A Dry Dock, Tender And Training Can Advance Australia’s New AUKUS Sub

While the primary public focus of the Australia, United Kingdom and United States (AUKUS) security pact centered on Australia’s eventual acquisition and operation of nuclear submarines, AUKUS is clearly laying the foundation for a far deeper and broader collaboration in military systems and know-how. As far as AUKUS goes, the high-profile “sub project” may well end up just being a minor part of a far larger effort, as partners in this ersatz “technical NATO” take on a larger set of “high-risk/high-reward” projects that would be too daunting for any one country to do alone.

The beginnings of this relationship are already unfolding. U.S.-made Lockheed Martin MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and Northrop GrummanNOC
MQ-4C Triton unmanned maritime patrol platforms are headed to Australia, while Boeing Australia’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat Loyal Wingman, an unmanned fighter concept, is coming to America. These incremental wins—where the partner countries successfully align concepts, test out platforms, and then disseminate those solutions throughout the region—are helping AUKUS take root as a fact-of-life in the Pacific.

Right now, bilateral technology transfers between the AUKUS partners are going well. But as technology exchanges deepen, and the technologies at stake extend into the most critical secrets of the Western arsenal, a single incident—a loss of key industrial information to China, an unexpected hack, some International Traffic in Arms Regulations violation, or just a simple security misstep could quickly compromise the whole effort.

At The Start, Keep It Simple

In any trading of operational military knowledge, classified technology, and secret warfighting goals, there’s a lot of boring and bureaucratically painful work that needs to be done in coordinating security structures, defense industry protections, and defense industry practices.

These complex back-office matters in tech exchanges often get ignored until they come back and bite the participants. In an alliance based on technology exchange, these back-office vulnerabilities are going to be the weakest, most easily exploitable link between allies. It is where China will focus an enormous amount of energy.

Leaks can have big consequences. In 2016, technical information on France’s widely-exported Scorpene class submarine was stolen and released, shaking up France-India technological exchange efforts and echoing into Australia’s aborted $50 billion submarine deal with France.

A headlong rush into a hasty exchange of secretive submarine technology does little good for anyone outside of China. Instead, a steady stream of simple, far less-sensitive projects can help prepare Australia’s non-traditional defense partners—the small innovators, shipbuilders, and others—to manage highly secured information on nuclear submarines, strengthening Australia’s industrial base to where it can maintain and operate their new undersea platforms from “day one”.

Instead of a new nuclear submarine, a good start for AUKUS might be a certified, nuclear submarine-ready dry dock. After the USS Connecticut (SSN-22), a Seawolf submarine, ran into an undersea feature in 2021, sub-ready dry docks became a hot commodity throughout the Pacific.

Austal USA, a subsidiary of West Australian-based shipbuilding company Austal Limited, is, after winning a $128 million U.S. Navy contract to build a floating dry dock, well-positioned to support that demand. Securely transferring U.S. drydock plans to Australia, and then building a new dry dock in Perth, where U.S. submarines are likely to be forward-based and need dry dock access, is a simple first step. Dry dock technology is, in itself, no major security risk, but this simple project offers an unmatched opportunity to identify potential problems early—and it would advance Australia’s ability to support submarines of any type in Western Australia.

Another simple step would be to build-out a submarine tender support base, followed by the fabrication of an Australian submarine tender. These unromantic maintenance and support craft are some of America’s most high-demand assets. Having a forward base, complete with ancillary support workshops, on-site crew-and-contractor lodging, and secure shore services necessary to support nuclear submarine maintenance, gives Australian maintenance personnel a perfect opportunity to shadow and train with U.S. maintainers. Local shipyards can start recruiting, vetting, and, by working alongside U.S. personnel aboard the tender, they can begin training a sub-ready workforce.

A new Australian vessel tender, deployed out to the Pacific, could work with AUKUS surface units while extend the operational reach of Australia’s conventional submarines and unmanned craft. After the embarrassing breakdown of HMAS Adelaide in Tonga earlier this year, a mobile maintenance platform should be an easy sell in the august halls of Canberra.

And while these projects are not fancy nuclear submarines in themselves, they all help AUKUS get started on the right foot. The challenge is for AUKUS partners to keep their focus on the dull and dirty work of stress-testing the complex bureaucratic frameworks required to share high-risk technology. The simple work of procuring dry docks, tenders and training are great ways for AUKUS’s undersea line of effort to get started.