Video summary
Five years ago, Australia made a highly secretive and controversial decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines through a trilateral agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom, known as the AUKUS pact. Announced by then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison alongside Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, the deal was framed as a necessary strategic move to counter China's growing military influence in the Indo-Pacific. At the time, the government presented it as a bold leap forward without providing specific details on costs, timelines, or technical specifications, which initially garnered widespread public support even from political opponents. However, experts and analysts have since criticized the lack of transparency and due diligence, noting that such a monumental decision was made by a small group of senior officials with minimal input from naval experts or project managers who understood the complexities of operating nuclear vessels.
As the details emerged over time, significant challenges came to light regarding the feasibility and cost of the project. The initial plan involved abandoning a long-standing contract with France to build conventionally powered submarines, a move driven by concerns over French delays, engineering difficulties in converting their designs, and tensions between Australian and French teams. The projected price tag eventually reached an eye-watering $368 billion, raising serious questions about whether Australia could afford such an investment while maintaining its other defense capabilities. Furthermore, doubts have grown regarding the ability of the United States to deliver Virginia-class submarines due to its own strained submarine production rates, and concerns exist that the UK may struggle to design and build the new Australian boats within the required timeframe, especially given their existing issues with their own nuclear fleet.
The geopolitical landscape has also shifted dramatically since the announcement, complicating the strategic rationale for the pact. While the alliance with the United States was seen as indispensable under the Biden administration, the Trump presidency introduced uncertainty, as his focus on economic rivalry with China rather than strategic cooperation in the Pacific undermined the core premise of supporting US deterrence efforts. Recent actions by the Trump administration, such as scaling back military exercises with allies like South Korea, have further destabilized regional security dynamics and cast doubt on America's long-term commitment to the Indo-Pacific. Consequently, Australia now faces a precarious situation where its aging Collins-class submarines are suffering from corrosion and maintenance delays, creating a potential gap in naval capability if new nuclear submarines are not delivered as promised.
Looking ahead, Australia must grapple with difficult choices regarding its future submarine force structure. There is a real risk that the Collins-class fleet will become non-operational before any new vessels arrive, leaving the nation vulnerable unless it pivots back to conventional submarines or explores other international options like those offered by South Korea or Germany. The debate has evolved from one of strategic necessity to a complex assessment of whether investing billions in nuclear technology makes sense when the primary ally may not be fully committed to the same level of engagement. Ultimately, the AUKUS deal represents a high-stakes gamble that has transformed Australia's defense posture but now requires careful management to ensure national security is not compromised by over-reliance on an unpredictable international partnership and an unproven industrial capacity.
Read the full video transcript
Well, good morning from Australia. I am
very pleased to join two great friends
of freedom.
>> It's 2021 and Australian Prime Minister
Scott Morrison was beamed up on a screen
next to Joe Biden and Boris Johnson.
>> So friends, Orcus is born.
>> AUS, the defense deal between the US,
UK, and Australia is one of the most
significant in our modern history.
The three countries wanted to curb
China's growing military presence in the
Indo-Pacific. And to do it, Australia
was going to get new nuclearpowered
submarines. But in the 5 years since,
it's been anything but smooth sailing.
>> A former prime minister has now slammed
the Orcus submarine deal as a colossal
sacrifice of sovereignty.
>> Orcus has made Australia more reliant,
more dependent on the United States.
There's three bleeders standing there.
Only one is pain.
Elbow.
I'm Justin Bergman, international editor
at the Conversation in Australia, and
this is the Conversation Weekly, where
experts explain how we ended up here.
Today, how the secretive defense pact
was struck and why it's proving so
controversial.
Hugh White, you're a longtime defense
and security analyst at the Australian
National University and author of the
new book Hard New World: Australia's
Post-American Future. Take us back to
the moment 5 years ago this week when
August was first announced. Do you
remember it?
>> Oh yes, quite clearly. I remember
hearing the night before somebody told
me there was going to be a big
announcement the next morning and I sort
of more or less dismissed it because I
wouldn't normally be watching TV at 7:00
in the morning. That's not my lifestyle.
And sure enough, there it was. And I
thought to myself, this is barking mad.
This won't work. But I was very much in
a minority back then. I'm going to say I
was very struck by the style and tone
and the level of the announcement. And I
mean to have something like that
announced by bringing the three heads of
government together not in the same room
but at the same broadcast moment was a
very striking piece of political and
strategic theater.
>> So this deal really came about as a big
surprise and a lot of people at the time
were upset concerned that it was
negotiated in secret. Isn't that right?
>> Certainly people were staggered that
such a big thing could be kept so secret
until the moment of announcement. The
idea was very much cooked up by a very
small group of people at very senior
levels who more or less by definition
didn't know much about submarines.
And so it was a a very unusual example
of a very big decision being made with
almost no expert input from the people
who really knew about these things. And
I don't just mean the navy and the
submarine operators, but the project
managers and the people who understood
what operating nuclearpowered submarines
might mean and all of that. So I think
the the price that was paid for the
secrecy was what I think historians
would judge was a a very sketchy very
sketchy job of analysis and assessment
and you might say due diligence of the
issues that were going to be involved.
>> What was in the deal then that they
announced that day? What details did we
know
>> in 2021? It was just Australia's going
to get nuclearpowered submarines. We're
going to cooperate with the British and
the Americans to get nuclearpowered
submarines. Full stop. End of story.
That was it. We intend to build these
submarines in Adelaide, Australia, in
close cooperation with the United
Kingdom and the United States. It was
brought forward with so little detail.
It's important to remember that the
Orcus as we know it now was not the
Orcus that was announced in 2021 because
back then there was no idea of what
submarines we were going to buy. There
was no idea of whether it was going to
be British or American. There was no
timeline. There was no price. And there
was no understanding of how the
transition from the Collins to the Orcus
submarines was going to be managed. But
one thing the government was very firm
on back then was that there wouldn't
need to be an interim boat that that we
could move straight from the Collins
class submarines straight to a new class
of nuclearpowered submarines. The whole
project looked in a sense because there
were no details, it was easier to sign
up to because there weren't so many
obvious snags to criticize. Now once we
saw the subsequent announcement in March
of 2023 of what they call the optimum
pathway then that began to bring people
to understand what a complex process
this was going to be how difficult it
was going to be to manage and of course
it was only in March of 2023 that we got
the price tag. The security deal quickly
caught the eye of China and it comes
with an eyewatering price tag $368
billion. And I think people then started
asking a whole lot of different
questions.
What's this going to do to the rest of
their force structure? Can these
submarines be delivered? Can the United
States actually provide us with the
Virginia class submarines that the plan
proposed? And can the British produce
the boat that we're meant to be building
with them in the 2040s? in all of those
questions have now loomed very large
>> and Australia already had a submarine
deal with France at the time. Right.
>> Yeah, that's right. I mean, part and
parcel of the decision to go with Orcitz
was to abandon the contract we'd signed
with the French to build 12
conventionally powered versions of their
nuclearpowered attack submarines, what
was going to be called the attack class.
And this was a huge deal. Australia had
made a great play of what a significant
thing it was for us to be working with
France to develop these capabilities.
And one of the reasons for the secrecy
was not just to keep it so to speak from
the Australian public but to prevent the
French from knowing and I think there
was genuine concern that they might try
and make an end run around it and you
know block it happening in some way. But
also I think you know politicians do
love to spring surprises and I think it
made a big difference to the impact that
the Orcus announcement had particularly
domestically here in Australia that it
came as such a bolt from the blue and it
was in many ways the biggest most
radical force structure decision
capability decision Australia had made
in the post-war era perhaps ever
actually cuz you know the idea of
acquiring nuclearpowered submarines was
such a radical departure from where we'd
been before and I think part of what was
going on was the government was eager to
enjoy the political theater of springing
this coup on an unsuspecting public. And
I think it worked in a sense that the
initial response to the announcement in
Australia was overwhelmingly positive
even amongst many people who you'd
expect to be very critical of it
including of course the Labour Party.
>> And so at the time why was this deemed
so necessary?
>> Well that's a really interesting
question. I think there were three
factors involved. The first is the
government was becoming very conscious
of deep problems with the French
submarine project. The the idea that we
should take a a perfectly good
nuclearpowered submarine that had been
designed and built by France and was
already in service and take the reactor
out and put a conventional power plant,
diesel engines and and electrical
generators and batteries into the
submarine, which sort of sounds simple
when you put it like that, but in fact
is an enormously complicated engineering
task. And it was becoming clear by 2021
just how challenging this was going to
be. There was also real concerns about
how serious the French were about
Australian industry involvement, about
whether they could stick to the
timeline. And I think there were also
quite a few tensions between the French
designers who not surprisingly thought
they knew exactly how to design
submarines and didn't need much advice
from Australia and the Australian team
that was very keen to be as actively
involved as possible. Then on top of
that we have to think about the
strategic circumstances. This all
happened during co times and that was a
special time in all sorts of ways but
this was the era in which the government
in CRA first really started to talk
about how seriously our strategic
circumstances had deteriorated. It was
on the 1st of July 2020 that Scott
Morrison as prime minister had launched
a new defense strategic update which had
for the first time used a formulation
which has now become a kind of a a
mantra on both sides of politics and
that is that we face the worst strategic
circumstances since the second world
war. We have not seen
the conflation of global economic and
strategic uncertainty now being
experienced here in Australia in our
region since the existential threat we
faced when the global and regional order
collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s.
>> And this became a really big deal. It
was a very radical thing for governments
to say. And the second bit of context
there is of course that we went through
that period under Morrison starting in
2020 when our relationships with China
really fell into a very deep hole. So I
think in that context as the government
looked at how they dealt with the
problems they were seeing in the French
project they were eager to find a way to
demonstrate that they were really taking
this decline in Australia strategic
circumstances seriously and prepared to
do a big thing in response to it. And
the third part of course is that they
were looking for ways to build up the
relationship with the United States as
part of that. And I think there was a
very strong determination which had gone
back some way, you know, all the way
back to President Obama's announcement
of the pivot in 2011, the beginning of
US rotational deployments of US forces
to Australia.
>> Today I can stand before you and say
with confidence that the alliance
between the United States and Australia
has never been stronger. it has been to
our past.
Our alliance continues to be
indispensable to our future.
>> There was a general agenda of wanting to
do more and more with the United States
in the context of facing a bigger
challenge from China and Orcus I think
or the idea of acquiring nuclearpowered
submarines working with the United
States and the United Kingdom really
gave a framework in which that could
happen.
The last bit of context that one
shouldn't overlook is that there was an
election looming. When the announcement
was made in September 2021, the 2022
election was, so to speak, just over the
hill. And I think we'd be very naive not
to imagine that Morrison and his
colleagues thought carefully about how
the politics of this would play out. I
think there was very likely a view that
Labour would find it very hard to agree
to Orcus and therefore by announcing
Orcus and making such a spectacular
fanfare of it, they would put Labour in
the very awkward position of not being
able to agree with it but not wanting to
disagree with it because it would make
them look weak on their alliance. They
may have underestimated just how
ruthlessly determined Albanzy turned out
to be to prevent anything getting in the
way of a successful campaign in 2022,
which as history now knows prompted
Labour on the basis of very little
information indeed very quickly to come
out and express a very strong support
for it. I think that was a very fateful
decision on their part. But if we think
of the context in which that the
announcement was first made, I think the
that domestic political context with a
looming election was a very significant
part of it.
After the break, what's the likelihood
Australia will even receive the
submarines?
Hi, I'm Anna Walker, host of a new
podcast called Jane Austin's Paper
Trail. from the conversation.
From a scandal-filled bun shop in Bath
to a windswept walk along the cob in
Lime Reges and even a glittering Regency
ball, we've traveled around England to
bring Jane Austin's world to life
through interviews with today's foremost
Austin experts. Listen to Jane Austin's
paper trail wherever you get your
podcasts.
Hugh, 5 years on, it seems like public
opinion in Australia is turning on AUS.
There's new polling from the University
of Sydney that shows that less than a
quarter of Australians believe the
government has properly explained the
rationale for it. Does this surprise
you?
>> No, it doesn't. I think it was always
very likely that support for Ocus would
fall away as the difficulties and
realities of the project became clearer.
When the announcement was first made, it
was in a sense too big to disagree with.
And that was easy because there was so
little known about it. You couldn't
criticize the price. You couldn't say,
"Oh, well, is this the right submarine
for Australia?" You couldn't raise all
the issues that people are now focused
on because the facts just weren't there.
Now, what we know is that there are real
doubts about whe the United States is
going to be in a position to deliver
Virginia class submarines to Australia
because it's having so much trouble
building enough to meet its own navy's
needs. There are real doubts about
whether the United Kingdom can design,
build, bring into service the Orcus
class submarine in the time frame it has
to do to meet our requirements because
it has so much else going on including
it's having such problem with its
existing class of nuclearpowered
submarines. It also must like the United
States give priority over the next
decade to building new ballistic missile
firing submarines also nuclearpowered
even bigger even more complicated. And
so, you know, as the time has passed,
the challenges that both the Americans
and the British are going to face and
and these challenges becoming more
clearly explained within the British and
US system, uh, the US Congressional
Research Service, for example, and US
senior naval officers acknowledging that
the present build rate of submarines in
the US uh, yards, about 1.2 two
submarines a year is about half of
what's required for the Americans to be
able to deliver enough submarines for
them to have any spares to give to us.
And that rate hasn't improved. Likewise,
you know, the British parliamentary
systems issued reports that highlight
how badly the British submarine nuclear
submarine industry is going and how
difficult it's going to be for them even
to keep their presence submarines in
service, let alone build the new
ballistic missile firing submarines and
then create the Orcus boats. And so, the
more we've learned, the more uncertain
it's become that we're actually going to
get these submarines.
I think the other thing that's really
added to uncertainty is the fact that
right at the heart of AUS is the idea
that we should be equipping ourselves to
align ourselves more closely with the
United States as the United States
pushes back against China's challenge
and seeks to deter China from
challenging the US position in the
Western Pacific. And that was something
that was relatively easy to go along
with under Joe Biden. But under Donald
Trump, of course, that becomes a much
harder story to tell because Trump is
very clearly just not interested in
preserving America's role in the Western
Pacific. He's very interested in
economic rivalry with China, but he's
not interested in strategic rivalry. And
for example, um just the other day he
announced that he was going to scale
back a major exercise with South Korea.
The US president accused Seoul of
refusing to take part in action against
Iran, announcing America's plans to cail
exercises.
>> We can't go around and protect all of
these countries, especially when they're
not there to help us.
>> These sorts of things very much
destabilize
uh countries in Asia and raise real
questions about whether America is
really serious about preserving its role
here. And that of course undermines the
really fundamental rationale for orcas
which is that providing Australia with
nuclearpowered submarines will increase
our capacity to support the United
States as the United States responds uh
to China's challenge.
And then of course finally there's the
question of the price. Now nobody really
knows where the $368 billion which is
the figure the government's used really
means anything. But what we do know is
that nuclearpowered submarines are
incredibly expensive and complex to
build and operate and this is going to
make a huge impact on the rest of the
defense budget. Now, the government
talks a lot about increasing the defense
budget, but in fact, defense spending is
not increasing that fast and certainly
not increasing nearly fast enough to
allow Australia to spend the massive
sums we're already spending on orcas and
still maintain all the other
capabilities that the ADF need. So I
think when you add all of these things
together, I'm not surprised that public
opinion has become more skeptical,
particularly because the government has
found it very hard to explain really why
nuclearpowered submarines are so much
better for Australia than the old
conventionally powered submarines.
>> Where does this leave Australia now with
a deal that's going to span the lives of
many US presidents, not just Donald
Trump? What does this mean for the
future?
>> Well, I think there's a couple of really
important angles here. The first is I
think it raises very serious questions
about the future of Australia's
submarine capability because our Colin
submarines are getting old.
>> It's been revealed only one of
Australia's six Collins class submarines
currently in service as the nation's
naval capabilities are hampered by
corrosion, maintenance delays, and
industrial strikes.
>> For a long time, there's been a plan to
extend their lives, which is a very
difficult and complex process. You take
the submarine apart. You look at all all
the bits and pieces within it. You see
which ones are wearing out and work out
how to replace them. If that sounds like
a bit of a nightmare, it is from a
project management and engineering point
of view. Successive governments delayed
the the commencement of the life of
extension because it was looking so
complicated. The government's now
announced that it's going to go ahead
but going to be in a very scaledback
way. And so our capacity to keep the
Collins class submarines operational and
at sea is getting weaker. At the same
time as the risk that the Americans, for
the reasons we touched on earlier, might
not be able to deliver the Virginia is
getting stronger and the chances that
the British will be able to deliver the
Orcus boats uh or at least the design
for the Orcus boats for us to build them
in Australia, that's very uncertain. And
so there's a real prospect that the
Collins class submarines will simply run
out of service life before we have any
new submarines available. There's a real
question about what Australia should do
about that. And one option is that we
should turn around and go back to trying
to buy conventional submarines. Either
go back to France and say, "Sorry, it
was all a misunderstanding. Please, can
we have our submarines back?" Or to go
somewhere else. Both the South Koreans
and the Germans are in this market. So
that's the first big question. And
whether or not if we do lose our
submarine capability, we should try and
replace them with new submarines or in
fact just accept that that's not going
to work for us and look for other ways
to do the same things.
you know, was very much a a symbol of
Australia's commitment to supporting the
United States. Well, now I think
particularly under Donald Trump, it's
clear that actually the United States is
not serious about that. So whether or
not it makes sense for Australia to
invest so much money, take such huge
risks in order to build uh
nuclearpowered submarines, in order to
support the United States in doing
something the United States is not
serious about doing. Those are the
really big questions we face today.
>> Thanks, Hugh. This has been wonderful
talking to you. Really appreciate it.
It's a great pleasure. Thanks, Justin.
>> That's it for this week's episode of The
Conversation Weekly. Read more from Hugh
White and his take on the August debate
at the conversation.com.
We'll also put a link to his articles in
our show notes. This week's episode was
written by me, Justin Bergman. Isabella
Podwinsky was the executive producer.
Sound mixing is by Dan Simo and our
theme music is by Nita Sorl. Gemma Wear
is head of audio. Ashlin McGee is the
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Thanks for listening.