There were never the sharpest negotiators in the room, resembling a facsimile of Bertie Wooster in desperate need of the good advice of his manservant Jeeves. The Australian defence establishment has yet to find a wise head who will finally tell them that the A$368 billion AUKUS pact between the three Anglophone powers of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States has only one oversized beneficiary in mind.
While the Australian treasury gets drained in throwing cash at US naval yards in acts of stealthy proliferation for Washington’s military industrial complex (A$1.6 billion has so far been forked out), it is becoming increasingly clear that a good gaggle of officials and lawmakers have no appetite to either relinquish Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines (SSN-774) to the Royal Australian Navy or to give its sailors sovereign control of them if that were ever to make the Pacific journey. The sale of the SSN-774 to Canberra is part of Pillar 1 of the AUKUS enterprise, envisaging, in addition to providing such boats to the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the rotational deployment of four US SSNs and one UK SSN to Australia out of Western Australia, the subsequent construction of three to five replacement SSNs for the US Navy, and aid Australia in the construction of three to five SSNs based on what will be a new UK-Australian design.
A good temperature reading of reluctance regarding the Virginia-class boats can be gathered from those invaluable reports from the Congressional Research Service, Australian officials, and journalists often ignore and seem reluctant to consult. Given that the US Congress will be the final arbiter of whether a single Virginia SSN is ever transferred into Australian hands under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), these comprehensive overviews plot the concerns for US lawmakers and what direction is likely regarding the expectations of AUKUS. Australia’s doddery and woolly-minded political class ignore them at their peril.
The latest report, authored by Ronald O’Rourke and published on January 26, 2026, lacks a glamorous title. But there is enough punch in Navy Virginia-Class Submarine Program and AUKUS Submarine (Pillar 1) Project: Background and Issues for Congress to sting officials in Canberra into a state of nightmare-inducing worry.
The issues for Congress identified in the report are not new. These include whether the procurement rate for the financial year (FY2026) of the SSN-774 and subsequent years should remain at 2 boats per year, or be adjusted; how the Navy and Department of Defense are using funds from the submarine industrial base (SIB) since FY2018, and how this has affected the production of Virginia-class boats; the maintenance backlog of SSNs in service and its impacts “on SSN – and overall Navy – capabilities, and steps the Navy plans to take to reduce the backlog”; and potential benefits, costs, and risks arising from the procurement rate and the way SIB funds are used.
The crucial test here, and one that would do away with any suggestions of Australian sovereignty on the matter, is how such “benefits, costs, and risks compare with those of an alternative of procuring up to eight additional Virginia-class SSNs that would be retained in US Navy service and operated out of Australia along with the US and UK SSNs that are already planned to be operated under Pillar 1.” Concern is expressed, as with previous reports, about the lack of clarity as to whether Canberra would support the US in a future conflict with China. “Selling three to five Virginia-class SSNs to Australia would thus convert those SSNs from boats that would be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict into boats that might not be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict.” Rather crushingly, the report goes on to question Australian prowess regarding the use of the boats, in that deterrence against China would become less persuasive if “Beijing were to find reason to believe, correctly or not, that Australia might use its Virginia-class boats less effectively than the US Navy would use them.”
Australia’s role as an appendage of US strategic deterrence against China in the Pacific is crudely confirmed: its bases are mere platforms for Washington’s warmaking plans, with the RAN left undistinguished and diminished. This applies both to the naval component and RAAF Base Tindal in the Katherine region, which will host six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers. Australia’s signatory status as a member of the Treaty of Rarotonga, also known as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, would, if it has not already, cease to be relevant.
The review of AUKUS conducted by Trump’s Undersecretary of Defense Policy, Eldridge Colby, while not available to the public, can hardly have deviated from the central premise that parting with the Virginia boats will be only possible if the production rate of submarines rises to 2 a year, and given that, what strategic implications would arise regarding US control over them. Colby had previously warned that the AUKUS pact would only “lead to more submarines collectively in 10, 15, 20 years, which is way beyond the window of maximum danger, which is really this decade.”
When Colby’s completed review was sent to the Australians last December, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell released a statement insisting that the recommendations for the review were for the benefit of improving the security pact. “Consistent with President Trump’s guidance that AUKUS should move ‘full steam ahead,’ the review identified opportunities to put AUKUS on the strongest possible footing.” It is hard to see how Australia ends up well here.
Australian pundits on the strategic cocktail circuit have suggestions as to how to sell Canberra’s broader capitulation to the US imperium and its military. These are drearily unoriginal. On the stationing of B-52s in the Northern Territory, for instance, Miranda Booth, writing for the Lowy Institute Interpreter, suggests the rather crusty propaganda line of collaboration. “The key is to put an emphasis on joint plans for training and exercises that build solidarity and trust, and enhance regional interoperability.” Such duplicity would magically dispel the appearance that Australia was merely a servile and willing client to US power.
The Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles, a fool of Chaucerian proportions, deserves a star of commendation in his denials of what AUKUS really entails. On his regular sojourns to Washington, he always comes back with the same glassy ignorance, failing to digest any contradicting briefings or literature that might have appeared. He has a story to tell a public he wishes to gull, and he always insists on sticking to it. Pity for Australian electors, it’s never the right one, let alone accurate.
The post Blind and Deaf to AUKUS: Australian Planners and Elusive Submarines appeared first on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.