Kinniburgh said all three allies were facing serious skills shortages for the entire defence pact, but he expressed particular concern about “pillar two” because of the uncertainty about its goals and the technologies it would fund.
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to help fix the skills shortages, and therefore to allow AUKUS to be delivered on time, but it will take concerted effort over many years,” he said.
The USS North Dakota, a Virginia-class boat of the type Australia would acquire under AUKUS.
The concern is one of several put to a UK parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS that is examining whether the project will deliver up to 12 vessels for the Royal Navy as promised from the late 2030s.
Defence expert Sophia Gaston told this masthead that AUKUS was a political project to address a geopolitical challenge, and the political project itself had now become geopolitical.
Gaston, a senior fellow at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security at King’s College London, told the parliamentary inquiry that AUKUS should be seen as a national mission because of the risk to the UK and its allies if it did not gain the skills and technology, to build the new fleet on schedule.
“We need to understand that this is an active battle that is going to decide our future economic growth, our capacity to act with autonomy and our capacity to influence geopolitical outcomes,” she told the committee in a public hearing.
Under the AUKUS deal, Australia will acquire at least three US-built Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s.Credit: AP
“If we lose this battle around technological competitiveness, we are facing a grave environment that is going to be extremely challenging.”
Gaston described AUKUS as a “disruptive project” to prepare for a more assertive China and Russia, which meant the pact was not only about an active security posture but also about defending the economy.
“I suppose it is putting us on more of a wartime footing,” she said. “We like to dance around the strategic context we are facing, and we keep talking about wake-up calls and so on, but we are really in an existential battle here.”
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Dr Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, warned that delays to building the new submarines would leave the AUKUS partners exposed.
He told the parliamentary committee the US would face a shortfall in its capabilities in the 2030s as China expanded its “area denial bubble” to about 2000 kilometres of the Chinese mainland, which would make it difficult for US surface vessels to get within that area, while the UK would be exposed to Russia.
“The risks to the UK are that, in the short term, we are looking at a trough in availability of [nuclear-powered submarines],” he said.
“There are a couple of immediate implications. The first is that the ability of Russian attack submarines like the Yasen-class to slip through the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap and launch cruise missiles at the European homeland from unexpected vectors will increase exponentially in a context where American assets are reallocated to the Pacific. And the UK, as one of NATO’s two operators of nuclear attack submarines, faces a capacity shortfall.
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“The second challenge is that European, NATO’s independent deterrence … will be at risk if Yasen-class submarines can break into the Atlantic in meaningful numbers.
“So the implications if pillar one of AUKUS does not deliver are quite dire and quite immediate for the UK.”
Australia aims to have five vessels from the early 2040s using the same SSN-AUKUS design as the UK, at a cost of $368 billion over three decades, using nuclear power plants built by Rolls-Royce. Any challenges to the UK timetable will have consequences for Australia because of the shared development, even though the new fleet is meant to be built in South Australia.
Rolls-Royce will receive about $5 billion from Australia over the coming decade to develop the power systems. The company signed agreements with South Australia and Western Australia earlier this month to develop the workforce needed for the project.
The British timetable depends on the country’s ability to build one new submarine every 18 months for the existing fleet – using the Astute and Dreadnought designs – before it can switch to the new fleet when the AUKUS design is decided. Industry experts are worried that each Astute submarine currently takes about 24 months to build.
A US nuclear-powered submarine docks at Rockingham, Western Australia, in March last year.Credit: US Navy
The Pentagon is also concerned about the US capacity to build new submarines at a faster rate, a key factor when it has said it would sell three to five Virginia-class submarines to Australia to fill a capability gap during the wait for the new design.
The review, led by US Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, was announced in June and was initially meant to take 30 days, but it has taken longer and is expected to finish in the northern autumn. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the US administration had assured Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles that the defence pact would continue.
In its submission to the UK inquiry, Make UK Defence called for a “clear, unified, public statement of support” for AUKUS from the three partner countries – a statement lacking while the Pentagon review proceeds.
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