Down Under On Nuclear Power - AUKUS and its impact on the Royal Navy
The Royal Australian Navy will operate nuclear submarines provided
initially by the United States and then in a joint design with the Royal Navy.
This extremely positive and very exciting news was the upshot of the meeting between
leaders from all three nations in San Diego this week, confirming that the
AUKUS security arrangement is one of the most forward leaning and exciting
developments of recent years. Much will be written on this topic for many years
to come, but the overall plan seems to boil down into three core phases. Joint
presence and operations in Australia by US and British SSN’s from the mid 2020s,
followed by Australia taking nuclear submarines to sea for the first time in
the early 2030s, using US VIRGINIA class hulls. At some point in the late 2030s
to early 2040s the RAN will roll out their own indigenous SSN capability
jointly designed with the UK.
The aspiration on display here is, frankly, stunning. In a
relatively short timescale the RAN will go from being an operator of conventional
boats to being ‘underway on nuclear power’. The timelines are not dissimilar to
the experience of the Royal Navy, which achieved agreement with the US in the mid-1950s
to provide a Skipjack derived reactor and machinery system and then commissioned
the first submarine HMS DREADNOUGHT in 1963 – a gap of some 7 years. With the
current timeline in place for the delivery of the VIRGINIA hulls, a not dissimilar
period of time will elapse for the RAN before it too becomes a nuclear submarine
operator.
![]() |
Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023. |
The timelines sound long term –for example the delivery of
SSN hulls for Australia in the late 2030s – in fact this is pretty tight as far
as it goes in warship design. To get an entirely new design completed, laid
down and constructed and then delivered to both the RN and RAN in barely
15years is going to be hard work. This will be the first time any nations have
developed a joint SSN design – all previous nuclear submarines have been
developed as purely national products.
To get this to the stage where the design is agreed and under
construction, both in the UK and Australia will require a lot of work and
investment. While achievable it does point to how when it comes to major
defence projects, nations need to think in generational terms.
For the UK and Royal Navy in particular this deal is both a huge
opportunity and a political albatross around the neck for planners and politicians
alike. In terms of the opportunity, it helps ensure that the Indo-Pacific tilt remains
a key part of policy makers plans and that the armed forces will play a
genuinely meaningful part in the region. If you look to the late 2020s then the
likely Royal Navy force laydown in the Indo-Pacific may consist of OPVs, Type
31 Frigates, a potential littoral response group onboard RFA ARGUS / LSD(A), an
SSN operating out of Australia and periodic carrier battle group deployments.
From a baseline of zero permanent presence in 2020, the RN is well on the way
to becoming one of the most capable naval powers in the Indo-Pacific region,
which will help thicken links not just to Australia and the US, but also Japan
and other partner nations.
This presence will play a key role in helping build an international
coalition to deter acts of aggression by hostile states like China, which seems
increasingly bent on acting in a manner that is at odds with international
standards. The increasing levels of aggression shown by Chinese forces and the menace
and threats made to both free nations like Taiwan and states within the wider region
act as a reminder that we must stand up collectively to Chinese bullying and
aggression, or potentially pay an awful price for standing idly by.
In industrial terms this deal is also superb news for the UK shipbuilding industry which will now see a long term guaranteed workflow into the nuclear shipbuilding programme, as well as seeing Australia operate the Type 26 frigate as well. For both defence policy makers and the defence industry, there is the prospect of good times ahead as a result of AUKUS. But what is the potential cost?
Hints that the Royal Navy may double its SSN force up to
potentially 19 boats should be seen as little more than wishful thinking by people
not best placed to make such decisions. Were the RN to go down this road it
would mean fundamentally reshaping the entire structure of the navy and
recruiting thousands of extra submariners – such a move would be ruinously
expensive and come at the cost of sacrifices across Defence to pay for it – it is
hard to see such plans emerging. What is possible though is that over time a
slight build up in the SSN force from 7 hulls may be factored in to ensure
availability in both the Indo-Pacific and home waters.
In the medium term the RN will face a big challenge of
trying to keep an SSN deployed (along with its crew and supporting services) in
Australia while still keeping up with its commitments to other military tasks,
ranging from supporting the deterrent to Perisher training and listening out
for ‘magma displacement’ in very cold waters. While the deployment will be a
very positive retention boost for the crew involved, it will place strain on
the force to support this. There is a big difference between a planned
deployment where you pop in and out of ports before returning home and using a
foreign nation as a base port for a sustained period. It will be interesting to
see if the RN logistics and supply chain (as well as associated pressure on other
areas like the strategic airlift needed to fly parts and people across) can
support this deployment without compromising other areas.
There is also the matter of ensuring that Australia doesn’t prove
too tempting a destination for the submariners. The Australian Armed Forces
have a long history of relying on personnel from the UK and other nations to
fill out posts in a second career, mostly through offering a very attractive
recruitment and retention package – they look after their people in a way that
the UK does not, and it is easy to see why so many skilled British personnel
take on second careers in Australia. There will need to be some carefully
thought through ‘no poaching’ deals put in place to prevent cannibalisation of
people structures between the two forces otherwise there may be challenges in
crewing these vessels.
![]() |
Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023. |
The wider challenge is that the move to signing up to AUKUS
and this longer term provision of support has essentially bound the UK for the
long haul to the Indo-Pacific tilt. The Australian government has committed to investing
billions in the UK nuclear industry to help ensure the capacity exists to
produce the reactors needed for their submarines. Future UK governments will see
AUKUS as the commitment necessary to maintain good relations with the US, which
is likely to place heavy pressure on the UK to not scale back or renege on its
plans to support the Australian capability. In practical terms this means that
the UK has now entered into a decades long naval partnership with Australia to design,
produce and operate nuclear submarines, which will be both incredibly capable
and also incredibly expensive. An article in the Times on Sat 18 March
estimated that the cost of the defence nuclear enterprise over the next 10 years
is roughly £60bn – or 25% of planned defence procurement spending. As budget pressure
continues to build, knowing that a large amount of funding is ringfenced to
support the nuclear submarine capability will prove frustrating to budget
planners grappling with major financial woes.
Extracting from AUKUS or scaling back from it may prove to
be more expensive than continuing it, and would cause huge damage to bilateral
relationships with Australia and the USA. In addition it is clear that moving
forward the days of the Anglo-American relationship being uniquely close are gone
forever – ‘Three Eyes’ is the future. The US sees the key threats to its
security as coming from the Pacific and it will do whatever is necessary to stay
secure. AUKUS is one part of this, ensuring additional very close and very
trusted allies are brought in and operate together to deter Chinese aggression.
Already it is clear that Australian influence in Washington
is growing exponentially – they are the right ally in the right neighbourhood
at the right time. They offer space, basing and access and a willingness to
house US forces as needed. Couple this with exceptional armed forces and very
capable intelligence and diplomatic services and add in the SSN equation and
suddenly Canberra becomes a logical top of the ‘capitals to call in a crisis’
list. For London there needs to be an understanding that dining out on the
legacy of WW2 and the Cold War will only go so far – to be relevant in Washington
and continue to ensure that the UK enjoys the privileged influence and access that
at times, it could be argued, it has rather lazily taken for granted, then it
needs to commit to AUKUS in a big way and show it is serious about funding Defence
and the commitments AUKUS will generate. Candidly some UK military personnel already
feel Australia is taken more seriously and seen as a more credible partner than
the UK by the USA – they point to the growing level of engagement and exercises
that even the UK isn’t going to, and the ongoing sense that Australia takes
Defence seriously. Given that even after the uplift to Defence spending this week,
the MOD is likely to need to make absolutely enormous defence cuts to balance
off their books until the next spending review, it is not hard to see why Washington
is taking Canberra seriously – unlike London, they can credibly talk and walk
the defence spending walk.
AUKUS is a good news story, but it is one that binds
successors to its activity for decades to come. The question will be asked
whether it is a defence pact or an outcome that supports highly paid industrial
jobs in NW England and the wider defence nuclear shipbuilding sector for its
long term survival. Like it or not the UK is now bound to the treaty and its
outputs and while this is good for security, it also poses challenges too. The challenge
ahead for the UK is to ensure it does not become a bit player in AUKUS while
also preventing it from dominating commitments to the extent of becoming a
funding albatross.
History has a strange way of repeating itself, the choices
facing the UK today about engagement in the Indo-Pacific versus deterring Russia
in Europe and how to retain nuclear capability and build and invest in modern
armed forces are eerily similar to those of the 1960s. There are competing visions
of how the UK can commit to global security and play an appropriate part in the
coming years, but it is strange to see how much history is repeating itself.
Whether the Whitehall policy makers and decision takers have learned the lessons
of history though remain to be seen…
This article is dedicated to the memory of Rear
Admiral James Goldrick RAN, who passed away on 17 March 2023. He was a man
who passionately believed in seapower and the people who make it possible, and
who made anyone who he met or engaged with feel that they were special and mattered.
The exciting future of the RAN as a truly global blue water navy is in no small
part due to his actions throughout his career. A true officer, gentleman, and
thinker, he will be deeply missed by all that knew him.
A fine article Jim..Spot On
ReplyDelete