Australia commits $10B to nuke sub base; US, UK boats welcome – Breaking Defense Breaking Defense

SYDNEY: Australia will spend upwards of $10 billion AUD ($7.3 billion) as part of its AUKUS effort to build a new base for nuclear submarines on the eastern seaboard, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced today. There are three candidates for what will be the Lucky Country’s first new military base since the 1990s: the city of Brisbane’s port, Newcastle and Port Kembla.

They will include specialized maintenance facilities, “personal amenities and suitable accommodation for submarine crews and support staff. They will be designed to handle visiting US and UK nuclear-powered submarines,” Morrison said. That would allow these boats to do significant resupply at a strategically significant location, and encourage fraternization and information-sharing between crews from the three countries.

Initial work on the port is set to be completed by the end of 2023.

But Morrison, speaking from the prime minister’s residence here at Kirribilli, also put paid to hopes that Australia might decide before the federal elections which nuclear submarines it plans to buy or build — a question of great interest to AUKUS watchers.

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Defense Minister Peter Dutton had said on a Sunday news show here that the decision would be made “within the next couple of months.” In his speech Morrison knocked that straight down but, clearly to lessen any perception that he and Dutton might be in disagreement, he said he could “confirm where Peter has said that we have made a lot of progress. I mean, we haven’t let the grass grow under our feet on this.” But the timeline remains 18 months for the full decision-making process.

Morrison stressed that the AUKUS nuclear submarines are not part of what he called “a procurement contest.” It is, he said, “a partnership.” The United States controls access to the technology, “not just over any technology that we would seek to use, but also over the UK’s use of such technology. So that is the nature of this partnership and the partners are working incredibly well together the speed at which what was effectively the trading level arrangements that need to be put in place.”

Addressing the broader state of the world, Morrison offered a dark view — very Manichean — saying the very openness of the West and “the well-motivated altruistic ambition of our international institutions has opened the door unwittingly” to the threat now posed by Russia, evidenced by its invasion of Ukraine, China’s increasingly belligerent stance and that of other autocracies.

“[T]he hope that such an inclusion and accommodation would lead to some reform or moderation of these autocratic regimes,” the long-serving member of Parliament said, has been “disappointed.”

Australia has acted on this view. “Last Tuesday, I announced around $70 million in defensive military assistance and non-lethal military equipment and medical supplies to support the defense of Ukraine. Our missiles are on the ground now,” he said. “So yes, we have offered our prayers, but in Australia, we have also sent our ammunition.”

Morrison, asked by Michael Fullilove from event sponsor the Lowy Institute, if Putin will win in Ukraine, offered this careful assessment:

“I think there has been an overestimation of Russia’s capability,” said the prime minister, well known for his aversion to answering hypothetical questions. “I think what we’ll see is a resistance in the Ukraine, one which will only grow over time. I think any gains that are potentially made will be very hard to hold.”

Morrison, in an impressively wide-ranging speech, also tackled the Indo-Pacific, which has been abuzz with speculation that China might use the Ukraine invasion as a sort of model for taking Taiwan.

“I wouldn’t for a moment, seek to draw any parallels between the situation in the Taiwan Strait and Ukraine. I think these situations are entirely different. And the responses that would be expected in the Taiwan Strait would be completely different to what has occurred in Ukraine,” he said. “I think those circumstances and that situation is as it was before, tense, deserving of concern and attention, but not necessarily at all impacted by the events in Ukraine. What can Australia do? Keep calling this out.”