The nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines to be built under the AUKUS agreement are on track to be the world’s most advanced fighting machines, says Australian Submarine Agency Director-General Jonathan Mead.

‘They’ll have greater firepower, a more powerful reactor, more capability and they’ll be able to do more bespoke operations, including intelligence gathering, surveillance, strike warfare, special forces missions and dispatching uncrewed vessels, than our current in-service submarines,’ Vice Admiral Mead says in an interview.

With a displacement of more than 10,000 tonnes, the SSN-AUKUS class will be larger than current US Virginia-class attack submarine of just over 7000 tonnes. Australia’s six conventionally powered Collins-class submarines are each about 3300 tonnes.

The SSN-AUKUS submarines to be built for Australia and Britain, with help from the United States, will be a ‘bigger, better, faster and bolder’ evolution of Britain’s Astute-class submarines, Mead says. The design will have the advantage of more US technology and greater commonality with US boats.

Australian steel will be used to build Australia’s SSN-AUKUS submarines, subject to a comprehensive qualification process expected to be completed in the first half of 2025.

The steel is also being qualified to both the British and US standards. Having Australian industry involved will deepen and bring resilience to the three nations’ supply chains, with greater mass, confidence and scale, Mead says.

In April, major US warship builder Newport News Shipbuilding lodged an initial purchase order for processed Australian steel from Bisalloy Steel’s Port Kembla plant for testing and training.

The government has committed to having eight nuclear submarines, Mead says, ‘and we’re on track’.

‘We’re planning on three Virginias and five SSN-AUKUS. That takes the program through to 2054.’

The SSN-AUKUS submarines built by Australia and Britain will be identical, incorporating technology from all three nations, including cutting-edge US technologies.

Those for the Royal Australian Navy will all be built at Osborne in South Australia. ‘Osborne will be the fourth nuclear-powered submarine shipyard among the three countries and one of the world’s most advanced technology hubs,’ Mead says.

The SSNs will all have an advanced version of the AN/BYG-1 combat system, used in the Collins class and in US submarines, and the Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo, an advanced version of which has been developed by the United States and Australia.

Mead says each Virginia has a crew of about 133 and the likely size of the SSN-AUKUS crew is being calculated as design work progresses.

The massive scale of the program and the nuclear element has understandably attracted strong attention, including criticism and questions about how skilled workforces will be found to build and crew the boats. Commentary has included suggestions that AUKUS is ‘dead in the water’.

Mead has no doubt that the project can be completed as planned. ‘Every day we ask ourselves the same question: ”Are we on track?” The answer is “yes.”’

For the program to succeed, it must be a national endeavour involving the Commonwealth, states and territories, industry, academia and the Australian people, Mead says. ‘To develop that social licence, we must provide confidence that we are going to deliver this capability safely and securely and not harm the environment.’

To build a nuclear mindset there must be an unwavering commitment to upholding the highest standards of safety, security, stewardship and safeguards, with all decisions underpinned by strong technical evidence. ‘It’s essential that everything we do is underpinned by strong technical and engineering evidence,’ he says. The reactor will be delivered as a sealed and welded unit that won’t be opened for the life of the submarine.

Mead acknowledges that recruiting is the big challenge.

He says comprehensive training of crews has begun, with Australian officers and enlisted sailors already passing nuclear training courses. ‘Australian officers have also topped courses in both the US and UK, showing that our people are up for the task that lies ahead.’

It’s intended that about 100 Australian officers and sailors will be in US training programs this year and they’ll go on to serve on US submarines as part of their crews. Other Australians will train in Britain and serve in Royal Navy boats.

Mead’s agency now has 597 staff, including engineers, project managers, lawyers, international relations specialists and policy makers. That is likely to rise to about 1000.

Given that Australia is the first non-nuclear nation acquiring nuclear-powered warships, the agency is working flat out to ensure rigorous regulations and safeguards are in place, along with the international agreements to back them.

Mead says Australia’s Optimal Pathway for acquisition of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) was designed to ensure that Australia would meet the exhaustive requirements to own and operate such vessels as soon as possible.

According to the Optimal Pathway, the first stage will see the first of several US and British submarines operating from the base HMAS Stirling in Western Australia as Submarine Rotational Force–West (SRF-West) from 2027.

In 2032, Australia will receive the first of three Virginia-class submarines from the US. One of the Australian officers now in US submarines is likely to be its commanding officer after extensive service on a US boat. The first two of those boats will be Block 4 Virginias, each with about 10 years’ US service, and they’ll be delivered after two years of deep maintenance and with 23 years of operational life left in them, Mead says, adding that the third US boat will be a brand new Block 6 Virginia. The US Navy has not yet put the Block 6 design into production.

The plan is to have the first SSN-AUKUS completed in Australia by early 2040s. Australia has an option to ask for two more Virginias if the SSN-AUKUS effort is delayed.

Mead says that how long the Collins are kept operational will be a decision for the government of the day as the SSNs arrive. The current plan is to begin big overhauls, called life-of-type extensions, for the Collins class in 2026.

He acknowledges that having the Virginias, SSN-AUKUS and Collin classes all operational could bring supply chain and training issues, but he believes those challenges can be handled. Having combat systems and torpedoes that are common to all these submarines will help.

Australians are on the design and design review teams for SSN-AUKUS. ‘We are embedding more technical and engineering people into the British program.’

Large numbers of Australian workers will soon be embedded in the British submarine construction site run by BAE Systems at Barrow, UK. ‘Many will come from the Australian Submarine Corporation, where they’ve been working on Collins. They’ll deepen their expertise, very specifically on how to build a nuclear-powered submarine,’ Mead says.

BAE will bring the intellectual property to the partnership with ASC to develop Osborne into a shipyard for nuclear-powered submarines.

It’s often suggested in Australia that, because the US has fewer submarines than it believes it needs, it will refuse to hand any over to Australia if its own situation worsens.

Senior American officials have expressed strong alternative views on why the project’s success is very important to the US and why it is in their own interests to make it work.

The US publication Defense News quoted the commander of US submarine forces, Vice-Admiral Rob Gaucher, telling a conference in April that co-operation with Australia would help the US submarine fleet in important ways. These included increasing the number of allied boats working together on operations. Having Australian personnel gaining experience on US boats would help ease a recruiting shortfall in the US Navy that flowed from the Covid-19 epidemic, and having access to the Australian base at HMAS Stirling in WA would extend the US Navy’s reach and maintenance options.

Gaucher said that, because the Australian SSNs would operate in co-ordination with American boats, ‘we get more submarines far forward. We get a port that gives us access’ to the Indo-Pacific region.

He said that by the end of this year the US Navy would graduate about 50 Australians as nuclear-trained operators and another 50 submarine combat operators. They would train on US submarines for the rest of this decade, increasing the number of people qualified to stand watch on American boats.

‘We get the opportunity to leverage an ally who can help us with manning and operating. We get surge capacity because now I have another area [where] I can do maintenance,’ Gaucher said.

Dan Packer, a former navy captain who is now the US director of naval submarine forces for AUKUS, told Defense News that Australia had eight officers in the inaugural training cohort that began in 2023. Three of those eight will be moved into an accelerated training pipeline, and one will eventually be the first Australian Virginia-class commanding officer.

Packer said the US was helping Australia build its submarine force from about 800 personnel to 3000. This year the US would bring 17 Australian officers, 37 nuclear enlisted and 50 non-nuclear enlisted into its training program. ‘And we’re going to up that number every year.’

These personnel would be fully integrated into US attack submarine crews until Australia could stand up its own training pipeline.

At some point, he said, the US Navy would have 440 Australians on 25 attack submarines, with each fully integrated crew including two or three Australian officers, seven nuclear enlisted and nine non-nuclear enlisted sailors. ‘They will do everything that we do’.

Mead says Australian navy personnel have been aboard the US submarine tender USS Emory S. Land for several months learning to maintain and sustain nuclear-powered submarines, and a US Virginia-class boat will visit HMAS Stirling for maintenance this year. Parts will come from an evolving Australian supply chain.

That visit will not include reactor work, ‘but ultimately, we will undertake work on systems that support the sealed power unit, within the compartment that houses it on the submarine,’ Mead says.

He says providing the industrial base to build and sustain the submarines, and crewing them, will involve about 20,000 jobs. A lot of work is being done with universities, technical schools and industry to prepare this formidable workforce.

Mead has long been a student of international relations and says the decision to equip Australia with SSNs was based on recognition that the Indo-Pacific is becoming a more dangerous place and ‘nuclear submarines provide a very effective deterrent’.

He rejects the argument that technology will soon make the oceans too transparent for crewed submarines to operate safely. ‘Our allies and partners and other countries in the region do not see it that way, and neither do we. We’ve done our analysis, and we see that crewed, nuclear-powered submarines will be the leading war-fighting capability for the next 50 to 100 years.’

He’s at pains to stress that the submarines will always be under full Australian sovereign control.

‘They will always be under the Australian government’s direction, operated by the RAN, and under the command of an Australian naval officer.’

As the world transitions to clean energy technology, managing the hazardous waste that it produces becomes an urgent issue. Australia is well positioned to take the lead in this field and create a vertically integrated supply chain for critical-minerals and hazardous-waste management. It can do so by building on its excellent import-export infrastructure and expertise in natural resource extraction and handling.

Ensuring the safe disposal of hazardous waste is essential in a resilient and reliable green industry. The value chains for every currently viable green technology produce materials that are hazardous to the natural environment, and recycling cannot eliminate them entirely.

Thanks to a dry climate, low seismic activity, and sparsely populated areas, Australia is well positioned to build an industrial capacity in clean energy waste management and manage waste produced domestically as well as that of strategic partners. For example, Tellus’s operational Sandy Ridge repository in Western Australia handles, and their future Chandler repository in Northern Territory will handle, waste produced around the country and can even take certain waste from nuclear submarine operations. By working with the traditional owners of the land, such facilities can also give an economic boost to the area, thereby building the community support needed to continue developing domestic green industries.

The investments required to facilitate a clean energy industry have already been made. The Australian government committed $840 million to the Arafura Resources project, which will create the nation’s first combined mine and refinery for minerals. At the sub-national level, the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct in the Northern Territory added depth to the industrial base and infrastructure. The combination of such efforts has created an ecosystem for not only exporting clean materials but operating a world-leading hazardous waste management industry.

It is imperative that consumers understand that the premium paid on green minerals ensures that the industry is sustainable. The safeguards not only include labour standards but prevent disastrous ecological damage during production associated with the cheaper products.

Australian critical- minerals producers already face difficulty in competing on price. Through vertical control of supply chains, Chinese firms can manipulate the price of lithium and other critical minerals, grossly distorting market forces and undermining the viability of non-Chinese firms. While there was a market correction in the price of nickel in 2022, the development of the Indonesian nickel mining and processing industry, supported by Chinese investment, has led to ever increasing product surpluses. This prompted Australian private nickel producer Wyloo Metals to announce a temporary shutdown of its mines, while mining company BHP’s Nickel West operations at Kambalda are under review.

Legislation such as the US Inflation Reduction Act may provide some relief. The law includes guardrails that favour US strategic partners in development of critical minerals supply chains. Financial incentives and mandates to use clean materials support allied manufacturers and prevent China from dominating industries that are vital to US national security. As a strategic partner, Australia is well positioned to capitalise on this.

In an attempt to improve transparency about the true costs of critical mineral production, Australia and the United States called on the London Metals Exchange to differentiate between ‘clean’ nickel produced by countries with high environmental, social and governance standards and ‘dirty’ nickel produced at high cost to the environment. The exchange rejected the proposal, however, citing challenges in liquidity of trading.

An alternative way to increase consumer awareness would be to introduce ethical production labels similar to battery passports and build up support through such initiatives as Buy Australian. Coordination among strategic partners is essential to sending strong demand signals and promoting price stability during market distortions. Without this, the risk of closing more mines and processing plants will only increase.

Australia can and should play a leadership role in clean energy waste management and in lifting environmental standards throughout the Indo-Pacific. As the global race for critical minerals intensifies, it’s easy to overlook environmental costs when supply chains don’t have real solutions to the problem of toxic or radioactive waste. But in the long term, such projects will lose public support and jeopardise an industry that is vital to the green transition and national security. Australia must prioritise holistic approaches to green technology or risk ceding its position as a global leader in the mining industry and becoming entirely reliant on China for materials.

A well-worn yarn in defence industry circles is the tale of the apocalyptic Last Supper of 1993. Then-US defense secretary Les Aspin called chief executives from the major prime contractors to a secret dinner at the Pentagon. He told them that times were about to change. The Cold War was over. Falling defence budgets meant the acquisition enterprise could no longer support such a wide range of capability providers. They must consolidate or die. 

In the years that followed, the US defense industry did just that. Spending fell by more than 18 percent in real terms between 1993 and 1998. The number of aerospace and defense prime contractors fell from 51 then to just five today. The DoD is suffering from the consequences of that decision. 

Hogwash. 

As Australia debates its new defence industry strategy and appropriate mechanisms to support it under the AUKUS framework, we must be careful to distinguish fact from fiction. One of the most pernicious mistakes in devising industrial policy is overestimating our ability to dictate outcomes. People are bad at translating strategy into practice.

Yes, the US defence budget fell in the years immediately following that epochal dinner. But as soon as 1999 it was on its way back up. The attacks of 2001 put the recovery into high gear. By 2010, the budget would be more than 50 percent larger than it was in 1993. The trend towards industry consolidation continued throughout. 

Increasing levels of concentration have been observed across a range of industries. One study estimates that more than 75 percent of US industries have grown more concentrated over the past several decades. We are all familiar with the phenomenon as it relates to the global tech giants. So, clearly there are forces at play going far beyond the defence sector.

Those forces are not the focus here. Rather, the view offered of the US defence industry—and how it is perceived by senior leaders across the public and private sectors—is informative when examining the problems Australia faces in the same domain.

Senior public servants would like to think they command the resources of a nation, and industry titans that they serve the forces of virtue and democracy through the pursuit of material wealth. Both worldviews are not without value. 

But they become a problem when they create an illusion of control, when they make everyone forget that operative forces arise not from grand visions and sweeping decrees but from the regulatory frameworks and organisational incentives directing day-to-day behaviors of millions of front-line employees. 

In a recent report, ASPI examines the problem from the perspective of those front-line employees. We reached out to hundreds of them, distributing surveys, conducting interviews, holding workshops and attending conferences and seminars. We talked with small- and medium-sized enterprises all the way up to prime contractors. We asked about what is holding them back, and what must be fixed if the AUKUS security partnership is to achieve its goals. 

The stories we heard are illuminating. Time and again, businesspeople hear the rhetoric and turn to their public-sector partners only to discover that, whatever the official guidance, nothing has percolated down so far as to affect daily decisions. 

An Australian SME was awarded a contract to supply a hypersonic test drone. The launch will require collaboration with the US Wallops Island Flight Facility and New Zealand’s Rocket Lab, among others. The company faces obstacle after obstacle as it tries to integrate its technology with systems operating on different technical standards. Rocket Lab, falling under a separate regulatory framework that New Zealand aligned long ago with that of the US, faces fewer such hurdles. 

Another Australian business, a small one, sought export-control approval to sell its product abroad. Directed to the self-service portal of the Defence Export Controls Branch office (DECO), the company was advised through the tool that no license was required. More than two years later, it received two separate violation letters from the Australian Border Force related to the sale. 

The company took the letters to DECO, which admitted that the online guidance was open to misinterpretation. But it placed responsibility with the ABF. The ABF refused to retract the letters unless DECO told it to do so. Despite agreement from officials on both sides that the company was treated unfairly, everyone pointed the finger elsewhere and refused to retract the violation letters on their own authority. If it gets one more such letter, the company will be prohibited from exporting. 

Prime contractors face challenges of a different sort. One hiring manager we spoke to, anticipating the turbulent environment ahead, was working on bringing in expertise in export-control regulation. 

Much of the debate over AUKUS-centered amendments to Australia’s Defence Trade Control Act 2012 focuses on funding: significant investment will be needed to establish and maintain compliance with the new rules. The Australian defence industry is composed largely of SMEs lacking the resources for such efforts. Who will fund the shift? 

But even businesses possessing resources to support such efforts—businesses out there trying to hire—tell us that the discussion about funding is immaterial. Adequate expertise does not exist in the Australian economy. 

ASPI asked the Office of Defence Industry Support for the referral list it had provide to SMEs seeking help in navigating export control regulations. The list contained four boutique consultancies and a link to general guidance published by the Australian Industry Group. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates the size of the defence industry at $10.6 billion.

The success of AUKUS does not depend on the visionary leadership of defence ministers and cabinet secretaries. We’ve all heard about the vision. What matters now is their ability to marshal resources and guide bureaucracies toward solutions to everyday problems like these. It depends on stuff that isn’t any fun and doesn’t win votes, stuff down in the weeds of regulatory codes and organisational incentives. 

The single biggest obstacle to the AUKUS effort will be the illusion that grand vision is sufficient to steer the ship.

India and Australia saw a fierce cricket Men’s World Cup final in 2023, but there is an opportunity to bat on the same team—for clean energy transition.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called India and Australia natural partners during his visit to India in March 2023 and had climate change high on the agenda during the G20 New Delhi summit in September. At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, it makes sense to work together in areas, ranging from critical minerals to green steel, that will fuel sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, bilateral collaboration for energy transition is critical, since many multilateral forums and initiatives are failing to address these challenges.

Australia and India both have great potential for energy transition. Australia is blessed with natural resources and India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies; it can also reap the benefits of a demographic dividend. Both have ambitious greening plans, with India’s clean energy, mobility and green hydrogen targets for this decade alone providing an investment opportunity that we estimate is worth US$500–550 billion.

The reliance on each other’s economies makes Australia and India natural partners. In 2022, trade between the two countries totalled US$31.4 billion, with exports from Australia to India making up more than 70 percent. Notably, nearly 80 percent of these exports were natural resources such as coal, gold, copper and natural gas. In critical minerals, Australia is India’s third-largest source of copper ore and the largest trading partner by far for nickel oxides and hydroxide. In collaborating on an energy transition, India and Australia have a unique opportunity to leverage these trading ties.

In the past 12 months, we have already seen increased alignment of Indian and Australian policies. The Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA), which took effect in 2022, will enable unrestricted trade of most commodities and products. The two countries have also signed a Critical Mineral Investment Partnership, which identified five critical mineral projects that could be jointly developed. On innovation, the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund aims to support research in important areas such as new and renewable energies and resource circularity.

Building on this momentum, India and Australia should collaborate in four ways to support each other’s energy transition.

First, they should join forces to develop critical minerals supply chains. Both countries currently lack the technical expertise in mineral processing and material manufacturing for use in clean energy production and have not been able to fully leverage opportunities of indigenisation. For example, Australia is the world’s largest producer of lithium, and it exports nearly all of it to China, where it is used in batteries. Meanwhile, India imports most of its batteries from China. Developing the domestic mineral resources and raw material production ecosystem could take up to a decade. Striking a balance between imports and developing domestic manufacturing will be critical for an unimpeded yet secure energy transition. Australia and India can complement each other based on their strengths and weaknesses in the clean energy manufacturing value chain.

Second, India and Australia should develop a rules-based architecture for new and emerging sectors such as green hydrogen, critical minerals and clean energy manufacturing. With governments adopting protectionist policies around the world, harmonisation of standards and trade rules for new technologies is critical for maintaining an open, fair and inclusive system. India and Australia should take the lead in standardising and interpreting environmental, social and governance standards and defining key terms such as critical minerals, concentration, diversification and vulnerabilities. They should also leverage multilateral initiatives such as the Quad, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity and the Mineral Security Partnership to develop a rules-based architecture for the fuels of the future.

Third, Australia and India should collaborate on upskilling their workforces and promoting co-development of technology. High-level skills in mineral exploration, mining, mineral processing and manufacturing clean energy components will be important for raw material value chains. And to make the clean energy supply chain resilient and sustainable, they must prioritise the development of new materials, alternative technologies and recycling processes.

The two countries should build on the ECTA framework to increase the number of exchange programs for university students and faculty members. Academic institutions and industries in both countries could work together in the research and development of technologies needed to process minerals and manufacture raw materials. Australia’s academic and industry experience and India’s burgeoning graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics would complement each other in this effort.

Lastly, Australia and India should boost their mutual flows of investment. As recently as 2017, just 0.3 percent of Australian direct investment stocks were in India. This made up just 0.24 percent of India’s total foreign direct investment. Given Australia’s ambitious plans to scale up critical mineral and clean energy value chains, its industries should invest more in India’s growing industrial sector by participating in government initiatives such as India’s Production Linked Incentive scheme.

There is great potential in the improvement and development of new technologies, from mineral mining to clean energy product manufacturing. A strong partnership between India and Australia in an energy transition is like a test match, requiring trust, patience and agile strategy, as well as specialised and complementary skills. Fortunately, this test match will have winners on both sides.

A number of commentators in Australia have lately made rash pronouncements about the demise of US submarines, alleging that innovative technologies will make the vessels vulnerable. Others have been arguing that US nuclear-powered submarines are now noisier than their Chinese counterparts and will be easily detectable by China. 

The fact is that the United States has been so far ahead in submarine technology and secure underwater operations over the past 50-plus years that its submarines are virtually undetectable by either China or Russia. In the Cold War, US attack submarines (SSNs) tailed Soviet ballistic–missile firing submarines (SSBNs) at close quarters without being detected. There is every reason to believe that the same applies these days to China’s SSBNs. It is our view that China’s SSBNs are so easily tracked by US SSNs that China’s allegedly survivable second-strike nuclear capability is at high risk (as was that of the USSR in the Cold War). In brief, the quietness of US submarines and the sophistication of their operations are legendary. 

The reason for this is that for more than half a century the United States has persistently poured vast amounts of research and development into superior underwater warfare technology. Naturally, these capabilities are among the United States’ most highly guarded secrets, so little information about them is in the public domain. However, we recommend two books: Blind Man’s Bluff by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew (1998) and The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945 by Peter Hennessy and James Jinks (2016). The former is about highly classified US submarine operations involving the CIA tapping into the USSR’s seabed communications in the sea of Okhotsk for the Soviet Pacific submarine fleet in Kamchatka. US submarines made repeated visits and were not detected. The Silent Deep covers close–quarter submarine operations against Soviet SSBNs and SSNs by British nuclear submarines, whose reputation is similar to US submarines’. To our knowledge, there is no equivalent book available about operations against China’s submarines yet (but the subject is touched on by Michael McDevitt’s China as a Twenty First Century Naval Power, 2020). 

Those who talk about superior Chinese submarine operations being able easily to detect US submarines do not know what they are talking about. The fact is that until recently China has depended very much on Russian technology for its SSBNs and SSNs. That includes even such relatively straightforward techniques as isolating the noise of engines and other machinery from the hull. We need to remember that in the Cold War Soviet ballistic–missile firing submarines were known as boomers because their loud noises were detectable over very considerable distances. As for China dealing with US submarines, the Pentagon stated in 2023 that China ‘continues to lack a robust deep-water anti-submarine warfare capability.’ 

It is true, of course, that both Russia and China are making progress towards quieter submarine operations. But do we believe that the United States is sitting on its hands and making no technological advances? Of course not. The US Navy continues to invest huge amounts in ensuring that its submarines remain at the absolute forefront of hard-to-detect operations under the world’s oceans. 

So, when we take delivery of our three Virginia–class SSNs from the US, we can be confident that they will be both highly effective and difficult to counter. This is why China is so angry about the prospect of our acquiring them. China already has a bad case of SLOC anxiety (worrying about its sea lines of communication). It fears loss of critical supplies, such as oil, that come through the confined waters of Southeast Asia.  

Things will only get worse for China when Australian SSNs enter service and when, under AUKUS, the US operates its own SSNs out of Fremantle. Further, if our Virginias are equipped with current long-range anti-ship missiles with a range of more than 2000km, they will be formidable strike weapons able to attack deep into our region. For example, 2000km is about the distance from east of the Philippines to the Yellow Sea between South Korea and China.  

Geography makes Chinese and Russian submarines relatively vulnerable when leaving base. In China’s case, the Northern Fleet is bottled up in the Yellow Sea. The sea is intensely surveilled by South Korea (which is just 400km from one Northern Fleet base, Weihai) and by Japan (which is 800km from the main base, Qingdao). Both are US allies.

Beijing’s main SSBN base is on Hainan, an island in the south of China from which submarines must move through relatively shallow waters until they reach deeper sea closer to the Philippines and Taiwan. And, to get to the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean, they must then pass through a chain of US SOSUS seabed sonar arrays that extends from South Korea and Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. 

The United States, by contrast, has submarine bases on its east and west coasts that provide prompt access to secure deep waters in the open Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It has no potential adversaries nearby. Similarly, submarines leaving such Australian ports as Sydney and Fremantle also have quick access to secure deep oceanic waters. 

It is important to remember that keeping a capability edge in pro- submarine and anti-submarine warfare is vital for US security. This is especially true with respect to nuclear capabilities, the stability of the nuclear balance and the survivability of US SSBNs. That is why the US continues to invest heavily in such matters as submarine signature management (including radiated acoustic signatures), sensor performance and upgrades of the Mark 48 torpedo (including through joint research with Australia). 

Against this background, we reject the belief of those who say that US submarines have had their day. The United States has the world’s largest and most potent nuclear-powered submarine fleet and intends to keep it that way. No wonder that China is so worried about the prospect of Australia acquiring such a vastly superior capability.