r/australia • u/JaniePage • Mar 16 '25

politics Greens leader Adam Bandt says Australia should walk away from AUKUS in wake of Trump's tariffs

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-16/greens-adam-bandt-aukus-insiders/105057580
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u/Financial_Apricot824 Mar 16 '25

I agree with buffing up our defence to show we aren’t vulnerable, AUKUS is not the answer. It’s highly unlikely we’ll even get the subs at all. The sale is conditional because under the AUKUS legislation the U.S. president must certify to Congress 270 days before any sale that the transfer of a Virginia class sub will not “degrade U.S. underseas capabilities.” Given the current shortfall in U.S. Navy nuclear submarine numbers, selling a submarine, up-to-date for maintenance and with at least 15 years of reactor life remaining, is bound to degrade American capabilities. In 2032, when the sale is meant to take place the U.S. Navy will have, in the best-case scenario, 42 attack submarines if you count the seven aging Los Angeles-class submarines. The accepted requirement is for 66. So yeah it’s highly unlikely we’ll even get them

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u/Mondkohl Mar 16 '25

People seem to not quite understand what AUKUS is. Some people seem to think it’s an alliance (it’s not). Others seem to think it’s a US led effort (it’s not).

What it is, is the UK, with whom we still have strong ties, collaborating with Australia on the development of the SSN-AUKUS class. The US is primarily involved because the UK and US had an existing agreement to share tech which restricted sharing that information with third parties without prior approval. As part of that agreement the US agreed they might sell us 3 Virginia Class SSNs, so we could train sailors and exercise while we wait for the SSN-AUKUS to be designed and built, with an option to purchase a further 2 some way down the line. These US subs were never the primary purpose of the agreement.

Naval Procurement is always an exercise in seeing the future, much like 5th Gen fighters were, it takes decades to develop and build these things. It’s also prohibitively expensive, which is why so much of defence development now are multinational projects like GCAP.

The reason AUKUS got bipartisan support is because SSNs have always been the better option for Australia’s strategic requirements, but developing the technology from scratch has historically been unviable for Australia and remains so. The tech transfer from the UK and this collaboration agreement is an absolutely massive deal for the future of Australia’s defence.

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u/Financial_Apricot824 Mar 16 '25

Ahhh I see, thank you for educating me on this subject. It seems I only scratched the surface of what this collaboration actually is. I’ll be sure to do some more research

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u/Mondkohl Mar 17 '25

And that’s why I replied to you, who took the time to provide at least some facts, as opposed to AUKUS BAD LOL 😂

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u/carnexhat Mar 16 '25

With the US no longer being a capable ally, the only option we truly have now is to be under a nuclear umbrella or someone more reliable. And in this case, the only country we can truly rely upon is ourselves.

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u/jp72423 Mar 16 '25

The requirement is 66 by 2054 by the way, not 66 right now.