The Australian government is expected within a year to announce the shipbuilding company that will work with the U.K. to build its next-generation nuclear-powered attack submarines, a Royal Australian Navy officer told reporters Nov. 8.
The official said a partner has already been nominated and the government will likely reveal the choice within 12 months.
“In Australia, we’ve nominated the partner to build the actual construction yard. And that work is scheduled to begin later this year. Inside the next 12 months, we expect the Australian Government to make an announcement on the SSN-AUKUS build partner. And so that entity will have a huge role to play in, in determining some of those requirements,” RAN Commodore Bradley Francis told reporters during the Naval Submarine League’s annual symposium.
The tripartite AUKUS agreement formed by Australia, the U.K. and U.S. aims to have the latter two help Australia operate and ultimately build nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) to replace its Collins-class conventionally-powered submarines. This involves building up a nuclear-powered submarine production industry as well as the ability to maintain the vessels.
The U.S. plans to sell a mix of three to five used and new Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s before the new SSN-AUKUS class vessels are ready in Australia in the early 2040s.
The plan foresees Australia and the U.K. sharing the same design in SSN-AUKUS, but each country building the boats domestically, with the first British one delivered in the late 2030s and the Australian one in the early 2040s.
“The SSN-AUKUS will have a high level of interoperability with the Virginia-class. There’s a stated amount of technology that’s going to be integrated in SSN-AUKUS that we will be familiar with by then. So the focus of the moment is building a workforce to operate [Virginia-class submarines],” Francis added.
Francis also confirmed part of the SSN-AUKUS strategy is for Australia to gain lessons learned from the initial British build of the submarine class.
“I think it’s very important and, in fact, it’s part of our strategy, to use the lessons learned from the delivery of the first SSN-AUKUS in the late 2030s by the U.K. to inform our understanding as part of the synergy that’s provided by the optimal pathway.”
Capt. Lincoln Reifsteck, the AUKUS integration and acquisition program manager at Naval Sea Systems Command, confirmed the plan envisions the submarines in that order for a reason.
“We want those in sequence. U.K. design, U.K. certainly has experience as a nuclear submarine building country so we can cut down on lessons and challenges to cut down on the overall construction.”
Reifsteck said the U.S. is not looking at any major changes to the used Block IV Virginia-class boats the U.S. plans to sell to Australia, but any redesigning will occur during the submarines’ major midlife overhaul period.
“We’re not looking at major changes. We’re assessing each type of capability or associated system, but it’s very hard to go into a well established design and start redesigning in a midlife overhaul prior to selling.”