Is AUKUS Delivering on Its Promise?

Good day. I'm Charles Eidell, senior adviser in Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Nearly 5 years ago this month, the leaders of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States appeared together and announced a new security partnership that got the world's attention. Almost nobody knew about this partnership outside of a small group of officials even as they were forming it. They called it AUS. Nearly a half decade on seems an appropriate moment to take stock to examine the original intent of AUS, but also look at where it's been, how it's changed as it's developed, and critically ask whether or not it's delivering on its original intent. Here at CSIS, we've developed a number of charts that will help us with that stock taking. Think of it as the who, the what, the where, the when, and the why behind AUS. To walk through those charts, I'd like to turn it over to my colleagues, John Olstrom, who recently retired from the US Navy and has just joined the CSIS Australia Ter as an adjunct fellow, and Angelina Bruno, an economist with Reserve Bank of Australia, who's currently working with us as a thie fellow. Angelina John, over to you. >> In the early stages of this partnership, AUS primarily existed on paper, an amalgam of good ideas that had yet to take form. Today, the AUS partners have found their cadence, moved beyond planning, and are putting real steel behind the vision. AUS made its public debut on September 15, 2021, announced by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and President Joe Biden. Between then and now, the mantle of leadership for this endeavor has changed hands several times. Nine administrations to put a number to it. Today, AUC is under the purview of prime ministers Anthony Albanesei and Andy Bham and President Donald Trump. In each country, AUS has gone through challenging reviews. Reviews that asked tough questions to ensure the partnership was delivering as intended and emerged stronger with each pass. The very heart of AUS is deterrence whether through conventionally armed nuclearpowered submarines or advanced defense technology development and its deterrent effects is the lens that AUS should be evaluated against. Augustus Pillar 1 is an audacious undertaking. The centerpiece of AUS is building something Australia has never had. A sovereign, conventionally armed, nuclearpowered submarine capability with the United States and United Kingdom, supplying technology, the training, and initially the submarines themselves. Sovereign capability means Australia isn't just buying submarines. It has to be able to own, operate, maintain, regulate, and eventually build them itself. Pillar one is the nuclearpowered submarine line of effort. The arrangement that transfers naval nuclear propulsion technology to Australia making it the seventh nation and first non-nuclear weapon state to operate SSNs. Its execution plan the optimal pathway announced in March 2023 unfolds in three phases. The first phase running from 2023 is a training and uplift phase. Australian officers and enlisted sailors embedded in the US and UK schools and submarines. Australian civilians embedded in partner nuclear shipyards. All alongside increased US and UK SSN port visits and maintenance activity at HMAS Sterling in Western Australia alongside significant infrastructure buildout and the standup of an independent naval nuclear propulsion regulator. Phase one also includes the launch of submarine rotational force west as early as next year with the rotational presence at HMAS Sterling of up to four US Virginia class submarines and one UK astute class submarine. The efforts of phase 1 directly support Australia's readiness for phase 2 which focuses on the development and start of a sovereign SSN capability starting in the early 2030s. Subject to US congressional certification is the sale of the first of three inservice Virginia class submarines to Australia. Phase 3 is generally known as SSN, the common UK designed US technology enabled submarine built in both Barrow in Scotland and Osborne in South Australia with the first British boat expected in the late 2030s and the first Australianbuilt boat in the early 2040s. Pillar 2 is the other half of August, the part that isn't about submarines. It's a standing arrangement among the three partners to develop and field advanced capabilities together. Undersea warfare, autonomy and artificial intelligence, quantum, advanced cyber, electronic warfare, and hypersonics and counter hypersonics. For the first several years, most of the work was to reform the export controls so engineers could actually talk to each other and build machinery to run trilateral programs. That ground work is now paying off. In May, the three defense ministers named the first pillar 2 signature project, payloads and enabling systems for uncrrewed undersea vehicles with deliveries starting next year. The AA submarine chain links Australian construction and basing sites to established US Navy support infrastructure. On this map, you can see there are around 8,000 nautical miles of open ocean between San Diego and Perth. That vast distance highlights one of the significant advantages found in August pillar 1. With nuclearpowered submarines, distance is less of a consideration in what is achievable. If you compare this to a conventional diesel-powered submarine, fuel becomes a significant factor in the submarine's ability to conduct sustained operations away from home port. This chart also highlights the unique uh nuclear submarine maintenance ecosystem across the Pacific and exemplifies the strategic nature of HMAS Sterling in this capacity. It is important to look at nuclear sustainment capability in different locations like San Diego, Banger and Pearl Harbor. Long distances sustain sustain a submarine distances which would prove challenging in the event of a conflict in the Pacific. This brings us to Henderson, just south of Perth, where Australia, with support of British and American partners, is building an intermediate nuclear maintenance capability that allows Perth to service submarines itself rather than sending them back across the Pacific. Angelina, over to you. >> Thanks, John. So on rawar submarine counts the largest fleets three largest fleets United States, China and Russia are close in size but composition is really important here. In particular the breakdown between nuclear and conventionally powered submarines. Currently there are around 60 submarines for each of the three largest fleets United States, China and Russia. Most of China's fleet is still conventionally powered. In contrast, the American and British fleets are entirely nuclear, built to operate a long way from home for a long time, and those are tools for different jobs. More importantly, that composition is changing quickly. China launched three nuclearpowered submarines in 2025 and is intending to expand its nuclear attack and cruise missile force in coming years. Orcus is designed to maintain the West's advantage in nuclearpowered submarines. At its core, Orcus is a numbers game, not just of numbers of submarines, but the funding commitments to enable Orcus to progress and the personnel required to make it a success. With regard to funding, the three governments account for defense spending slightly differently and over different time horizons. But the chart on the left communicates the sheer scale of forward committed spending reflecting decadesl long build programs. The chart on the right shows the additional personnel each country has announced it needs for submarine con submarine con construction sustainment and support. Again, these time horizons differ because each government is sizing its workforce to meet both national requirements and orcus commitments. But the scale is the key point. This is a very large amount of skilled labor that will need to be recruited and trained over many decades. And this map shows the range of diplomatic responses to Orcus today. Overall, there has been broad support for and little opposition to ORCUS. Support largely tracks countries with direct exposure to Chinese maritime pressure, including South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, as well as treaty partners, including Canada, Germany, and New Zealand. The initial reactions in 2021 at the announcement were noticeably cooler, particularly from some Southeast Asian and Pacific Pacific countries, Pacific Island countries. Since then, sustained engagement by the three partners foreign ministries has improved regional understanding of what Orcus is and what it is for. And that includes the distinction between nuclear propulsion and nuclear weapons and greater confidence in the non-prololiferation arrangements around it. Poor visits by US Virginia class and British astute class submarines to Western Australia have contributed as well making the program tangible rather than a hypothetical. So I'll pass back to John now. >> Thanks Angelina. It's important to remember that AUS in many ways is both a sprint and a marathon. The partners are sprinting on each vital line of effort. But when you step back, you immediately see that this is a long-term effort. Over the coming years, we will look for growth in submarine industrial-based workforces, sustained and significant financial commitments, sustainment and production improvements in national submarine programs, the arrival of the first US Virginia class submarine at HMAS Sterling, and many other critical metrics and milestones.