USS Greeneville (SSN 772) enters Diego Garcia’s harbor Aug. 21, 2020. (DVIDS)

WASHINGTON: The trilateral defense pact laid out by President Joe Biden and counterparts Wednesday will present serious workforce challenges for Australia, a precedent-setting discussion of non-proliferation policy and could take two decades before coming to fruition, defense experts told Breaking Defense.

Dubbed AUKUS, the surprise agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, as described by Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, includes an agreement to share highly sensitive nuclear propulsion technology with the end goal of Australia establishing a conventionally armed but nuclear-powered submarine program.

How long that will take, what submarine the Australians will build and what assistance the US and UK will provide are all questions to be worked out over the next 18 months as the three countries determine the path forward.

Senior American administration officials speaking to reporters prior to the heads of state’s official announcement admitted the timeline for Australia to put a submarine in the water is not clear, and what makes it even more complicated is the fact the country currently lacks any real nuclear domestic infrastructure.

Most analysts who spoke to Breaking Defense said the lack of specific details makes the timeline difficult to predict, but those who did offer guesses placed it between 10 and 20 years. While Biden and his counterparts were careful to not say it, the driving force behind the deal and at least some sense of urgency is obvious to observers.

“This is all to counter China. That’s unspoken, but that’s what it’s for,” said Tom Stefanick, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “If you want this new alliance, AU-UK-US, to have an impact on China’s calculations, it’s got to happen pretty fast. So, China sets part of that deadline.”

Which Sub Will the Aussie’s Build, and How Will They Build It?

USS Hawaii (SSN 776) undergoes routine inspections and repairs in Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

American shipbuilding executives and Navy acquisition officials often talk about industry’s problems maintaining an educated and skilled workforce whenever workloads fluctuate. The challenge Australia will face in establishing a nuclear workforce mostly from scratch will be tremendous.

“They are going to have train up a whole new cadre of nuclear engineers,” said Brent Sadler, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former submariner. He said to train a qualified enlisted sailor or officer to work on nuclear technology takes at least two years.

And that only covers the military’s operational side. American shipbuilding companies responsible for building the US fleet train their own personnel to work on nuclear technology, a major investment of time and money. In addition to the operators and maintenance crews, there’s also auxiliary staff such as doctors who need to be on hand for medical support. And then there are the subsequent inspections necessary to ensure the technology is being operated safely.

“There’s various levels that have to be built up and it doesn’t occur overnight. This is a long-haul process to get there,” one shipbuilding executive said of the infrastructure needed for industry to work on nuclear technology.

Which submarine the Australians end up building could also present specific workforce challenges. Most analysts noted the amount of time and money required for designing and developing a new boat from scratch makes it an unlikely option.

Instead, Bryan Clark, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, predicted the US Navy’s Virginia-class submarine would be a logical choice.

Clark said the Australians’ original deal with the French — which has now been scrapped — called for $66 billion to buy 12 boats.  If research and development costs can be minimized due to the work already done in the US, Clark theorized the deal could include 12 Virginia-class submarines costing roughly $3 billion each, with the rest of the funds going towards building domestic infrastructure, construction and maintenance.

“Because submarines are the one part of the US Navy shipbuilding infrastructure that is maxed out right now, building 12 VA-class for the [Royal Australian Navy] will mean 12 US VA-class will not get built,” Clark said. “That could be part of the administrations’ plan, since arguably those are still 12 SSNs for the alliance, but they would be paid for by Australia. However, those boats cannot help with US missions elsewhere.”

The announcement Wednesday evening made clear the Australian government is keen to tout job creation as a benefit of this deal. But it is not clear whether those manufacturing jobs in Australia would be for building components from scratch or whether they would complete the assembly process. Either way, US industry would be taxed either in raw manufacturing capacity or having to send experts currently working on American Virginia-class submarines to Australia.

Clark and other experts also mentioned the British Astute-class submarine as an alternative to the Virginia class.

Sharing Propulsion Tech Prompts Fear of Nuclear Proliferation ‘Loophole’

Electrician’s Mate (Nuclear) 3rd Class Jacob Timms, assigned to USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN 78) reactor department, dons a 40 cal suit, Sept. 29, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Brett Walker)

During the Wednesday night announcement, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a point of saying his country is not seeking nuclear weapons. Regardless, proliferation experts said they worry about the precedents that could be set in the coming years.

One concern stems from the international laws surrounding nuclear materials. Normally, the organization responsible for enforcing those laws — the International Atomic Energy Agency — requires non-nuclear weapon states to declare their materials for inspection. However, that law has a loophole: nuclear materials for use in a submarine.

No country yet has ever tried to use that loophole, according to James Acton, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“I’m not worried about Australia using nuclear material that’s been removed from safeguards to build a nuclear weapon,” he said. “I am worried that other non-nuclear weapon states will follow Australia’s lead. This loophole has never been invoked in 50 years. It seems to me quite unlikely that that degree of restraint will continue if Australia invokes that loophole.”

The concern is that if an American ally exploited the loophole, an adversary like Iran might be much more willing to do so as well. It could also make countries such as China less willing to pressure other nations not to do the same.

“If Iran announced it was removing highly enriched uranium from safeguards for the purpose of naval propulsion, we would go apeshit over that,” Acton said. “And we should. It would be outrageous for Iran to go ahead and do that. But I think we [would have] set a very dangerous precedent.”

Alan Kuperman, a professor at University of Texas at Austin who studies nuclear proliferation policy, also expressed concerns about the US providing a submarine using highly enriched uranium to Australia. Just hours before Wednesday’s announcement, he argued in a Breaking Defense Op-Ed that the US Navy should shift to using low enriched uranium on its own submarines in the interest of preventing a hostile actor from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“The most likely path to such a bomb would be for an adversary to divert or steal one of the two required nuclear explosives, plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU), from a non-weapons purpose like reactor fuel,” he wrote. “That is why the US, for nearly 50 years, has worked to phase out global commerce in these two dangerous materials.”

Officials said it is not yet clear what kind of uranium Australia’s submarine will use, but the US and UK both rely on HEU. The French, who were left out of the new security arrangement much to their chagrin, already use low enriched uranium.

Kuperman said if the Australian sub uses HEU, other navies seeking nuclear propulsion would demand the same. However, if the US and UK were to develop an LEU-fueled ship, that may influence US shipbuilding.

“If LEU is good enough for the Australian navy, why not also the US Navy?” he said. “I think this could have long-term positive effects for phasing out HEU in naval propulsion, including in the US Navy.”

With the announcement of the deal made public, the three countries can get to work in answering all of these questions and more. But in the meantime, they will have to contend with the French, who are very publicly voicing their displeasure.

“The [US] choice to exclude [a European Union] ally and partner such as [France] from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region […] shows a lack of coherence that [France] can only note and regret,” the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. tweeted following the White House’s announcement.

Colin Clark contributed to this report.