Two high level members of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday said they are “bullish” that Congress will ultimately pass legislation enabling key elements of the tripartite AUKUS deal to help Australia buy and build its own nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN-AUKUS), but noted Australia must hit milestones before the U.S. sells its submarines.
Speaking during a discussion at the Politico Defense Summit on Nov. 14, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Armed Services subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces said the reason why the legislation for AUKUS has been “a bit tricky is just that the legislative proposals came over late. I mean, they came over after the March announcement, the optimal pathway that set up the roadmap for sale of Virginia-class submarines, as well as technology sharing, as well as defense production act sharing. So we were well into [National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA] markup, when those arrived.”
Under the AUKUS agreement, the U.S. plans to sell three to five new and used Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s before Australia’s new SSN-AUKUS boats start coming online in the early 2040s.
Last week, Commander of Submarine Forces Vice Adm. Bill Houston told reporters the current plan, if all legislation passes allowing the sales, is for the U.S. to sell two in-service Virginia-class submarines following their midlife refueling and modernization period in 2032 and 2035 followed by one new construction submarine in 2038 (Defense Daily, Nov. 9).
All three vessels will be of the standard Virginia-class, without the Virginia Payload Module vessels being built with increased missile capacity.
Courtney said the proposals also went to the foreign affairs committees in both the House and Senate. He compared synchronizing the work of the House and Senate defense and foreign affairs committee approving AUKUS submarine sales and receiving funds from Australia as “sort of trying to herd the cats to get them lined up to, you know, hopefully, be folded into NDAA has taken, you know, definitely some three dimensional chess to mix my metaphors here in terms of just trying to, you know, get the pieces together.”
Despite the logistical and political challenges, Courtney said he is “really very optimistic that we’re going to make some real strong progress with both pillars.”
Rep. Rob Wittman, Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, agreed during the discussion that he is optimistic about the legislation passing as well and he underscored it will help all three countries increase their submarine numbers.
Before this Congress, Wittman served for several years as chair or vice chair of the House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee with Courtney.
“I think there’s a lot of great things about AUKUS. One thing we know for certain it has to result in a net increase in submarines between the three nations, bottom line. We want to make sure that it helps us in our industrial base, because our industrial base is going to help grow the Australian industrial base, we know they have to have organic capacity there to produce submarines,” Wittman said.
He underscored that while in the interim the U.S. will sell submarines to Australia before SSN-AUKUS is ready, “but I think there needs to be a measure there to say as we sell them submarines, they need to demonstrate certain milestones in organic capacity.”
Wittman said in a recent trip to Australia that “their governing officials agreed when we were there meeting with their members of parliament, and in Prime Minister [Anthony] Albanese and others, they’re in agreement that you have to demonstrate the Australians that they’re doing this. So I think the enterprise is on track to do that.”
However, Wittman said they should “not underestimate the complexity and the toughness of this challenge for all of us. We want to make sure shipbuilders are here. Their submariners are here, which they are. But it’s going to take an all hands on deck effort to make sure that this happens. And I think that folks are ready for it. But it’s going to take a tremendous amount of resolve.”
He also reiterated that “we need to be laser focused on making sure that the net result of this are more submarines than what would happen if each nation did this enterprise individually.”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced three bills in July that authorized the Biden administration’s request to sell two used Virginia-class submarines to Australia as well as exempt Australia and the U.K. from export control rules (Defense Daily, July 27).
In contrast, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) was blocking the Senate version of the sale provision to increase submarine and defense spending past the limit from the debt limit agreement between Republicans and President Biden.
Wicker argued the U.S. industrial base should be pushed to produce 2.3 to 2.5 attack submarines per year to avoid decreasing the Navy’s fleet further below the requirement of 66 boats.
The U.S. submarine industrial base is currently producing around 1.3 attack submarines per year in addition to building the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN).
A recent Congressional Budget Office report said the Navy would need to build 1.9 to 2.6 attack submarines per year to both keep up with U.S. submarine production goals and build extras to replace sales to Australia, beyond the SSBN work. The CBO was skeptical that the U.S. industrial base could achieve these gains and it was more likely the U.S. Navy would have reduced submarine numbers than planned for 20 years (Defense Daily, Oct. 30).