Submarines in Cockburn Sound

Los Angeles class USS Santa Fe (SSN 763) joins Royal Australian Navy Collins Class Submarines HMAS Collins, HMAS Farncomb, HMAS Dechaineux and HMAS Sheean in the West Australian Exercise Area in February 2019. (RAN LSIS Richard Cordell)

SYDNEY and SIMI VALLEY, Calif. —  Rep. Rob Wittman, one of the most powerful defense lawmakers on Capitol Hill, sent a shot across the bow this weekend at anyone who thinks the solution to getting Australia new nuclear attack subs is simply to have America make them.

“There’s been a lot of talk about well, the Australians would just buy a US submarine. That’s not going to happen,” Wittman, currently the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee, told Breaking Defense in a Saturday interview. The issue, he said, is that the US cannot afford to interupt its own submarine buy: “I just don’t see how we’re going to build a submarine and sell it to Australia during that time.”

That unequivocal statement from Wittman makes clear the speculation that America would sell Australia a Los Angeles or Virginia class sub to get them going until the Lucky Country can build and deploy its own nuclear-powered attack submarine as part of the AUKUS agreement between Australia, the UK and the US will face serious headwinds in Congress. Ahead of those meetings, Australian Minister of Defence Richard Marles met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin today at the Pentagon.

The comments were made just days before the Dec. 6 Australia–US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) meetings between the foreign and defense ministers of the US and Australia. The first meeting of the Australian, UK and US defense ministers to discuss AUKUS are also scheduled for this week.

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Marcus Hellyer, defense procurement expert at the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said Wittman was expressing some simple truths about the difficulties Australia faces.

“The US doesn’t have spare submarines it can sell to Australia, and it won’t have them anytime soon. Giving Australia submarines that the USN needs, particularly when its own numbers are declining or at best flat-lining, is just not an option that the US political leadership will consider,” Hellyer said. “Ultimately, Australia will have to learn to build SSNs if it wants them, but what exactly ‘build’ looks like is still very unclear.”

Wittman did offer what he called a “creative” path forward.

“We’ve got to get Australian submariners or Australian shipbuilders here to the United States for a full build cycle, get them to HII to Electric Boat, have them there through a full build cycle for a submarine so that they know what it entails,” the veteran lawmaker told Breaking Defense on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum.

Then, “What I believe the [US] Navy needs to do is, to say [when Australia’s] Collins class finishes the end of its lifecycle, we are going to, in the next Virginia class that’s built, designate that to the Australian AOR. And we’re going to dual-crew it with Australian sailors and US sailors. And we’re going to dual-command it with mission planning with Australian forces and US forces. So it’ll be a submarine that operates in their AOR like an Australian submarine. It won’t belong to Australia, but it’ll still be an asset that they have that element of control with. And I think that we can do that.”

That would seem to pose a host of legal and policy difficulties, especially given what such sensitive and powerful assets nuclear-powered attack submarines are. But Wittman said he “thinks” it can be done.

“It may be that the US needs to have 51% control and command and Australia has 49%. But still, there’s nothing that prevents it from saying it’s going to operate in the Australian AOR, and we’re going to consult with Australians on mission planning and the things that it does,” the lawmaker said. “Listen, in an emergency, it will come back to the United States. But if it’s an emergency, the Australians are probably going to want the United States to be able to have that.”

Hellyer predicted if such a plan went forward, both country’s navies would find it difficult to accept what are essentially calculated losses of sovereign control. But, he said, “Traditional views of sovereignty and sovereign capability are kind of irrelevant at this point.”

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“The stepping stone to an Australian SSN capability is going to have to involve some new and creative approaches to operating capabilities that are very different from the traditional ‘sovereign’ capability approach. This involves not just joint crewing, but some kind of shared command arrangement — something quite foreign to Australia’s traditional practice,” Hellyer said in an email. He pointed to NATO’s experience with nuclear weapons, where allies “will deliver US nuclear weapons to American forces,” which requires shared command and control of the assets and of determining the process by which they are moved.

Wittman cautioned that Australia must build the nuclear boats in Australia, which has been the goal of AUKUS since it was formed. “I don’t think anybody knows how quickly they can put together that capability,” he admitted. “But I do know that, at the very least if their shipbuilders are here, if their sailors are here, then it will still be a platform that is jointly built with the Australians. So I think that they can do that.”

In the long run, Wittman appeared optimistic that Australia will train crews and build their own nuclear-powered boats: “And I do think the Aussies will get there.”