American submarines being driven by Australians

OPINION:

Winston Churchill once quipped that the United States and the United Kingdom are two great nations separated by a common language. How would he characterize the Australia-United Kingdom-United States alliance, known as AUKUS, today? Perhaps he would expand on the original quote and note that they are three great countries united by a common defense but separated by uncommon spelling.

On Sept. 15, 2021, Australia surprised the world by announcing that it would acquire nuclear submarines from the U.S. and the U.K. after canceling a significant contract with France. Australia has a fleet of six diesel-electric submarines that it had intended to replace with newer conventionally powered French submarines. Less than three weeks before the AUKUS announcement, the Australian government publicly renewed its support for the procurement of the French submarines.

The submarine community — the silent service — is arguably our military’s silver bullet. Nuclear propulsion technology remains one of our best-kept secrets, and few would have predicted that the U.S. would extend its submarine technology beyond the U.K., our greatest ally.

The American submarine program is characterized by a history of innovation. Less than two decades after the splitting of the atom, the USS Nautilus broadcast “Underway on Nuclear Power” on Jan. 17, 1955. Few would have predicted that the cantankerous Hyman Rickover, who would later rise to the rank of four-star admiral, would overcome blatant antisemitism at the Naval Academy to deliver one of the greatest contributions to American naval supremacy.

Australia’s purchase of American submarines was surprising for a number of reasons. Australia has not expressed interest in a nuclear economy despite being one of the leading suppliers of uranium to the global market. As a military matter, the purchase of the submarines represents an extraordinary investment since a nuclear submarine program requires a large industrial and technological footprint. As a security matter, having nuclear submarines does not allow Australia to escape China’s fury, which includes nuclear weapons.

But in retrospect, the purchase makes sense. The day after the announcement, then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that this “is not a change of mind, it’s a change of need.” Two salient events caused the Aussies to confront the reality of a bellicose China. In 2020 and 2021, Australians had the temerity to ask where the COVID-19 virus originated and to demand that Australia’s internal communications capabilities exclude any Huawei components.

In obvious retaliation, China launched a campaign of economic coercion and employed its famed “wolf warrior” tactics against Australia. Australia’s civilizational partners are literally an ocean away. Still, China is within what the Australians consider the bookends of their neighborhood, with China to the north and India to the west. In retrospect, the only answer for the Aussies was the acquisition of nuclear submarines, which enabled long-duration deployments with the necessary stealth to counter the Chinese navy. Some Australian Ministry of Defence members have lobbied for nuclear submarines since the 1990s.

For the United States, too, what had been a surprise now looks like an inevitability. Americans might consider Ukraine and Taiwan — with both being targeted by authoritarian regimes bent on revanchist claims, both of which are of strategic interest to the West.

The geographic differences, however, demonstrate how radically different the two cases are and why the AUKUS deal was inevitable. In Europe, we have forces that are already forward deployed and can defend allied territory at any time. By contrast, our ability to defend Taiwan, the gateway to containing a Chinese blue water navy, requires air and naval forces to project power over the vast expanse of the terribly misnamed Pacific Ocean. Such power projection may require days or weeks to surmount the tyranny of distance.

Put simply, we require more capability forward deployed in the western Pacific to meet the security threat. Royal Australian Navy nuclear submarines bring significant military capabilities into the theater. Indeed, Australian sailors have already been trained in U.S. nuclear submarine schools. To them and their future mates, we welcome our newest nuclear submariners with the naval blessing “Fair Winds and Following Seas.”

• David S. Jonas is a partner at Fluet in Tysons, Virginia. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown and George Washington University law schools. Patrick Rhoads leads the nuclear research efforts at the National Strategic Research Institute. These are the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of any organization which they have been or are now affiliated.