Copyright Hartford Courant
There was relief in naval circles on three continents recently when President Donald Trump insisted the U.S. is moving “full steam ahead” on the AUKUS security agreement that sends state-of-the-art submarines to Australia and commit’s the U.S. to sharing top secret Navy technology. Some suspected last spring that the administration might walk away from the joint Australia-United Kingdom-U.S. agreement when it announced it was being reviewed by the Pentagon. The purpose of the review, which is continuing, is to determine whether the U.S. can muster the industrial capacity to produce complex, nuclear-powered submarines fast enough to satisfy both U.S. security requirements and its obligation under AUKUS sell ships, built by Electric Boat in Groton, to Australia. After meeting at the White House Monday, Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese affirmed support for the agreement signed by President Joe Biden with the leaders of Australia and Great Britain in 2021. It commits the U.S. to provide Australia with 3 to 5 Virginia class submarines beginning in 2032, part of a broader agreement to use U.S. nuclear technology combined with U.S. and British industrial capacity to bootstrap Australia’s outdated submarine force into part of a credible, western barrier to Chinese expansion in the Indo-Pacific. The White House announcement keeps the overall deal on track But questions remain about how quickly the billions of dollars being invested in industrial capacity in the U.S. and Australia translates into faster production of the $4.5 billion ships Electric Boat is building in Groton with support from subcontractors across the country. Navy has kept details of its review secret in spite of wide interest. Navy Secretary John Phelen, also at the White House meeting, said the purpose of the review is to make AUKUS “better” and eliminate “ambiguity.” Despite Phelan’s assurance that the Pentagon review “should be a win-win for everybody,” his remarks sparked a new flurry of questions out whether the struggle of Electric Boat and its partners to meet the Navy’s delivery goals for Virginia class submarines could jeopardize or delay delivery of submarines to Australia. U.S. Rep Joe Courtney, the eastern Connecticut Democrat and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Seapower Subcommittee, pushed aside such concerns. A leading AUKUS proponent and influential Congressional voice on ship building and naval technology, he said Phelan was referring to improvements being made to reduce production bottlenecks and speed delivery of submarines to the Navy. “My expectation is that we are going to see some recommendations when the secretary’s report is released,” Courtney said. “Again, the secretary described it as ‘minor details’ … I think the message everyone took away is everyone would welcome improvements of any kind that people would suggest. But I don’t think it was being recommended in anyway that truncates AUKUS or obviously stops AUKUS from moving forward.” “As the president said yesterday AUKUS is going to move forward full steam ahead,” Courtney said. “That was a moment that a lot of people weren’t sure was actually going to materialize. But it did.” Courtney’s district includes both Electric Boat and the U.S. Naval Submarine Base, just up the Thames River in Groton. With the Navy planning to buy as many as 66 Virginia class submarines from Electric Boat, the three to five earmarked for Australia under AUKUS might seem a multi-billion dollar afterthought. But the treaty — and the balancing act it has created between national and foreign security commitments — has made AUKUS another reason to focus on the country’s diminishing post-cold war industrial capacity. The examination is happening at a time when China is in the midst of an extraordinary naval expansion. Western analysts suspect recent aggressive moves by China to close parts of the South China Sea are part of a broader plan to control southeast Asia shipping lanes. “I think in this it is important to emphasize that in the U.S. and Australia, we very much see ourselves as the status quo powers in this context,” Paul Myler, Australia’s former deputy U.S. Ambassador said during a visit to Connecticut with Courtney a year ago. “We are the ones that are trying to protect the environment which has created so much prosperity, including for China, over the last 70 years.I think China has made it quite clear that it is interested in shifting that status quo.” The western response has revealed that decades of flat, post-Cold War military spending not only shrunk the U.S. Naval fleet by half, but depleted the ranks of welders, shipfitters and riggers who build ships, not to mention their employers, the companies that form the submarine industrial base. Until relatively recently, America had not built submarines since 1995 when, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China not yet a concern, Congress killed the 29-boat Seawolf class after EB built only three boats. Electric Boat, arguably the world’s premier builder of submarines, is taking an array of steps to ramp up production. It has invested hundreds of millions in technological improvements at its facilities in Groton and Quonset Point, RI. It has been hiring and continues to hire and train new shipbuilders at a rate of from 3,000 to 5,000 a year. It and others have invested in four shipyards from Philadelphia to Alabama that, it is intended, will produce modular sub components for shipment to Groton. Last week, Gov. Ned Lamont applauded the shipyard for buying most of the struggling Crystal Mall in Waterford to house expanded engineering, training and software development operations Courtney said that, since AUKUS was signed, Congress has invested “close to $10 billion” in efforts to expand and improve U.S. industrial capacity. Courtney travels regularly to Australia. He is a leading AUKUS proponent and is co-chair of the Congressional Friends of Australia Caucus. As a measure of its concern over Chinese expansionism, he said Australia will have invested another $2 billion in U.S. manufacturing by the end of this year. Courtney called it a remarkable sum to spend on foreign manufacturing considering the hundreds of billions Australia has committed to expanding its own manufacturing effort and building a naval base capable of berthing its own and allied nuclear powered submarines. Electric Boat is producing Virginia class submarines, which now cost more than $4 billion a ship, with the latest design modifications, at a rate of 1.2 a year. The Navy says it needs production of 2.3 a year to meet its goal associated with its defense goals. At the same time, it is also building the Navy’s new fleet of about a dozen massive, Columbia class ballistic missile submarines. The nuclear-powered Virginia class submarines are unmatched in technology and are at the front line of U.S. defense. They are armed with cruise missiles and capable of open-ocean and inshore missions, among them intelligence gathering and anti-submarine warfare. After the presidential announcement, Courtney predicted that the Navy’s review, expected to be finished before year end, will focus on how to streamline production to meet US and AUKUS security targets rather than recommending substantial changes to the agreement. “There is no question over the last five months … that the secretary has said he is very much concerned with production cadence and how we can basically get more delivery of submarines so that there is a sufficient inventory for both the U.S. Navy and the Australian Navy,” Courtney said. “I will say this that there has been a huge dollar investment in the industrial base that is still just now coming to fruition,” he said. Assuming it will take time for the investments in industrial base to yield results, he said it is too soon to talk about substantial amendments to AUKUS such as changing the number or delivery schedule of submarines to Australia. In addition, he said whoever is president in 2032 has 270 days before the first scheduled delivery under AUKUS to determine whether doing so is contrary to U.S. security interests. “Personally I think I feel it is really premature for any of us to try to judge what the industrial base is going to look like five years from now,” Courtney said. “And we really should let all of this investment, which has allowed shipyards in Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and now Philadelphia, to be part of the steel fabrication. And it has taken a huge number of manhours out of southern New England. And that really has not clicked in 100 percent right now.” In the meantime, he said AUKUS has proved enduring enough to survive successive political administrations in all three signatory countries. He said the mood was “very buoyant and bullish” when the Friends of Australia Caucus hosted the Australian Prime Minister at a Washington breakfast after the White House announcement. “I think that what we heard from the East Room was really a pretty significant commitment and endorsement by an administration — the opposing party from the prior administration — and now it is clearly a policy of the Trump administration, just like it is in Australia and England,” Courtney said. “This plan has really shown some endurance in terms of shifts in political winds.”
