On the menu today: Hey, remember AUKUS, that big submarine construction and joint defense deal with Australia and the United Kingdom, an agreement that even GOP hawks said represented the “one bright spot” in Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy? The one that the Chinese government absolutely hated because it posed “a serious military challenge to China”? Yeah, well, apparently now the Pentagon is reviewing it to make sure AUKUS is “aligned with the president’s ‘America First’ agenda.” Heaven forbid that we actually work with our longtime allies to join forces against a mutual threat!
The Defense Department Is Reviewing the U.S.–U.K.–Australian Attack Sub Pact
Back in April, congressman Michael McCaul of Texas — the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — and Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote here at National Review about the importance of AUKUS, a security pact established in 2021 between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, to work together on a cluster of advanced technologies.
The AUKUS agreement had three components: The United States would sell Australia three to five Virginia-class submarines beginning in 2032; the United Kingdom and Australia would co-develop a new AUKUS-class submarine to enter service around 2040; and all three countries would spend billions of dollars to expand the capacity of a trilateral submarine industrial base.
McCaul and Herman called the agreement the “one bright spot” in President Biden’s foreign policy record; he argued that when it came to standing firm against Chinese military aggression, there was no substitute for AUKUS.
AUKUS will change the game when it comes to countering the generational threat posed by China.
The trilateral agreement is composed of two “pillars,” the first of which focuses on the development and sale of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines for the Australian Royal Navy. The crown jewel of the ocean, these submarines will operate with stealth, precision, and endurance to secure the seas.
Pillar 2 establishes collaboration in a host of high-tech areas meant to “enhance our joint capabilities and interoperability.” This pillar will drive the future of modern warfare, covering AI systems and undersea vehicles, cyber capabilities, quantum technologies, hypersonic weapons, and more. If done correctly, it could help the U.S. and our allies obtain the greatest technological advancement since the Manhattan Project, giving us a strategic advantage in the Indo-Pacific.
Naturally, the Trump administration is thinking of pulling the plug on the whole deal.
The Financial Times reported Wednesday that the Pentagon had launched a review of the AUKUS submarine deal, and that “the review to determine whether the U.S. should scrap the project is being led by Elbridge Colby, a top defense department official who previously expressed skepticism about AUKUS, according to six people familiar with the matter. Ending the submarine and advanced technology development agreement would destroy a pillar of security co-operation between the allies.”
A Pentagon spokesperson told the Financial Times that the review is to ensure that “this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the president’s ‘America First’ agenda.”
During a defense-spending fight in February 2024, the editors of National Review concluded, “In 2021 Australia broke a sure-thing submarine contract with France in favor of these promised American subs as part of AUKUS — the trilateral agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to cooperate on the most advanced defense systems for the security of their interests in the Indo-Pacific. Australia’s ditching its contract with the French was no small incident between the two nations. French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called it a “stab in the back”; so far, Australia has maintained a diplomatic silence. For the U.S. to fail to meet its side of a bargain it invited Australia to join would be negligent in the extreme.”
Shortly after Trump took office in January, Australia transferred $500 million to the United States as a down payment on the deal, part of $3 billion that is supposed to help the U.S. hire more shipbuilders and expand facilities to build submarines faster. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said the payment was “an important investment — it is about Australia paying its way when it comes to AUKUS by helping to uplift the U.S. submarine industrial base so that Virginia class submarines are available to be transferred to Australia.”
A day later, in opening remarks of a meeting in Washington with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said, “The president is very aware, supportive of AUKUS, recognizes the importance of the defense industrial base.”
Eh, maybe not so supportive after all?
But hey, don’t ever let it be said that the Trump administration’s foreign policy never generates a positive response from foreign governments.
“The Chinese side has made clear its position over the US, UK and Australia establishing the so-called security partnership and advancing cooperation over nuclear submarine and other cutting-edge military technologies,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Thursday.
“We always oppose creating bloc confrontation, increasing the risk of nuclear proliferation and intensifying arms races,” Lin said.
So, Beijing is happy.
What bothers the Trump administration is the planned transfer of the five Virginia-class submarines beginning in 2032. The short version of the problem is that U.S. submarine construction is progressing disturbingly slowly. Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in defense issues, laid it out last September:
Navy planners have long emphasized the need for a “1+2” build schedule to maintain the size and strength of the submarine fleet and offset planned retirements. This requires one Columbia plus two Virginia boats to be built each year. The progression of AUKUS, the trilateral security pact to supply Australia with U.K. and U.S. nuclear-submarine capabilities, only increases pressure on sub construction for the U.S. Navy. The initial expected transfer of existing attack subs to Australia — before that nation’s navy begins constructing its own — means that, to replace those subs in the U.S. fleet, the build rate must go up even higher, to one Columbia plus 2.33 Virginias each year.
And the U.S. is currently falling far short of these benchmarks. The first Columbia-class submarine is delayed. The Navy recently reported a build rate of just 1.2 Virginia-class boats per year, a full submarine short of the annual requirement to support AUKUS. This has created a multi-year backlog of orders worth “tens of billions of dollars,” according to the service’s comptroller.
In his confirmation hearing, Colby said when asked about AUKUS:
The idea of empowering our Australian — in some sense, perhaps our closest ally in the world. They have been with us, even in our less advisable wars, is the way I put it. It is a great idea for them to have attack submarines.
…if we can produce the attack submarines in sufficient number and sufficient speed, then great. But if we can’t, that becomes a very difficult problem because we don’t want our servicemen and women to be in a weaker position and more vulnerable, and, God forbid, worse because they are not in the right place in the right time. So my perspective, and what I have told the Australians and also the Brits, is, if confirmed, you know or before, I think it should be the policy of the United States Government to do everything we can to make this work.
A February Congressional Research Service report stated, “the actual Virginia-class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited to about 1.2 boats per year.” The report adds:
The first two boats, which are to be sold in FY2032 and FY2035, would be existing boats with 18 to 27 years each of remaining expected service life. The third boat, which is to be sold in FY2038, would be a new boat taken directly from the U.S. production line, and thus have a full 33-year expected service life.
The U.S. Navy anticipates eventually building three to five additional SSNs in the 2030s as replacements for the three to five Virginia-class boats that are to be sold to Australia. Until the replacement boats are built, selling three to five Virginia-class boats to Australia would reduce the size of the U.S. Navy’s SSN force. The reduction in the U.S. SSN force would begin in FY2032 (when the first Virginia-class boat would be sold) and (as estimated by CRS and the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] would last until sometime between 2040 and 2049.
At the beginning of this month, Hegseth met with Marles again at a defense summit in Singapore, and the official readout of the meeting noted, “On defense spending, Secretary Hegseth conveyed that Australia should increase its defense spending to 3.5 percent of its GDP as soon as possible.”
In 2024, Australia spent 1.9 percent of its GDP on defense, according to its Parliament, although other calculations put the figure closer to 2.3 percent. They are on track to spend 2.3 percent of their GDP on defense by 2028 and have debated increases that would take it up to 2.5 percent. Keep in mind, Australia’s economy is the 14th largest in the world at an estimated $1.74 trillion, so one percent is $17 billion. (All figures in U.S. dollars.)
Asked about American calls to spend more on defense, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, responded, “I think that Australia should decide what we spend on Australia’s defense. Simple as that.”
This morning, Marles acted like the Pentagon review was a routine formality, and that there was little chance the U.S. would withdraw from the deal.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told Sky News Australia that he had known about the review of the deal “for some time,” saying that it was a “very natural step for the incoming administration to take.”
He noted that the UK’s government also reviewed the deal, the centerpiece of a three-way alliance known as AUKUS after it was elected, and that his own government had looked at it as part of its own review of Australia’s entire defense posture.
“I think an incoming government having a look at this is something that they have a perfect right to do and we welcome it and we’ll work with it,” he said.
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who signed the AUKUS deal, issued a statement declaring, “this is a departmental review, not a policy decision, and should not be over-interpreted . . . The case for AUKUS was first built on convincing the U.S. and U.K. defense institutions during the period of the first Trump Administration and the [Boris] Johnson Government about the technical merit, sovereign capability, and shared security interests. It has enjoyed bipartisan and institutional support in both Washington and London from the outset.”
The British government is similarly confident that no major changes are around the corner.
A U.K. government spokesperson has downplayed the possibility of the U.S. pulling out of the deal, emphasizing Aukus as “one of the most strategically important partnerships in decades.”
They added: “It is understandable that a new administration would want to review its approach to such a major partnership, just as the U.K. did last year.”
“The U.K. will continue to work closely with the U.S. and Australia at all levels to maximize the benefits and opportunities which Aukus presents for our three nations.”
Keep in mind, Australia has its own soft-on-China politicians, and those who don’t like the idea of sending $3 billion to the U.S. to help us build more submarines. If the Trump administration sends a signal that it’s wavering on the deal, Australian opponents of the deal are likely to pressure their government to pull out first.
For AUKUS critics like former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating, the Greens, the peace movement and elements of the strategic policy community, they will claim this has proved them right all along and this is the off-ramp Australia needs from its $368 billion submarine folly.
If Colby ends up being the one who recommends the Trump administration withdraw from the AUKUS deal, it will be an ironic role for him. Back in December 2021, Colby* wrote a cover story for National Review magazine arguing that if China attacks Taiwan, the U.S. should defend Taiwan, and noted:
The only way China can be prevented from dominating Asia is through a coalition. While the United States is a superpower, its economy is roughly comparable in size to China’s, and it is, of course, located across a vast ocean from the economic centers of Asia. Power and influence naturally tend to attenuate over distance, and so America simply is not strong — let alone resolute — enough to confront China alone in Asia. Instead, an anti-hegemonic coalition is needed to prevent this outcome. This grouping can be very ecumenical; it should involve any country willing and able to stand up to Beijing’s desire to dominate the region. With the uniquely powerful United States by necessity in the lead, it could naturally include countries such as Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, perhaps others — and Taiwan.
The prospect of having fewer submarines in the U.S. Navy from 2032 to anywhere from 2040 to 2049 is not an irrational concern. But blowing up a deal with two of our closest allies — particularly when Australia has already started paying for us to expand our shipyards! — feels like a thumb in the eye to London and Canberra, and exactly the kind of division that Xi Jinping and the Chinese government would like to see.
*In light of Vice President Vance’s expression of regret that he wrote for National Review, isn’t it odd that so many people in the Trump administration have written for NR? Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy, Kristi Noem, Lee Zeldin — and that’s just the top cabinet officials.
ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I finally get to put my past experience in Transnistria to good use.