Australia Should Push for US Nuclear Submarines Over UK Ones, Opposition Leader Says

A member of the crew's first watch comes onboard during the commissioning commemoration ceremony for the Virginia-Class submarine USS Delaware at the Port of Wilmington in Wilmington, Delaware, on April 2, 2022. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Australia should push to acquire the proven U.S. Virginia class nuclear-powered submarine rather than a pioneer British model, according to opposition leader Peter Dutton.

Dutton, previously the defence minister, made the comments just days before an expected announcement between U.S., UK, and Australian leaders on which submarine model will be acquired by the Australian Defence Force under the landmark AUKUS deal.

“The advice to me at the time was very clear; that Rolls-Royce [in the UK] didn’t have any production capability left, no headroom; Barrow-in-Furness is obviously landlocked, it didn’t have the ability to scale up; and the problem that we had with the French design, in particular, was that it was a new design,” he told reporters at the Avalon Airshow in Victoria on March 1.

“Anybody in the defence space can tell you, going with the first-in-class makes it very difficult because there are production mistakes, there are design mistakes, and by the second or third or fourth or fifth that rolls off the production line—whether it’s a tank or ship or a submarine—you get it right by then.”

Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton speaks to media during a press conference in Perth, Australia on Feb. 20, 2023. AAP Image/Richard Wainwright

The opposition leader was referring to the troubled multi-billion French-designed non-nuclear submarine project that was eventually cancelled by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison in favour of a nuclear-powered submarine under AUKUS.

“The beauty in my mind with the American model, or the Virginia class, was that it was a proven design,” Dutton said.

“It gave us interoperability with the Americans, and there’ll be more American subs in the Indo-Pacific than there will be British submarines, who will concentrate, quite rightly, particularly given the Russian threat to continental Europe.”

The opposition leader said U.S. industry was also able to scale up quickly, and that a “cheaper design” will draw out the timeline.

Dutton has advocated for the Virginia class previously, revealing in June 2022 that while in office he was preparing to try and acquire two subs from the United States as a stop-gap measure before new nuclear submarines could be built for Australia.

“We would have our first two subs this decade. I had formed a judgment that the Americans would have facilitated exactly that,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Australian newspaper. “The further eight subs (we had always said at least eight), making 10 in total, could have been built in South Australia, which honours our commitments.”

Current Minister Lambasts Dutton

Dutton’s comments were heavily criticised by current Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy.

“I think those comments from Peter Dutton are incredibly irresponsible. This was a man who received classified briefings up until the 21st of May on this program,” he told reporters, also in Avalon where he was signing a deal with Boeing for Apache helicopters.

“I just find it completely unhelpful in the public debate for him to be injecting this stuff when he knows that there are security reasons that mean that we can’t detail information until we make the announcement.

Conroy said Dutton was being “mischievous” or was not privy to the latest information.

“I’ve just come back from Barrow in the United Kingdom where I’ve got a full briefing on what the United Kingdom is doing. I stay in regular contact with the U.S. Navy, and we’ll make announcements very shortly about the optimal path forward on our nuclear propelled submarines.”

New Tri-Nation Submarine Model Likely to be Chosen

There are indications that the three governments could settle with a new submarine design, likely the British developmental SSNR submarine that is supposed to succeed the current Astute class.

The UK’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in February that the project was “collaborative.”

“It’s a joint endeavour. Whether that is the sharing of technology, and the understanding of how to do it, the sharing of the build, or the sharing of the design,” he said after a meeting between Australian and UK ministers on Jan. 2.

“The Australian government’s getting exactly to the position where it knows what it wants,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that it will be a tri-nation project.”

Yet the same concerns over delivery timeframes remain with the Chinese military build-up in the Indo-Pacific continuing.