Thirty seven Royal Australian Navy (RAN) officers and sailors are going to Guam to train on board a U.S. submarine tender as it starts to build up the capability to maintain nuclear-powered submarines under the tripartite AUKUS agreement.
Last year, Australia alongside the U.S. and U.K., announced that in 2024 Australian sailors will start maintenance duty in Guam to prepare for Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-W).
As part of phase one of the AUKUS deal, SRF-W is expected to be established as soon as 2027, when a rotation presence of up to four Virginia-class submarines and one British Astute-class attack submarine will have a presence at the Australian HMAS Stirling naval base.
The AUKUS deal aims to help Australia field and ultimately build its own nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs). The U.S. plans to sell three to five Virginia-class SSNs to Australia in the 2030s, with Australia set to finish domestic production on its first new SSN-AUKUS class submarine in the early 2040s.
These RAN personnel are set to spend up to five months on board the USS Emory S. Land (AS-39), a U.S. Navy submarine tender. There they will integrate with U.S. sailors to build knowledge on how the U.S. conducts SSN maintenance.
The Australian Defense Ministry said this training opportunity is both a milestone in Australia developing its SSN capabilities and will allow the RAN to support the first planned maintenance activity of a U.S. SSN during a visit to HMAS Stirling scheduled for the second half of 2024.
“The skills, knowledge and experience gained in Guam alongside our United States Navy partners will afford our people the opportunity to undertake some of the most complex maintenance on a United States SSN,” Vice Adm. Mark Hammond, Australian Chief of Navy, said in a statement.
“This is an exciting step forward in developing our workforce skill sets so that the Royal Australian Navy is ready to support, maintain and operate Australia’s future nuclear-powered submarine capability,” he continued.
Richard Marles, Minister for Defense and Deputy Prime Minister, said this learning opportunity “demonstrates meaningful progress along Australia’s pathway to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.”
He added that maintenance of the U.S. Navy SSN later in 2024 “will be an important milestone in the development of skills within Australia’s submarine and industry workforces,” he continued.
This is the latest in a series of moves to help Australia gain the capability to service and ultimately build its own SSNs.
In July, the U.S. Navy named Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PHNSY & IMF) as the Naval Supervising Authority and Lead Maintenance Activity for SRF-W. This means it will help support training Australian personnel for submarine maintenance (Defense Daily, Aug. 4, 2023).
At the time, the Navy said extended rotations at SRF-W will last three to five years, so the Virginia-class SSNs will require voyage repair and intermediate-level maintenance, which usually lasts for weeks. That maintenance does not require dry docking.
Then, in August, the first set of subject matter experts from Australia, the U.K. and U.S., making up the Advance Verification Team (AVT), arrived at PHNSY & IMF. They spent weeks working to understand the maintenance and industrial skills required to establish SRF-W, then created an embedment plan to help Australian personnel train at the four U.S. public naval shipyards (Defense Daily, Aug. 16, 2023).
In November, the first set of over a dozen Australian submarine maintenance personnel from Australian submarine builder ASC arrived at PHNSY & IMF) to start learning how the U.S. plans and executes SSN maintenance. Ultimately, hundreds of Australian AUKUS Maintenance Partners personnel are set to train that way (Defense Daily, Dec. 8, 2023).
In December, the State Department approved a potential $2 billion foreign military sale to Australia for AUKUS-related training equipment as well as the means to train select Australian personnel at U.S. shipyards (Defense Daily, Dec. 4, 2023).