles visits the Skills and Training Academy at Osborne in South Australia on Tuesday.
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Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles, visiting the site with Mead on Monday, said Australian workers were going to BAE in the UK to train in submarine construction. He said 180 were working with the US at Pearl Harbour to maintain Virginia-class vessels.
“Nuclear-powered submarines are the single most complex machine that humanity has ever built,” he said. “We’re not only building that, but we are standing up a production facility to build that. It is going to take time. So our best estimate is that those first submarines that will be built here at Osborne will enter the water in the early 2040s.”
