The recent change of guard in the United Kingdom with the Labour Party coming to power after nearly a decade may have consequences in the newly developed AUKUS alliance strategy.
It’s expected that Keir Starmer will continue the policies of the earlier Conservative government when it comes to developing the alliance strategy in the Indo-Pacific along with the United States which includes having the AUKUS co-operation.
The United Kingdom could be regarded as the most unambiguous beneficiary of AUKUS cooperation. The project promises the United Kingdom a critical future submarine capability, continuity of production and Australian investment for their industrial base, access to US technologies, and burden-sharing with partners on cost and workforce challenges.
Though, AUKUS is often spoken of by commentators as an Australia-US alliance project, Australia gains significantly from the United Kingdom’s involvement. The United Kingdom brings to Australia’s AUKUS enterprise its depth of experience in submarine design and construction, major industry players, amplified collective bargaining power in Washington and tangible support for Australia’s vision of a regional balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
Though the newly-elected Labour Party is somewhat sceptical of continuing their conservative predecessors’ so-called Indo-Pacific “tilt” in favour of concerted focus in the Euro-Atlantic, both parties’ commitment to defence industrial ‘levelling up’ and expanded innovation efforts are ample reason to expect the new Starmer government to proceed with the AUKUS optimal pathway as announced.
On the other hand, Australia’s effort to acquire nuclear submarines as a part of the newly formed security alliance involving the United States, United Kingdom and Australia will be a cornerstone of strategic alignment supplanting Quad.
Canberra’s path to building submarines is nothing new and it has been talked about for over a decade despite the change of governments displaying a sense of strategic continuity.
On the first objective, Australia’s former prime minister, Scott Morrison, who negotiated the AUKUS submarine deal, claimed it was necessary to achieve a “credible deterrent” against China, and his successor Anthony Albanese soon agreed. However, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) belied that assertion. It reported that, because the United States would sell Australia three to five existing nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) from the US fleet before the US industrial base could expand to replace them, “the sale of SSNs to Australia would reduce the number of attack submarines available to the [US] Navy.
Second, Morrison declared in 2021 that AUKUS’s “first major initiative” would be to provide Australia with a nuclear-powered submarine fleet. This year, however, Albanese conceded that the still-under-design SSN-AUKUS would not begin delivery to Australia until the 2040s at least. In the meantime, according to RAN Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead’s Senate Estimates testimony in May, Australia expects to receive from the United States by the late 2030s two partially used nuclear submarines and one new one. That may sound like three submarines, but it is illusory. Recent reports reveal that only 63 percent of the US Navy’s submarines are operable in any year, and those that can operate spend only 39 percent of the year at sea. Thus, on average, each US attack submarine is on duty for just 25 percent of the year or three months. This means that even if Australia received its promised three US vessels by the late 2030s, on average the RAN would be able to deploy less than one nuclear submarine at a time. Is that really the “fleet” that Aussies expect for their billions of tax dollars?
In conclusion, the nuclear submarine program will have a far-reaching strategic and operational challenge in the complex geopolitics evolving in the Indo-Pacific region despite the evident change of guard in London and the newly elected Labour Party will continue the path of the earlier right-wing conservative government.
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