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.