The Holes in AUKUS and the Australian Defence Plan

The Productivity Commission measured the 2020 sanctions and found them close to a rounding error. Nothing models a full break.

The counter-case comes first, because it is official and it is strong. The Productivity Commission modelled China's trade sanctions of 2020 and found that they reduced the total value of Australian exports to the world by 0.2 per cent, reduced gross domestic product by less than one-hundredth of a percentage point, and reduced the purchasing power of real national income by less than one tenth of a percentage point. Treasury separately estimated that affected sectors lost $5.4 billion in exports to China in the first full year while finding $4.4 billion in new markets, a net loss of about $1 billion, or 0.25 per cent of Australian exports.

That result depended on the nature of the episode. The sanctions covered exports worth about 1 per cent of gross domestic product, and the goods were largely diverted to other buyers. Coercion of that kind is survivable, and the record shows Australia survived it.

The contingency the submarines are bought for is not that. Two-way trade with China was $326 billion in 2025, about a quarter of all Australian trade. Exports were $196 billion, 29 per cent of everything Australia sells. The remaining $130 billion is what Australia buys: electrical and electronic equipment, machinery, vehicles, fabricated steel and plastics, which are inputs to almost everything Australia builds. In a rupture the imports stop as well, and there is nowhere to divert a purchase to at that scale and speed.

The direction of the asymmetry is known. Modelling of a halt to trade between the two countries finds that in 60 of 63 sectors Australian gross domestic product contracts by more than Chinese gross domestic product.

What does not exist is a number. No Commonwealth assessment of a full rupture has been published, by Treasury, by the Productivity Commission, or by the Review. The body that modelled a 1 per cent episode has not modelled the 28 per cent one.

Read more: The AUKUS Cost BlowoutReferences[318] Australia's Productivity Commission assessment of China's trade sanctions Productivity Commission, as reported by the Lowy Institute[319] Treasury estimates of the effect of Chinese trade restrictions Australian Treasury estimates, as reported in Foreign Policy, November 2021[320] Economic and emission impact of Australia-China trade disruption Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, discussion paper[13] China country brief Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Commonwealth of Australia[14] The economics of AUKUS Lowy Institute, March 2023↑ Back to the boat

No navy has reopened a closed sea lane. Three have closed in three years, and none was reopened by force.

ANZUS commits the parties to consult, not to fight. But willingness is the smaller problem: what Australia needs protected cannot be protected by a fleet.

Modern conditions decide it. Anti-ship missiles, cheap one-way drones and mines are launched from shore against ships that are radar-bright, slow and broadcasting their own position, and the cost of the weapon is a fraction of the cost of the interception. Hormuz, the Red Sea and the Black Sea have each closed on that arithmetic.

Commercial withdrawal is one of the mechanisms, not the cause. At Hormuz in February 2026 premiums rose fivefold and cover was re-quoted at about sixty times pre-crisis rates within 48 hours, before a mine was laid; the Lloyd's Market Association says safety rather than insurance drove it. Either way the decision was commercial. Red Sea transits fell 90 per cent with a United States carrier group present.

Read more: The Proof of the Hormuz Pudding, The Island Castle, and The True Cost of Cheap Imported FuelReferences[15] The Insurance Weapon: How Commercial Risk Logic Became an Irregular Warfare Tool at Hormuz Irregular Warfare Initiative, June 2026[16] Safety concerns, not insurance availability, driving reduced vessel traffic in the Strait of Hormuz Lloyd's Market Association, market statement, 23 March 2026[17] Middle East shipping insurance costs rise on Hormuz risks S&P Global Commodity Insights, July 2026[18] Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America, [1952] ATS 2 Australian Treaty Series, via AustLII↑ Back to the boat

ANZUS requires the parties to consult. It does not require them to fight.

Eight submarines are to be in Australian service by the 2050s, a schedule spanning a dozen governments in three democracies. The treaty record does not support that assumption.

ANZUS, in force since 1952, commits the parties to consult when security is threatened, and to act to meet a common danger in accordance with their constitutional processes. It creates no obligation to fight, no integrated command and no assigned forces. It has been formally invoked once, by Australia in 2001, to join a war the United States was already fighting. New Zealand has been partially suspended since 1986 over a nuclear policy dispute, which is the demonstrated case that a party can be removed from the arrangement over exactly the kind of question AUKUS raises. One partner is currently reviewing the agreement against an America First test.

Read more: category EReferences[18] Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America, [1952] ATS 2 Australian Treaty Series, via AustLII[19] Force Posture Agreement between Australia and the United States of America, [2015] ATS 1 Australian Treaties Database, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade[20] The ANZUS Treaty United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney↑ Back to the boat

The force is built for a shooting war. The demonstrated vulnerability is a supply one, and it is unassessed.

The Review rejects a "balanced force" able to meet a range of contingencies in favour of a "focused force" designed against one military threat. That is a choice about the kind of war as much as the opponent.

Australia imports more than 90 per cent of its medicines and about 90 per cent of its liquid fuel, and roughly 98 per cent of its trade moves on foreign-owned or foreign-controlled shipping. Two refineries remain, from eight in 2005, meeting under a fifth of demand. Diesel reserves have been reported at 22 days against an International Energy Agency obligation of 90. There is no mandated minimum stockholding of medicines and no public figure for what stock exists.

A Commonwealth body is charged with exactly this. The Office of Supply Chain Resilience covers fuel, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, fertilisers and telecommunications equipment, and names national security in its remit. Yet a 2026 expert roundtable found Australia's supply chains long, opaque and heavily import-dependent, with no comprehensive national risk or vulnerability assessment mapping those dependencies. The country is armed for one kind of attack and exposed to another.

Read more: The Island Castle, The Proof of the Hormuz Pudding, and The True Cost of Cheap Imported FuelReferences[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[25] The defence strategic review: a revolution in Australian defence planning? Australian Strategic Policy Institute[26] Office of Supply Chain Resilience Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Commonwealth of Australia[27] Submission on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for Australia's resilience Institute for Integrated Economic Research Australia, to the Australian Parliament[28] Five important ways to reduce Australia's supply chain risks UNSW BusinessThink, University of New South Wales, 2026[29] Australia's fuel security falling short as war-game report, released under FOI, reveals vulnerabilities ABC News[30] The escalation trap is exposing Australia's economic vulnerability Australian Institute of International Affairs, March 2026↑ Back to the boat

The plan assumes eight boats threatening China's sea lanes will deter. China has spent two decades preparing for exactly that.

The reasoning is that a long-range submarine force puts Chinese shipping at risk and so buys Australia a say. Beijing named that vulnerability in 2003 and has worked on it since: strategic reserve construction from 2007, pipelines from Kazakhstan, Russia and Myanmar, and the Belt and Road corridors. Overland now carries about a tenth of Chinese oil imports, from nothing before 2006.

This has not solved China's problem: roughly 80 per cent of its crude still transits Malacca. But the comparison is what matters. China holds a reserve measured in months, fourteen land neighbours and the world's largest refining industry. Australia holds about 30 days and no land neighbour. A blockade of China is measured in years; Australia's endurance in weeks.

And the lane runs both ways. Australia's own refined fuel arrives through those same waters, from Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia. Closing the strait closes it on Australia first.

Read more: The Island Castle and How China Held the World UpReferences[34] China's Malacca Dilemma, After the Hormuz Blockade Foreign Policy, May 2026[35] Internal Energy Balancing and the Coercive Isolation of Taiwan China Journal of Foreign Policy[36] Strait of Malacca: Asia's oil lifeline and China's weak spot GEOPOL, May 2026↑ Back to the boat

Mines, uncrewed systems and land-based missiles are already funded and arriving. No published analysis compares them with the submarines.

The alternatives are not hypothetical. Australia has committed $1.1 billion to dozens of Ghost Shark autonomous undersea vehicles, with first delivery in 2026. Bluebottle uncrewed surface vessels are on order in the dozens. Sea mines, land-based anti-ship missiles on trucks, and Tomahawk and SM-6 on the destroyers are all in train. Each arrives years before the first submarine, and can be bought in numbers.

A former Minister for Defence told the AUKUS Public Inquiry in June 2026 that she had not yet seen anybody put forward a credible alternative, and that abandoning the programme over a delivery shortfall would be like answering a leaky roof by selling the house. A former Minister for Foreign Affairs put a detailed alternative to the same inquiry two weeks earlier: conventional boats bought off the shelf from France, Japan, Germany, Sweden or South Korea, with more resources to drones, uncrewed submarines, anti-ship missiles, sea mines and strike missiles, and to cyber capability. In September 2026 the same authors published costings, set out below. Drawing on expert advice and work by the Parliamentary Budget Office, they put the through-life cost of eight AUKUS boats at $260 billion, of 24 Attack-class conventional boats at $240 billion, and of twelve French Suffren-class nuclear boats at $180 billion, all at constant 2025 prices with no contingency allowance. Their conclusion is that twelve smaller nuclear boats using low-enriched fuel could be had for about seventy per cent of the cost of eight large ones using highly enriched fuel.

Two cautions belong with those figures. They are not struck on the same basis as the government's $268 to $368 billion, which is in outturned dollars and carries a fifty per cent contingency, and the register makes no claim that either set is correct. And the authors are not proposing conventional submarines: they argue nuclear propulsion is necessary, because Australian boats would be deployed north of the Indonesian archipelago and a nuclear boat transits at three times the speed without snorting.

The register does not adjudicate between them. It records that a costed alternative now exists, that it was published to the same inquiry that heard the claim none had been proposed, and that no government document compares any of them with the submarines being bought.

The government's position is that these complement the submarines rather than replace them. That may be right. What has never been published is the comparison — what the same $368 billion buys in mines, uncrewed systems, land-based strike and stores, measured against eight boats arriving from 2032. A different pathway was also available and unexamined in public: the French Suffren class, cheaper, with a crew of about 65 rather than 100 or more, and a reactor that can be refuelled rather than a sealed life-of-boat core.

Read more: Sub to Nowhere and The Island CastleReferences[40] Security without submarines: the military strategy Australia should pursue instead of AUKUS University of New South Wales, April 2025[41] Distributed firepower: attack missile boats are alternatives to major warships ASPI The Strategist, February 2025[42] An alternative AUKUS path Australian Naval Institute[43] Australia to deploy fleet of underwater attack drones dubbed Ghost Sharks CBS News[226] Linda Reynolds defends AUKUS, argues Australia has no credible alternative The Point, 29 June 2026[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026[236] Australia needs nuclear submarines — but not AUKUS Dr Michael Keating AC and Jon Stanford, Pearls and Irritations, 14 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

Armed neutrality and non-alignment are live options in the literature and in the region. No Australian government document examines either.

The option is not fringe. Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and, in varying forms, Sweden and Finland have practised armed neutrality or military non-alignment. Singapore holds close defence relations with the United States and Australia while maintaining non-alignment, and sees no contradiction in it. Australian academic work has examined armed neutrality directly, and even institutes that support the programme acknowledge that the spectrum of deterrence options runs from neutrality to nuclear weapons.

What is missing is any assessment on the government's own record. There has been no white paper since 2016. The 2023 Review does not test non-alignment, armed neutrality or a regional security architecture as postures, and no departmental analysis of them has been released. The middle path was not rejected on the record. It was never examined on the record.

Read more: The AsiaPac Solution and From AUKUS to AUASIAReferences[50] The US alliance is precious, but Australia should plan for more self-reliance ASPI The Strategist, April 2025[51] Plan B? Reconsidering Australian security in the event of a post US alliance era Australian Journal of International Affairs[52] Advice to ASEAN: N should equal non-aligned, not neutral ASPI The Strategist, March 2024↑ Back to the boat

The record says otherwise. The official American assessment found the blockade alone would have broken Japan without a single bomb on its cities.

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey is the definitive post-war assessment, and its finding is unambiguous. By August 1945, even without direct air attack on Japanese cities and industries, war production would have fallen 40 to 50 per cent below its 1944 peak solely through the interdiction of shipping. Oil imports began declining in August 1943 and had been eliminated by April 1945. By mid-1944 coal and ore imports were down two-thirds; by March 1945 coal had virtually ceased and iron ore was cut off entirely, with the remaining ships carrying food and salt. Aviation fuel stocks fell so low that pilot training and combat missions were cut.

Germany runs the same way. Fighter production peaked at 3,375 acceptances in September 1944, and only a minority reached combat, in part for want of fuel and pilots.

Read more: The Island CastleReferences[53] United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report, Pacific War, 1946 United States Government Printing Office[54] United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report, European War, 1945 United States Government Printing Office↑ Back to the boat

Stirling is beyond land-based missile range. That has stopped mattering, because the launcher moves.

The case for Western Australia rests on geography: Perth sits roughly 7,000 kilometres from the Chinese mainland, outside the reach of the land-based systems that dominate the near seas. On land-based ranges alone that is true. It is also the wrong measure.

The Pentagon's assessment is that the Chinese navy will soon conduct long-range precision strikes against land targets from its submarines and surface combatants using land-attack cruise missiles. The Type 093B carries vertical cells for the CJ-10, range beyond 1,500 kilometres. A submarine does not need a 7,000-kilometre weapon, because it closes the distance itself, and finding one boat is the hardest task in naval warfare.

Above that sits a tier with no defence at all. Six Jin-class submarines have carried twelve JL-3 missiles apiece since 2022, with a range beyond 10,000 kilometres, from patrol areas near China. Nothing Australia buys alters that. Only not being a target does.

Read more: The Island CastleReferences[61] Type 093B: China could soon have a fleet of guided missile nuclear submarines The National Interest[62] China submarine capabilities Nuclear Threat Initiative[63] China to expand its nuclear submarine fleet as production of the Type 093B increases Army Recognition, February 2025[64] China deploys new submarine-launched ballistic missiles Arms Control Association, May 2023[65] United States officially recognises the Type 094 Jin-class submarine as China's first credible naval nuclear deterrent Army Recognition, March 2025↑ Back to the boat

Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. None arose from a threat to Australia. The record runs one way.

The mechanism has a name and its architects used it openly. It is the insurance model: pay the premium by fighting alongside the larger ally, and the ally will help in a time of need. Menzies invoked it explicitly in going into Vietnam. A commentator writing in a defence institute's own journal puts it plainly, that Australia invites itself to America's wars in order to pay its alliance dues.

The measure of what that has bought is the ally's own. An American scholar describes Australia as a very good ally precisely because it has sent troops to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan despite the absence of a clear and present danger to Australia itself. The Australian mainland has been attacked in one war. Australia has fought in nine since Federation.

The treaty itself has been invoked once in seventy-five years. On 14 September 2001, following the attacks of 11 September, Australia invoked Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty. It was invoked by Australia in support of the United States, not by Australia in its own defence, and Afghanistan followed.

Read more: category DReferences[69] Cabinet papers reveal Australia was on path to war in Iraq in 1998 Graeme Dobell, ASPI The Strategist[70] The origins of the ANZUS alliance Australian Journal of International Affairs[71] Dangerous proximity: the collapse of Australia's defences in a contested Asia Australian Foreign Affairs[362] ANZUS Treaty invocation, 14 September 2001 Australian Government records and parliamentary material on the ANZUS Treaty↑ Back to the boat

Taiwan, the Philippines and Fiji supported it. Indonesia and Malaysia objected. Malaysia set conditions in waters the boats must transit.

Regional reaction split, and it split along lines that matter operationally rather than rhetorically. Taiwan's foreign ministry welcomed the steady advancement of AUKUS; the Philippines supported it; Fiji, which hosts the Pacific Islands Forum, backs it, and the Forum chair said he was reassured after American assurances.

Indonesia's foreign ministry recorded deep concern at the continuing arms race and power projection in the region, and its director general for Asian, Pacific and African affairs wrote that Australia, as the first Non-Proliferation Treaty state party to build nuclear-powered submarines, may set a dangerous precedent. Malaysia's prime minister called the arrangement a catalyst towards a nuclear arms race, and Malaysia has since required that AUKUS observe its policy on the operation of nuclear-powered submarines in Malaysian waters, along with the Law of the Sea Convention and the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone.

Those are the archipelagic waters between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. No published Australian assessment addresses what compliance with that requirement would mean for transit.

Read more: category CReferences[72] Southeast Asian Responses to AUKUS: Arms Racing, Non-Proliferation and Regional Stability William Choong and Ian Storey, ISEAS Perspective 2021/134[73] ASEAN responses to the AUKUS security dynamic East Asia Forum, November 2021[74] The AUKUS Announcement and Southeast Asia ISEAS Perspective 2023/23[75] Why China Should Worry About Asia's Reaction to AUKUS RAND Corporation, April 2023[76] Pacific Responses to AUKUS a Mix of Unease and Understanding The Diplomat, April 2023↑ Back to the boat

Eight hulls are counted as eight. On Australia's own cycle, six boats yield two deployable, for the world's third largest maritime zone.

Under the usage and upkeep cycle introduced after the Coles review, six Collins boats give two in long-term maintenance, three consistently available for tasking and two consistently deployable. Defence has told parliamentary committees it achieves that model. At the same ratio, eight nuclear boats return two or three at sea. Australia's exclusive economic zone is about 8.2 million square kilometres, the third largest in the world.

Both partners are performing worse than that, not better. The United States Government Accountability Office reported in August 2026 that maintenance backlogs cost the American attack submarine fleet about 15,000 operational days between 2016 and 2025 — some 41 years of submarine time — at about $3.4 billion, with a further 15 boats entering idle time to 2030. The United States Naval Institute has put the share of attack submarines out of service at around 40 per cent. British attack submarine availability reached zero in 2026.

A former Minister for Foreign Affairs put the same arithmetic to the AUKUS Public Inquiry in June 2026: that even with a full fleet of eight boats in service, normal operating constraints mean only two, or at most three, will be deployable across Australia's maritime environment at any one time.

The headline figure of eight is a procurement count. No published Australian document converts it into boats at sea.

Read more: category KReferences[79] US and UK partners show the realities facing Australia's small submarine fleet Baird Maritime, April 2026[80] British attack submarine availability falls to zero per cent as maintenance issues worsen Military Watch Magazine, June 2026[81] Collins class sustainment listed as a Product of Concern Minister for Defence Industry, 13 December 2024[82] Navy Readiness: Actions Needed to Address Costly Attack Submarine Maintenance Delays and Idle Time, GAO-26-109256 United States Government Accountability Office, August 2026[83] Forty per cent of US Navy nuclear attack submarines are out of service National Security Journal, April 2026, citing the United States Naval Institute[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026↑ Back to the boat

The Review sets an urgent period of 2023 to 2025. The submarines contribute nothing to it, or to the one after.

The judgement is bipartisan and has been restated at every step. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update found that the ten-year warning assumption was no longer an appropriate basis for planning. The 2023 Review found that in a missile age Australia can rely on neither geography nor warning time, and that the force was not fully fit for purpose. The 2024 National Defence Strategy repeated that Australia no longer enjoys a ten-year window of strategic warning.

The Review then divided its work into three periods: 2023 to 2025 for matters which must be addressed urgently, 2026 to 2030, and 2031 and beyond.

The submarines deliver nothing in the first period and nothing in the second. The first transferred boat is due in 2032 and the first built in Australia in the 2040s. The programme that consumed the Review's first priority is scheduled entirely inside its third period, and the 2016 white paper it replaced had predicted no major threat before 2040.

Read more: category QReferences[92] Launch of the National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program Minister for Defence, 17 April 2024[93] Australia is entering the missile age and is no longer protected by its geography, defence review says ABC News, 24 April 2023[94] Australia's Defence Strategic Review signals radical changes Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne, May 2023↑ Back to the boat

Australia has committed to disposing of spent naval fuel here, having never sited a facility for low-level waste in fourteen years of trying.

The commitment is explicit. Australia has undertaken to manage all radioactive waste generated by the programme, including spent nuclear fuel, in Australia. Each reactor compartment weighs over 100 tonnes and contains about 200 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which is weapons-grade material; released documents describe a reactor compartment as roughly the size of a four-wheel drive and the spent fuel as roughly the size of a small hatchback. Three boats yield about 600 kilograms of it.

A member of the governing party has put the position to the House. The Member for Fremantle, in the state that hosts the base, told Parliament that Australia has not managed a storage solution for low-level waste after forty years and more than $50 million, and is now taking on the safe disposal of high-level waste, which he described as a problem no country has solved.

Against that stands the record. Australia has no national facility for radioactive waste. Waste is held at more than a hundred sites, Lucas Heights is nearing capacity, and the site-selection process for a national facility has run since legislation passed in 2012 without producing one. That facility, if built, would permanently dispose only of low-level waste and temporarily store intermediate-level waste, which would later move to a deep geological facility that does not exist.

The high-level facility was announced on 14 March 2023, the day of the submarine announcement, as a fait accompli on a remote site.

What it will cost is also unestablished. A former senator and Royal Australian Navy submariner told the AUKUS Public Inquiry that he had asked the submarine agency for its latest cost estimates for such a facility and had been told they could not be found, which he described as an extraordinary situation for an organisation required to cost projects from cradle to grave. His own estimate is billions to build and up to $30 million a year to maintain. Three of his freedom of information requests were refused, and the department concerned is contesting a ruling that would give him access while seeking an order that he pay the Commonwealth's costs if he loses.

Defence says storage will not be required until the mid-2050s. The obligation is dated. The site is not, and neither is the price.

Read more: category OReferences[107] Australia hasn't figured out low-level nuclear waste storage yet, let alone high-level waste from submarines The Conversation[108] Where will Australia store its nuclear waste? ASPI The Strategist[109] Radioactive waste disposal and storage Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency[110] Australia is not prepared for AUKUS submarines' nuclear waste Interesting Engineering, reporting documents released under freedom of information[228] Rex Patrick warns AUKUS is too costly, too risky and too secretive The Point, 17 July 2026, reporting evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Adelaide hearing[229] Former senator on the government's refusal to release nuclear waste storage information Reporting a submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry[250] Australian ruling party lawmaker raises concerns on nuclear submarines Bloomberg, reporting a speech to the House of Representatives by Josh Wilson MP, Member for Fremantle, Western Australia, of the governing party↑ Back to the boat

The Review says the submarines are key to a strategy of denial. Its supporters say the mechanism is under-specified.

The stated rationale is a sentence. The Review holds that the acquisition is key to effecting a strategy of denial and to the provision of anti-submarine warfare and long-range strike options. It does not say which actions, in which places, the boats would deny.

Those making the case for the programme have said so. Academic assessment describes the question of how the submarines contribute to denial as under-specified. A defence institute writes that the strategy of denial lacks the precision needed to guide investment or convey clear thresholds, and that the behaviours to be stopped need defining first. A United States service journal warns against treating planned capabilities as inherently deterrent without sufficient strategic rationale, and finds substantial gaps in Australian strategy that undermine the credibility of the posture.

A second answer, from a former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, is that the aim of integrated deterrence under this arrangement is to deter an attack on Taiwan rather than an attack on Australia.

One answer has been given, though not by a government. The former Head of Force Development and Analysis Division in the Department of Defence, who was responsible for departmental advice on submarine options after the Oberon class retired, told the AUKUS Public Inquiry that the Virginia-class boats were specifically designed for a United States war with China rather than for the defence of Australia, and that their purpose is high-priority underwater operations defending the United States.

The sharper objection is that the capability does not match the strategy. Long range, endurance and stealth suit deterrence by punishment rather than denial. Punishment against a great power would require strikes on its mainland, and the Pentagon's own assessment records that it has effective defences against them.

Read more: category GReferences[115] AUKUS, the Defence Strategic Review and Australia's quest for deterrence University of Technology Sydney[116] Australia and deterrence: dazed and confused Lowy Institute, March 2024[117] AUKUS and deterrence: what, exactly, are we trying to deter? ASPI The Strategist, May 2025[118] The role of deterrence in Australian strategic thought Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, United States Air University, September 2024[220] Evidence of Dr Michael Gilligan to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Former Head of Force Development and Analysis Division, Department of Defence, responsible for departmental advice on submarine options following the retirement of the Oberon class; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026[236] Australia needs nuclear submarines — but not AUKUS Dr Michael Keating AC and Jon Stanford, Pearls and Irritations, 14 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

The United States intelligence community does not describe China the way the Australian plan does.

The 2026 Annual Threat Assessment of the United States Intelligence Community, published in March and summarising eighteen agencies, records that China is prioritising a productive and stable economic relationship with the United States and will seek to reduce tension where that serves its interests. It assesses that Chinese leaders do not currently plan an invasion of Taiwan in 2027, have no fixed timeline for unification, prefer to achieve it without force, and recognise that an amphibious invasion would be extremely challenging with a high risk of failure. No Australian document reconciles the plan’s premise with that assessment.

References[12] Australia appears confused about its place in the global world order Laura Tingle, ABC News, 5 September 2026[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023↑ Back to the boat

A loaded tanker is slow, unarmoured, radar-bright and broadcasts its own position. Escorting does not fix that.

The assumption beneath the plan is that shipping can be defended if a navy is present. The 2026 record says otherwise, and the admission comes from inside the alliance. An American defence institute has written that the Navy cannot escort commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz at scale, and that when the largest maritime power on earth cannot keep the most critical strait open during a conflict, something fundamental has broken. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said missiles, not mines, are now the largest threat to merchant shipping there.

Researchers at a Singapore defence institute reached the same conclusion: a navy-escorted convoy through Hormuz is very complex and offers limited protection, because air defence, counter-drone, anti-small-boat and mine detection would all be required at once. Outside the strait the risk continues for as long as a ship is within missile range. Russia's answer has been armour plating, sandbags and anti-drone mesh fitted to merchant hulls.

Read more: The Island Castle and The Proof of the Hormuz PuddingReferences[31] Dire Straits: Mines, Missiles, Drones, and the Autonomy Gap American Enterprise Institute, March 2026[32] Why convoys cannot fully protect oil tankers from Iran attacks Digital Journal, March 2026[33] Cages, convoys and coastal routes: Russian shipping adapts to drone threat Splash247, August 2026↑ Back to the boat

Every alternative under discussion is a weapon. Stores, refining and domestic manufacture are treated as another portfolio.

The debate over what else the money could buy has been conducted entirely in munitions. Missiles, mines, uncrewed vessels and aircraft are argued about; the things that decide whether a country can hold out are not.

The proportions show it. The submarine programme is $368 billion. The Australian Fuel Security and Resilience package announced in May 2026 is $14.8 billion, about four per cent of it, and it is the largest commitment of its kind Australia has ever made. Until then Australia was among the only members of the International Energy Agency with no government-held fuel reserve at all. Within that package, $10 million is allocated to feasibility studies for new and expanded domestic refining.

No document sets the two against each other as competing ways of buying security. They are not even scored on the same page.

Read more: The Island Castle and The True Cost of Cheap Imported FuelReferences[44] Government action Fuel Plan, Commonwealth of Australia[45] Government securing more fuel reserves: the Australian Fuel Security and Resilience package Prime Minister of Australia, 6 May 2026[46] More than $10 billion slated to boost fuel supplies and emergency stockpiles ABC News, 6 May 2026↑ Back to the boat

A country with no navy destroyed a third of Russia's Black Sea Fleet using drones costing about $200,000 each.

Ukraine lost most of its navy in February 2022. By early 2026 its defence ministry assessed that roughly 30 per cent of the Black Sea Fleet had been destroyed or seriously damaged, and one academic assessment puts the loss of effective capability nearer 40 per cent. Within a year of entering service, MAGURA V5 uncrewed surface vessels alone accounted for eight Russian warships destroyed and six damaged. The fleet withdrew from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk.

The counterweight belongs here. Those strikes tailed off through 2025 as Russia adapted with nets, dispersal, helicopter patrols and close-in defence, and cheap boats do not replace anti-ship missiles. Cheap mass denies a sea; it does not command one. That is the point. Denial in its own approaches is what Australia requires, and no published document tests eight submarines against it.

Read more: The Island Castle and Sub to NowhereReferences[47] Swarm at Sea: Autonomous Naval Drones and the Erosion of Maritime Deterrence Georgetown Security Studies Review, April 2026[48] How Ukraine beat Russia in the Black Sea TIME[49] A game of drones: the economics of cheap mass Sentinel Intelligence↑ Back to the boat

Landing craft, frigates and submarines project force outward. The vulnerability being described is at home.

The reorientation is documented and deliberate. The Army established a Littoral Manoeuvre Group in March 2026, is taking 18 medium and eight heavy landing craft under contracts including one worth $4 billion, and describes itself as transforming to optimise for littoral manoeuvre paired with long-range strike. The amphibious combined-arms land system is funded at $48 to $59 billion, the third largest capability priority in the 2026 Investment Program. Analysts read the result as a force configured to project presence into and through the near region rather than to defend the continental landmass.

Two plans are running at once. One buys reach: submarines, frigates, landing craft, strike. The other is the country's actual exposure, which is fuel, medicine, shipping and stores. No published document reconciles them, or says which is to be preferred if the money runs short.

Read more: The Island CastleReferences[55] New landing craft to boost littoral defence Department of Defence, Commonwealth of Australia, February 2026[56] Australia's 2026 National Defence Strategy: what Canberra is actually prioritising Second Line of Defense, April 2026[57] Australian naval shipbuilding at the Henderson Defence Precinct Naval News, July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Iran shows the shape. Strikes in February, and six months later the tankers are still being hit.

Major combat operations against Iran began on 28 February 2026. What followed was not a decision but an attrition. An American aerial campaign opened on 19 March to reopen the Strait of Hormuz; a naval blockade was imposed on 13 April; escorted convoys ran from May; negotiations began in June. Iran struck at least thirteen commercial vessels in August, one attack killing two seafarers. In September the United States began striking Iranian tankers in retaliation for attacks on shipping, a policy officials described as tanker for tanker.

Some of it worked. Transits recovered toward seven million barrels a day by late August, and the strait was never fully closed. That is the point. Six months of strikes, blockade and escort produced a contested waterway rather than a settled one, and the shipping is still being hit.

Read more: The Proof of the Hormuz Pudding and The Island CastleReferences[66] US and Iran trade strikes in the Strait of Hormuz USNI News, 4 September 2026[67] US strikes Iranian oil tankers for the first time in retaliation for Hormuz attacks Axios, 2 September 2026[68] Iran tightens grip on the Strait of Hormuz as shipping is forced into controlled routes HSToday, 2026↑ Back to the boat

Canada chose twelve conventional boats for about a quarter of the cost, with the first four due in 2034.

On 6 July 2026 Canada selected the German Type 212CD as preferred supplier for up to twelve conventionally powered submarines, replacing four Victoria-class boats of which one remains seaworthy. The programme is put at 20 to 30 billion Canadian dollars for the boats and 70 to 80 billion over about thirty years including operations, maintenance and support. The first four are wanted by 2034 and the contract is to be concluded by the end of 2027. South Korea's Hanwha, offering a boat already in production with vertical launch tubes, remains the reserve option.

The comparison is not like for like and the register says so. A conventional boat must snort to charge, is slower in transit, and is limited by fuel and crew rather than by a reactor. Canada's requirement is Arctic and North Atlantic patrol; Australia's is long-range operations far from home.

What is comparable is the arithmetic on the same basis. Both figures cover about thirty years including sustainment. Canada expects twelve boats for the equivalent of roughly ninety billion Australian dollars, with four in the water by 2034. Australia expects eight for $368 billion, with the first transferred in 2032 and the fleet complete in the 2050s.

Australia did not run that comparison. Canada ran it in eighteen months, against five bidders.

Read more: category RReferences[104] Canada selects German firm to build 12 attack boats for Royal Canadian Navy USNI News, 8 July 2026[105] Canada selects the Type 212CD: what the $86 billion industrial package actually involves Quwa, July 2026[106] Canada picks Germany's TKMS for historic submarine buy Defense News, 7 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Six countries run nuclear submarines. Each had a civil nuclear industry before it had a naval one. Australia has a research reactor.

The point was made by a former Prime Minister within a fortnight of the announcement and has not been answered since. Australia is the first country to receive access to United States naval reactors since the transfer to the United Kingdom in 1958. Britain was then, and remains, a nuclear weapons state with a substantial civil nuclear industry. Australia will be the first to operate naval reactors without one.

The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and India all built civil nuclear power before or alongside their naval programmes. That base is where the regulators, the safety culture, the fuel handling expertise, the qualified trades and the waste infrastructure came from. Australia operates a single research reactor at Lucas Heights.

The consequences are recorded separately throughout this register: a regulator with no operating history, a workforce that does not exist, a reactor that cannot be serviced here, a clean-room installation facility that has never been built, and no disposal site at any level of waste.

None of those is an oversight. Each follows from starting a naval nuclear programme in a country that has never run a civil one, and no published document sets out how the base is to be created in the time available.

Read more: category OReferences[233] Address to the National Press Club The Hon Malcolm Turnbull AC, 29th Prime Minister of Australia, 29 September 2021[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[221] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, treaty text Tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024; entered into force 17 January 2025↑ Back to the boat

Three submarine options have been costed by outsiders. No published document costs what coercion short of war would do, or what would answer it.

The Review that justifies the programme divided its work into three periods, named six priorities and put the submarines first. Every one of those answers a shooting war: what floats, what strikes, what deters an attack.

The logistical question is absent. Australia holds reserves reported at 22 days of diesel, imports roughly 90 per cent of its transport fuel, retains two refineries from eight in 2005, and is the fifth-largest importer of refined petroleum product in the world. None of that appears as a capability requirement in the Review, and the submarines do not change any of it.

The register records elsewhere that the ally cannot keep tankers moving, that merchant shipping cannot be protected, and that resilience is not counted as defence. It also records the United States Strategic Bombing Survey finding that by August 1945 Japanese war production would have fallen 40 to 50 per cent below its peak through the interdiction of shipping alone, without any attack on cities or industry. The logistical question has decided a Pacific war before.

A former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has made the same point about the force structure: the Review concluded Australia needed a maritime strategy, and Australia did not get one. The Army was not cut back and retained its main battle tanks.

Three alternative submarine fleets have now been costed, by people outside government. What has never been costed, by anyone, is the cost of the logistical question going unanswered.

Read more: category HReferences[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[236] Australia needs nuclear submarines — but not AUKUS Dr Michael Keating AC and Jon Stanford, Pearls and Irritations, 14 September 2026[209] US attack submarine output still short of Navy goal UK Defence Journal, September 2026↑ Back to the boat

A strait can be closed with a few cheap weapons. Beyond the strait, the surface is watched by satellite and over-the-horizon radar, and the missiles reach four thousand kilometres.

A-2 records that no navy has reopened a closed sea lane. This entry records why the problem does not end at the chokepoint.

The chokepoints are as narrow as the arithmetic suggests. The Strait of Malacca runs eight to nine hundred kilometres and contracts at the Phillips Channel near Singapore to about 2.7 kilometres, barely wider than the length of a modern container ship, with a main channel as shallow as 25 metres. Through it pass roughly 94,000 transits a year, about a quarter of all seaborne trade, and more than 15 million barrels of crude a day, second only to Hormuz. Between 75 and 80 per cent of China's seaborne crude goes through it. The two alternatives, Lombok and Sunda, cannot absorb that traffic at the same scale.

Closing such a place is cheap. A shore-launched missile, a one-way drone or a small number of mines costs a fraction of the ship it stops and a fraction of the interceptor fired at it.

Leaving the strait does not solve it. The targeting picture over the open ocean is assembled from electronic and signals intelligence satellites, synthetic aperture radar satellites that image through weather, and shore-based over-the-horizon backscatter radar cueing on major surface contacts beyond 3,000 kilometres. The shooters behind it reach across the theatre: an anti-ship ballistic missile credited with about 2,150 kilometres, and another with about 4,000, described by the United States Department of Defense as capable of precision anti-ship strikes across the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea from mainland China.

The objection that once answered this was movement. A ballistic missile follows a predictable arc to a fixed point, and a ship making twenty knots travels several kilometres during the flight. That objection has been settled in combat.

On 15 December 2023 an anti-ship ballistic missile struck the merchant vessel Palatium 3 in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, assessed as the first ship ever hit by such a weapon. Central Command subsequently recorded strikes on the Swan Atlantic, Gibraltar Eagle, Zografia, Marlin Luanda, Star Nasia, Islander, Laax, True Confidence and Rubymar. The Rubymar sank. Three crew were killed aboard the True Confidence. Closed-circuit footage from the Zografia shows the weapon arriving between midships and the bow at about forty-five degrees at high speed. Specialists record that although Iran, Russia, China and North Korea had developed and tested such weapons, they had never been used in combat before this.

The technical details establish what was demonstrated. The launch positions were at least two hundred kilometres from the ships, a distance at which an unguided ballistic missile is extremely unlikely to hit a vessel at sea. The attacks took place by day and by night, so the missiles carry a mix of infrared and visible-light seekers. Reporting indicates that targeting data came from ships at sea and satellite data from a third country. A non-state actor assembled and operated the full chain.

One finding runs the other way and belongs here. The missiles did little structural damage, because modern merchant ships are resilient and the warheads are small; the Islander was hit twice and the Laax three times, and both stayed afloat. It made no difference. Container transits through the Suez Canal fell about ninety per cent. A lane does not close when ships sink. It closes when owners will not sail.

A loaded tanker cannot accelerate away, cannot manoeuvre, cannot be armoured and cannot be hidden. It is radar-bright, thermally obvious, satellite-visible, and in normal operation it broadcasts its identity and position continuously. The open sea is not a refuge from that combination. It is a larger area within which the same targeting applies.

The register records at A-17 that an American defence institute has stated the United States Navy cannot escort commercial shipping through Hormuz at scale. No published Australian document sets out how the shipping Australia depends on is to be protected in those conditions, or what is to be done when it cannot be.

Read more: The Island Castle and AsiaPac Sea LanesReferences[340] Strait of Malacca: dimensions, traffic and constraints GEOPOL chokepoint profile, and Strait Up Maritime live vessel tracking data[342] Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China United States Department of Defense, annual report to Congress, as cited in The Island Castle[343] Anti-ship ballistic missiles in the Red Sea: the first combat use and the vessels struck United States Central Command statements, and reporting by Breaking Defense, The War Zone and Defence Security Asia, December 2023 onward[344] If Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, these are the ballistic missiles it will use Breaking Defense, July 2025[341] Live vessel tracking, Strait of Malacca Strait Up Maritime, public vessel tracking service↑ Back to the boat

AUKUS was announced in September 2021. The strategic review that justifies it arrived nineteen months later.

AUKUS was announced on 15 September 2021 by Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, in coordinated statements from three capitals. The Defence Strategic Review that is cited as its justification was commissioned by the following government and released on 24 April 2023, nineteen months afterwards.

The decision itself was taken over about eighteen months of private deliberations. It was put to a National Security Committee of Cabinet convened the day before the announcement, for which ministers were given special COVID exemptions to travel to Canberra. The Leader of the Opposition and three senior shadow ministers were briefed on the plan, which the reporting of the day described as a highly unusual step. A cabinet subcommittee, the Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise Governance Committee, had been established after the 2020 United States election, chaired by the Prime Minister and including the ministers for foreign affairs, defence and defence industry.

None of the three leaders who made the announcement remains in office.

References[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[1] Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australia, United Kingdom and United States; tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024[312] Australia to get nuclear-powered submarines, will scrap $90b program to build French-designed subs ABC News, 16 September 2021[314] Who killed the Attack class? Australian Defence Magazine[313] Australia wrote to Naval Group noting progress on submarines a week before contract was cancelled Guardian Australia, December 2021, on documents released under freedom of information↑ Back to the boat

The last Defence White Paper was 2016. None preceded the largest defence decision in Australian history.

Australia set its force structure by Defence White Paper for four decades: 1976, 1987, 1994, 2000, 2009, 2013 and 2016. Each was a published document, open to submissions, debated in public, and setting out the strategic assessment, the force structure that followed from it, and the money.

None has been produced since. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update was not a white paper. The 2023 Review was commissioned after the submarine decision and was directed to implement it, as recorded at B-3. The National Defence Strategies of 2024 and 2026 are shorter documents on a two-yearly cycle, published without a submissions process of the kind the white papers carried.

The largest defence decision in Australian history was therefore taken in the longest gap between white papers since the practice began, and no document of that kind has been produced in the five years since to test it.

References[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

The 2023 Review's first priority action is acquiring the submarines already announced. It could not conclude otherwise.

The Review was announced in the first hundred days of the incoming government and delivered in April 2023. Its terms of reference directed it to consider the force structure, posture and preparedness needed to defend Australia, and it accepted 105 of its 108 recommendations.

What it was not asked to do was test the submarine decision. That decision had been taken and announced nineteen months earlier, the pathway negotiation was already under way against a March 2023 deadline set at the announcement, and the Review reported six weeks after the optimal pathway was published.

The register records at B-13 that no comprehensive review of the arrangement was undertaken on taking office, and that a second opportunity was passed up in 2025 when the United States reviewed its own participation. This entry records the narrower point: the document most often cited as the strategic justification for the submarines was commissioned after they were chosen, and was directed to implement rather than to examine.

References[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

In June 2026 the Defence Minister defended the programme as the conclusion of that review.

An opinion piece published on 22 June 2026 states that a clear-eyed assessment points to this being the best path forward, and that this was the conclusion of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review. The Review was given the decision to justify.

References[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[93] Australia is entering the missile age and is no longer protected by its geography, defence review says ABC News, 24 April 2023↑ Back to the boat

No tender, no published options analysis, no competing proposal assessed against the one chosen.

The standard is the government's own, and it was applied to the programme this one replaced. In 2015 the ministerial position was that decisions on the submarines would be based on a competitive evaluation process managed by the Department of Defence, taking place within a thorough two-pass Cabinet process with professional advice from Defence. That process was run, and the Auditor-General audited it, in Report No. 48 of 2016-17.

Neither step was taken for AUKUS. There was no competitive evaluation process, no two-pass Cabinet consideration, and no published options analysis setting the nuclear pathway against alternatives. The decision was taken across about eighteen months of private deliberation and put to a National Security Committee convened the day before the announcement, as recorded at B-1.

The register records at A-6 that three alternative submarine fleets have since been costed, by people outside government, and that no government document compares any of them with the boats being bought.

References[14] The economics of AUKUS Lowy Institute, March 2023[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024[315] Ministerial brief on the Future Submarine acquisition strategy Department of Defence, released under freedom of information, 2015-16[316] Future Submarine — Competitive Evaluation Process, Auditor-General Report No. 48 of 2016-17 Australian National Audit Office↑ Back to the boat

$368 billion has been committed. No business case, options analysis or investment assurance for it has been released.

What a business case is required to contain is not a matter of opinion. The Commonwealth Procurement Rules oblige officials to assess value for money, and a whole-of-life cost estimate is a mandatory requirement for a major acquisition.

The Auditor-General's audit of the Hunter class frigates shows what happens when they are not produced. Defence was found to have conflated an objective of industry policy with the mandatory value for money requirement, and the whole-of-life cost estimate was not provided to government. The Auditor-General noted that Defence had performed value for money assessments on two other shipbuilding tenders running at the same time. Within twenty-four hours of the report the Parliamentary Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit opened an urgent inquiry.

That programme is costed at about $45 billion. No business case, options analysis or investment assurance document has been released for the submarine programme, which is costed at $268 to $368 billion, and the register records at S-4 that researchers attempting to assemble a spending ledger from public documents concluded that what they produced hardly qualified as one.

References[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024[161] Getting a clear view of the cloudy budget for Australia's nuclear submarine program Strategic Analysis Australia, updated after Senate estimates of 14 February 2024[317] Department of Defence's procurement of Hunter class frigates, and reporting on the audit Australian National Audit Office, and Declassified Australia, 2023↑ Back to the boat

A Senate committee inquired into the regulator and reported with recommendations. No committee has examined the acquisition, its cost or its alternatives.

Parliament has not been absent. The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill and its transitional bill were referred to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee on 16 November 2023. The committee took submissions, held hearings, and tabled a final report on 13 May 2024 containing several recommendations to government. The register records that first, because it is scrutiny and it produced results.

What that committee examined was the provisions of legislation establishing a regulator. Its subject was the safety framework for submarines already decided upon. It did not consider whether to acquire them, what they cost, what alternatives existed, or whether the strategy they serve is sound.

No committee of the Australian Parliament has inquired into those questions. There has been no references committee inquiry into the acquisition, no joint standing committee report on the decision, and no treaties committee examination preceding the commitment, in a programme costed at $268 to $368 billion.

The register records at B-8 that the House of Commons Defence Committee did inquire into delivery, and at B-9 that the only public inquiry into the arrangement in Australia was convened outside Parliament and paid for by subscription.

Read more: category SReferences[321] Inquiry into the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 and Transitional Provisions Bill Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Legislation Committee; bills referred 16 November 2023, final report tabled 13 May 2024[294] Hunter Class Frigate Program engagement with Australian industry grows Minister for Defence Industry and Minister for Defence, October 2020[295] Hunter Class Frigate Program — ASC Shipbuilding — Australian Industry Capability Public Plan Department of Defence, published on defence.gov.au↑ Back to the boat

The Commons Defence Committee inquired because AUKUS had received only limited parliamentary scrutiny. Australia's did not.

The House of Commons Defence Committee launched its inquiry in April 2025, held five oral evidence sessions between September and December 2025, and reported in April 2026. It found that the strategic priorities of the two countries do not align. The junior partner's legislature examined the deal; the country paying for it did not.

References[3] AUKUS, First Report of Session 2025-26, HC 841 House of Commons Defence Committee, United Kingdom Parliament, 28 April 2026[283] AUKUS: Government must do more — and do it faster Defence Committee news release and statement of the Chair, Tan Dhesi MP, 28 April 2026[284] Critical report highlights AUKUS shortcomings and failings Business Crack, April 2026, reporting evidence given to the House of Commons Defence Committee↑ Back to the boat

The only public inquiry into the submarine pact is being paid for by subscription.

A public inquiry is being conducted on crowd-funded terms because no official equivalent exists.

References[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026[226] Linda Reynolds defends AUKUS, argues Australia has no credible alternative The Point, 29 June 2026↑ Back to the boat

Henderson gets a business case, appropriation and parliamentary scrutiny. Osborne is delivered through a body exempt from all three.

Two sites carry the programme's infrastructure and they are governed differently. The Henderson Defence Precinct is delivered through the traditional federal capital-spending pathway, in which a business case is developed, investment assurance is applied, and parliamentary scrutiny provides visibility over major expenditure decisions.

The Osborne Submarine Construction Yard is delivered through Australian Naval Infrastructure, a government business enterprise, which is not subject to any of that. The reason is a legacy exemption under the Public Works Committee Act, inherited from the Australian Submarine Corporation on commercial confidentiality grounds.

The criticism is made by an institute that supports the programme. Its deputy director of national security programs wrote in July 2026 that at Osborne the funds are going into a black box, including $4.6 billion announced that week which took total funding at the site to $8.5 billion, and that where a project receives billions in additional public funding after approval the public should have confidence that the reasons for cost increases, scope changes and delivery risks are subject to appropriate scrutiny regardless of the delivery model.

Her conclusion is the shortest statement of the hole. If it is good enough for Henderson, it should be good enough for Osborne.

References[239] One AUKUS element by-passing scrutiny Raelene Lockhorst, Deputy Director of National Security Programs, Australian Strategic Policy Institute; published by the Australian Naval Institute and The Mandarin, July 2026. Cited as an institute that supports the programme making the criticism[240] South Australia to deliver nuclear-powered submarine build Minister for Defence Industry, March 2023↑ Back to the boat

The Pentagon is reviewing AUKUS against an America First test. Who, when and why were not stated.

The programme being replaced was not in acknowledged failure at the moment it was cancelled. Documents released under freedom of information show the Department writing to the contractor eight days before the announcement noting progress, and again on 15 September 2021, hours before it, with the Director General of the Future Submarine Program confirming that the exit of the Functional Ship System Functional Review had been achieved as required. A joint communiqué of 30 August had underlined the importance of the programme.

The French foreign minister told a parliamentary hearing that someone had lied, because he could not reconcile that correspondence with the decision communicated by the Prime Minister. The French President said publicly that he had been lied to; the Prime Minister described the accusation as sledging.

The register does not adjudicate that exchange. It records that the department certified a contractual milestone on the morning of the day the contract was abandoned, and that no published document reconciles the two.

References[167] Australia pays US second $800m for AUKUS amid review Australian Associated Press via The Canberra Times, July 2025[168] Australia pays US another $525 million to bolster AUKUS industrial base Breaking Defense, July 2025[313] Australia wrote to Naval Group noting progress on submarines a week before contract was cancelled Guardian Australia, December 2021, on documents released under freedom of information↑ Back to the boat

No election, referendum or parliamentary vote preceded a commitment running to 2075.

The commitment was made by executive act. Treaty-making in Australia is an exercise of the executive power under section 61 of the Constitution, and does not require parliamentary approval. Treaties are tabled and referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which advises on whether to ratify, and the government is not bound by that advice.

The three AUKUS instruments followed that path. All were tabled after the decision: the information-sharing agreement in November 2021, the propulsion agreement in August 2024, and the United Kingdom partnership agreement in July 2025.

No election was fought on the question. No referendum was held. No vote of either house preceded the announcement, and none has been taken since on whether to continue. The commitment runs to 31 December 2075.

References[138] Acquiring nuclear-powered submarines Lowy Institute Poll[139] Does AUKUS have public support? University of Technology Sydney, December 2024[227] Evidence of Dr Colin Hughes to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Former Head of Public Health, Perth; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026[321] Inquiry into the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 and Transitional Provisions Bill Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Legislation Committee; bills referred 16 November 2023, final report tabled 13 May 2024↑ Back to the boat

The incoming government did not review the arrangement in 2022, and did not review it in 2025 when the United States reviewed its own.

The arrangement was announced in September 2021 by an outgoing government. A new government took office in May 2022 with the agreement still in its infancy and the first binding commitments not yet made.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry from a former Minister for Foreign Affairs records that no comprehensive or stringent review was undertaken then, and that a second opportunity was passed up in 2025 when the Pentagon announced a review of its own. The Australian position through both was that the arrangement would proceed.

There was also an offer. When it became clear that the British could not supply a mature submarine design, the Albanese government rejected a French offer of the in-service Suffren class, which two former senior officials describe as significantly cheaper, available sooner, with a crew not much larger than Collins and better suited to Australian requirements.

A third data point sits between them. The former Prime Minister who signed the French contract has said he approached the French President and senior officials in early 2022 to revive the Attack class programme, and that the incoming government chose not to take up those overtures.

The register records the absence rather than the motive. No Australian government has published a review of the decision taken by its predecessor, at either point, and the Defence Strategic Review that followed was directed to implement the acquisition rather than to test it.

Read more: category AReferences[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[234] There's no point dwelling on AUKUS paths not taken ANU National Security College, first published in the Australian Financial Review, 23 July 2024[230] Australia's naval defence without AUKUS Pillar One Dr Michael Keating AC, former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance, and Employment and Industrial Relations, and eleven years on the Secretaries Committee on National Security including five as chairman; with Jon Stanford, former division head, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing, 3 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

He did not describe an oversight the register has found. He described a principle, and the record matches it.

Every other entry in this category records an absence: no white paper, no competitive process, no published business case, no parliamentary inquiry, no vote. The natural reading is that scrutiny was overlooked.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry in July 2026 suggests otherwise. A former Minister for Defence, who supports the programme, told the commissioners that Parliament should have no role in deciding Australia's national security arrangements. He described the arrangement as a permanent change, bipartisan, unstoppable and critical to national security.

The register does not dispute that a government may enter treaties under the executive power. It records that the absence of parliamentary scrutiny, documented across this category, is consistent with a stated view that Parliament should not have any, and that no government has put the contrary case.

Read more: category SReferences[231] Christopher Pyne declares AUKUS unstoppable, and says Parliament shouldn't vote on it The Point, 17 July 2026, reporting evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Adelaide hearing. Cited as a former Minister for Defence who supports the programme; now chairman of the consulting firm Pyne and Partners and a non-executive director of the defence manufacturer Highcom[3] AUKUS, First Report of Session 2025-26, HC 841 House of Commons Defence Committee, United Kingdom Parliament, 28 April 2026↑ Back to the boat

Under Rarotonga Australia must prevent stationing of nuclear weapons. Under neither confirm nor deny it cannot know whether it has.

The Treaty of Rarotonga prohibits nuclear explosive devices, not nuclear propulsion. Article 5 obliges each party to prevent the stationing of any nuclear explosive device in its territory, and leaves visits by foreign ships to each party's discretion. Propulsion is therefore not the issue. Armament is.

No United States attack submarine has carried a nuclear weapon since 1992, so the distinction has not been tested. Congress has mandated a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile for the Virginia class, with limited deployment by September 2032 and initial operational capability by September 2034. Submarine Rotational Force-West begins at HMAS Stirling in late 2027, with enduring access, a maintenance activity and a shore command.

Two outcomes are then possible. If the boats are unarmed while operating from Australia, the arrangement constrains the capability the base exists to support. If they are armed, Australia is not preventing what Article 5 requires it to prevent. Neither confirm nor deny makes the two indistinguishable from Canberra. The obligation remains; the means of verifying it does not exist.

The joint statement naming the first boat, USS Colorado, on 26 October 2026, says the rotation will comply with Australia's obligations under the Treaty of Rarotonga. The United States maintains its policy of neither confirming nor denying whether a given vessel carries nuclear weapons. The statement does not say how Australia will establish that the obligation is met.

The sequence is fixed and each step precedes the next decision point. Construction at Stirling is under way, rotations begin in late 2027, and the weapon is due in 2032. No later date offers better information, because the arrangement that would supply it is the one that withholds it. The question is settled by policy before 2027 or it is not settled at all.

Read more: category DReferences[4] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), IF12084 Congressional Research Service, United States[5] Sea Launched Cruise Nuclear Missile to Deliver in 2034, Says Admiral USNI News, 8 May 2025[77] Pacific Islands Forum chair reassured over the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal Asia Pacific Report, April 2023[78] South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga), full text Signed 6 August 1985, in force 11 December 1986[84] South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty and Protocols United States Department of State[369] First US submarine assigned to SRF-West Australian Submarine Agency, joint statement of the AUKUS defence ministers, 26 October 2026[371] First AUKUS nuclear sub to come to Australia revealed Australian Associated Press, 26 October 2026↑ Back to the boat

Australia will be the first state without nuclear weapons to remove weapons-grade uranium from routine IAEA inspection.

Article 14 of Australia's Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement allows routine inspections to be suspended while nuclear material is inside a military activity the treaty does not prohibit. It has never been used by a non-nuclear-weapon state. Canada would have been the first in 1987 and abandoned its submarine plan.

The material is not ordinary reactor fuel. United States and United Kingdom naval reactors run on uranium enriched to about 93 per cent, which is weapons-grade, and each reactor holds roughly 200 kilograms of it. Low-enriched naval fuel exists — China and France use it — but American development of an equivalent is not expected to bear fruit until the 2040s, so the enrichment level is a consequence of the timetable rather than a choice.

The arrangement is also a precondition rather than a formality. The former senator and submariner quoted below put it plainly to the AUKUS Public Inquiry: if the Agency does not agree the changes to Australia's safeguards agreement that allow it to receive submarine reactors, the programme does not proceed.

A path that avoids the exemption altogether has been proposed to the same inquiry. A former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with a former division head of that department, has urged cancelling both acquisitions and pivoting to low-enriched uranium vessels sourced from France or South Korea. Boats fuelled with low-enriched uranium require no weapons-grade material, no suspension of routine inspection, and set no precedent. The register does not endorse the proposal. It records that the enrichment level, and the exemption that follows from it, are consequences of the pathway chosen rather than of nuclear propulsion itself.

The mechanism of the precedent has been stated plainly. Using the Article 14 exemption to remove hundreds of kilograms of weapons-grade material from routine inspection creates a legal blueprint that a threshold state can follow, by declaring a naval propulsion programme of its own.

The precedent is no longer prospective. On 7 September 2026 the Director General of the Agency told the Board of Governors that South Korea had formally notified the Secretariat of its intention to begin consultations on an arrangement under Article 14 of its own safeguards agreement.

The precedent is already being cited. Brazil opened its own Article 14 discussions with the Agency in May 2022. Iran notified the Agency in 2018 that it intended to build naval propulsion, is already enriching to 60 per cent, and its officials have invoked AUKUS at the United Nations in support of that programme. The Agency's own board has recorded that the arrangement sets a precedent for the safeguards system.

Read more: category OReferences[111] IAEA safeguards, the naval loophole and the AUKUS proposal Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, October 2021[112] The international legal implications of AUKUS: a poor precedent for non-proliferation ANZSIL Perspective[113] Bad precedent: has AUKUS torpedoed the nuclear non-proliferation regime? The National Interest[114] AUKUS and the rules based international order Security and Defence PLuS Alliance[228] Rex Patrick warns AUKUS is too costly, too risky and too secretive The Point, 17 July 2026, reporting evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Adelaide hearing[230] Australia's naval defence without AUKUS Pillar One Dr Michael Keating AC, former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance, and Employment and Industrial Relations, and eleven years on the Secretaries Committee on National Security including five as chairman; with Jon Stanford, former division head, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing, 3 September 2026[137] AUKUS makes Australia a nuclear target, top experts warn The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 2026[262] AUKUS infrastructure, part 5: The HEU problem Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, August 2026[329] Nuclear submarine race spreads beyond nuclear powers as Australia, Brazil and South Korea pursue nuclear-powered submarines Eurasian Times, September 2026, reporting the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors↑ Back to the boat

It runs to 31 December 2075. Any party may terminate on one year's notice. Australia may not make or buy its fuel anywhere else.

The Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion entered into force on 17 January 2025 and, by its own terms, remains in force until 31 December 2075. Any party may terminate it by giving at least one year's written notice.

What Australia gives up across that half-century is set out in the text. It may not enrich, produce or reprocess nuclear fuel domestically for naval propulsion. It may not acquire that fuel from any source other than the United States or the United Kingdom. It may not arm the submarines with nuclear weapons. It indemnifies both suppliers against loss or injury connected to the material transferred. And it is responsible for the management, storage and disposal of all spent fuel and radioactive waste arising.

What the suppliers give up is less. Article I conditions any transfer on it not constituting an unreasonable risk to their own defence and security, a judgement each makes for itself. A separate understanding, expressly not legally binding, records that cooperation is to be conducted so as not to degrade their own military requirements or their own naval propulsion programmes. Continuation is also conditioned on ANZUS remaining in force and on both partners remaining in NATO.

Australia is bound for fifty years and cannot source fuel elsewhere. The suppliers are bound for one year at a time, and may decline to transfer on their own assessment. The agreement governing the American presence in Australia, recorded at F-14, runs to 2040 and then continues by default.

Read more: category FReferences[221] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, treaty text Tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024; entered into force 17 January 2025[222] Revamped AUKUS document reveals how the United States and United Kingdom can walk away from the nuclear submarine deal ABC News, 12 August 2024[223] New AUKUS agreement signed Australian Defence Magazine, August 2024[224] AUKUS nuclear cooperation, IF11999 Congressional Research Service↑ Back to the boat

The statute requires Australia to prove it can operate and maintain the boats. It cannot yet.

The transfer is authorised by an Act of the United States Congress, not by the partnership. Section 10431 of Title 22 permits the President to transfer up to two Virginia-class submarines on a sale basis, and not more than one additional boat, within the twenty years from 22 December 2023. Any transfer beyond that requires a new law.

A second provision sits alongside it. Under section 8677 of Title 10, no President may transfer a second-hand Virginia-class hull if doing so would degrade American undersea readiness. That is a test about the United States, applied at the time of transfer, and the register records elsewhere that American attack submarine numbers are projected to be at their lowest around 2030.

The authority carries conditions, and they are conditions about Australia. The certification requires that Australia has achieved Submarine Rotational Force-West full operational capability to support four rotationally deployed Virginia-class boats and one Astute, having demonstrated the domestic capacity to fully perform all the associated activities necessary for the safe hosting and operation of nuclear-powered submarines. It further requires that Australia has achieved sovereign-ready initial operational capability to support a Royal Australian Navy Virginia-class submarine on the same basis.

Against that stands the timetable. Stirling is to be ready for the rotational force in 2027 and the $8 billion expansion runs across a decade. Henderson is to provide contingency docking from the early 2030s and depot-level maintenance from the late 2030s, against $12 billion committed of an estimated $25 billion, with master planning still under way. The floating dock proposed there has no contracts and no site works, and is seven to ten years from operating. Osborne is to be complete in 2040. The first boat is due in 2032.

The regulator began operating in November 2025 with no operating history and its submarine-specific regulations have not been made. The first maintenance period conducted here was directed by an American shipyard.

The transfer schedule is also subject to a 270-day presidential certification clause, which ties the timing to American industrial throughput and to executive discretion.

Under United States law, the boats do not come unless Australia can prove it can operate and maintain them. It cannot yet.

Read more: category PReferences[246] 22 U.S. Code § 10431, Authorization of sales of Virginia Class submarines to Australia AUKUS Submarine Transfer Authorization Act, enacted 22 December 2023; United States Code, Title 22, Chapter 111, Subchapter III[243] AUKUS infrastructure, part 1: The docking gap that could sink Pillar 1 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd) — two submarine commands, Commander of the RAN Submarine Squadron, Director of Submarine Policy and Warfare, and Head of the Submarine Capability Team established to rectify Collins introduction into service; Pearls and Irritations, 29 July 2026[195] Press conference, Henderson Prime Minister of Australia, September 2025[196] Press conference, Henderson Deputy Prime Minister, August 2026[198] New Defence precinct at Henderson Australian Submarine Agency[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[270] AUKUS is heading for the rocks: the statutory bar on degrading United States readiness Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, September 2026, citing 10 U.S.C. § 8677[268] Second-hand submarines: a sovereign flaw Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

A state may withdraw nuclear material from inspection for naval propulsion. Nothing in the system can establish that enrichment is solely for that purpose.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty divides activity into peaceful use and proscribed use, and provides for a third category, non-proscribed military activity, only by inference. The Agency's own Statute divides activity into two categories, not three. Naval propulsion sits in the inferred category, and paragraph 14 of the comprehensive safeguards agreement is the mechanism by which material enters it and leaves routine inspection.

The people who built the system recorded the risk when they built it. The former Director-General of Australia's own safeguards office writes that it cannot have been the intention of the Treaty's negotiators to provide a major loophole rendering ineffective the prohibition against diversion to weapons; that the purpose of suspending safeguards was to handle the practical problems of military activity, being the protection of classified information and inspector access to mobile reactors; and that the drafting committee was anxious to avoid the paragraph becoming a loophole. His assessment of the present moment is that the first use of paragraph 14 will be very important for the precedent it sets.

The structural defect is a verification defect. Enriching uranium is the hardest step in building a weapon, and the Treaty does not prohibit a non-nuclear-weapon state from enriching for naval use. Published analysis states the consequence plainly: there is no way to determine that enrichment activity would be solely for naval propulsion. The Agency also lacks the legal mandate to prohibit a non-nuclear-weapon state from acquiring nuclear-powered submarines at all.

The category is filling. Iran informed the Agency in 2018 that it had decided to construct naval nuclear propulsion, and Iranian officials have pointed to this arrangement to justify it. Brazil has declined for years to conclude an Additional Protocol, citing its naval propulsion programme, and is in confidential negotiations with the Agency. On 7 September 2026 the Director General told the Board of Governors that South Korea had formally notified the Secretariat of its intention to begin Article 14 consultations.

A former head of verification at the Agency has argued that the Board should revoke paragraph 14 altogether, on the basis that invoking it opens a Pandora's box.

The register records at O-7 that the arrangement which would have made the test unnecessary, the return of the fuel to the supplier at the end of the submarine's life, was assumed in the non-proliferation case made for the programme in 2021 and does not appear in the instruments signed since.

Read more: category AReferences[328] Verification of nuclear material in non-proscribed military activities: paragraph 14 and safeguards John Carlson, former Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office; Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation[331] Gatekeeping nuclear-powered submarines: what will the precedent be? Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation[329] Nuclear submarine race spreads beyond nuclear powers as Australia, Brazil and South Korea pursue nuclear-powered submarines Eurasian Times, September 2026, reporting the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors[330] Naval nuclear propulsion: a two-track solution for IAEA safeguards integrity IDN-InDepthNews, Vienna, November 2025[332] Bad precedent: has AUKUS torpedoed the nuclear non-proliferation regime? The National Interest[333] AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal: non-proliferation aspects John Carlson, former Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office; Asia-Pacific Leadership Network, 17 September 2021, and Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation↑ Back to the boat

The Geelong Treaty binds Australia and Britain for fifty years. It was signed in July 2025, during the United States review of the partnership.

The propulsion agreement recorded at C-3 runs to 31 December 2075. On 26 July 2025 Australia signed a second instrument of comparable length: the bilateral Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Treaty, described by both governments as the commitment for the next fifty years of United Kingdom and Australian cooperation under Pillar One.

Its scope is the whole programme. It covers the design, build, operation, sustainment and disposal of SSN-AUKUS, the development of the workforce, infrastructure and regulatory systems Australia needs, and the rotational presence of a British submarine at Stirling. It is described as creating a seamless defence industrial base between the two countries.

The timing is the entry. The United States announced a formal review of its participation in June 2025, and the review was under way when the treaty was signed. Australia committed to fifty years with one partner while the other was deciding whether to remain in the arrangement at all.

Three terms are worth recording. The published United Kingdom text is marked as not in force at the time of presentation. The treaty contains explicit provisions ruling out uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing in Australia, which is the prohibition recorded at F-3. And where any inconsistency arises between it and the trilateral propulsion agreement, the trilateral agreement prevails.

The commercial expectation was stated on the British side: officials put the potential value of the programme to British companies at more than twenty billion pounds in export contracts.

Read more: category FReferences[337] Joint statement on the Australia-United Kingdom Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Treaty Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Australia, and Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom, 26 July 2025[338] Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Agreement between the United Kingdom and Australia, Geelong, 26 July 2025, Australia No. 2 (2025) Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, United Kingdom, presented to Parliament[339] Australia and the United Kingdom sign 50-year agreement for SSN-AUKUS nuclear submarines Overt Defense, August 2025, and reporting of the signature during the United States review[227] Evidence of Dr Colin Hughes to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Former Head of Public Health, Perth; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026↑ Back to the boat

The treaty makes Australia liable for any nuclear loss, including third-party claims. Australia has no nuclear liability statute and is party to no liability convention.

The obligation is in the treaty text, not in commentary. Australia shall indemnify the United States and the United Kingdom against any liability, loss, costs, damage or injury, including third-party claims, arising out of or resulting from nuclear risks connected with the design, manufacture, assembly, transfer or utilisation of any material or equipment transferred under the agreement, including the propulsion plants and their component and spare parts. A separate provision has Australia indemnifying both governments and their employees for any liability arising from patent infringement, and neither supplier warrants that what it transfers does not infringe someone else's patent.

The exclusions are narrow. The indemnity does not apply where a supplier has already been indemnified by a third party, and does not apply to an in-service Virginia-class boat until the point of transfer.

What Australia does not have is a domestic regime to sit underneath that promise. The Nuclear Energy Agency records that there are no specific provisions in Australian legislation governing nuclear third party liability, and that Australia is party to none of the conventions on the subject, having signed the 1997 Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage without ratifying it.

The comparison is with the country being indemnified. The United States has had the Price-Anderson Act since 1957. It provides about 15.5 billion United States dollars of cover, at no cost to the public or the government, without fault needing to be proven, across power reactors, research reactors, enrichment plants, waste repositories and every other nuclear facility, and has been extended to December 2065.

Australia has accepted an uncapped liability to two governments, for reactors it did not design and cannot inspect, without a statute, a cap, a fund or an insurer standing behind it. The register records at P-6 that no evacuation plan has been published for the population nearest the base, and at O-2 that the treaty also assigns Australia the waste from operations, maintenance, decommissioning and disposal.

No published document states who would pay a third-party claim, what the ceiling is, or whether one exists.

Read more: category RReferences[347] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australian Submarine Agency, published treaty text, tabled in Parliament 12 August 2024[348] Nuclear Legislation in OECD Countries: Australia Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Nuclear Energy Agency[349] Liability for nuclear damage World Nuclear Association[350] Revamped AUKUS document reveals how the United States and United Kingdom can walk away from the nuclear submarine deal ABC News, 12 August 2024↑ Back to the boat

Every established nuclear state channels claims to one operator, absolutely and without fault. Australia has no channelling regime and no certainty about insurance.

Nuclear liability law has a standard architecture, and it exists because ordinary civil litigation cannot handle a nuclear accident. Claims are channelled exclusively to the licensed operator, who is liable absolutely and irrespective of fault; a statutory cap applies; and the government stands behind claims above the cap. That is how Britain does it, where the Nuclear Installations Act sets annual caps on operator liability and the Government covers claims beyond them.

Advice prepared for industry participants in this programme records the Australian position. In most established jurisdictions liability for nuclear incidents, including in some cases military applications while on shore, is exclusively channelled to the licensed operator. In contrast, there is currently no channelling of claims related to nuclear incidents or liability for nuclear damage in Australia, and it is not certain what nuclear liability insurance arrangements will apply.

The consequence is set out in the same advice. Without an established channelling regime, a person who suffers loss or damage due to a nuclear incident may bring a claim against any party that has some, or even perceived, involvement in the incident.

That is litigation, not compensation. It falls on the claimant to identify a defendant, to establish fault, and to outlast the Commonwealth, a state government, a foreign navy and several contractors in court.

Two further gaps sit underneath it. Comcover, the Commonwealth's self-managed insurance fund, exists to protect Fund Members, which are Commonwealth entities, and not the public. And property insurance generally carries a nuclear exclusion clause, so a damaged house may be covered neither by the operator nor by the owner's insurer.

The register records at C-7 that Australia has nonetheless indemnified two foreign governments without limit.

Read more: category PReferences[354] Australia's nuclear frontier: key contractual considerations for AUKUS industry participants Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, August 2026. Cited as advice prepared for industry participants in the programme[355] Australia's energy transition: a complex regulatory road to nuclear power Allens, April 2025[358] Comcover Statement of Cover 2025-26, and the nuclear exclusion in general insurance Department of Finance, Commonwealth of Australia; and published descriptions of nuclear exclusion clauses[347] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australian Submarine Agency, published treaty text, tabled in Parliament 12 August 2024↑ Back to the boat

The agreement excludes an in-service American submarine until the point of transfer. Rotations begin in late 2027; the first transfer is 2032.

The indemnity recorded at C-7 has a stated scope. It applies to nuclear risks connected with material and equipment transferred or to be transferred to Australia, and the submarine agency's own description is that it applies only to nuclear risks. Its exclusions include, expressly, an in-service Virginia-class submarine until such time as it is transferred to Australia.

The boats that arrive first are not transferred. From late 2027 up to four American and one British submarine are to rotate through HMAS Stirling under Submarine Rotational Force West, owned and operated by their own navies. The first, USS Colorado, was named on 26 October 2026. The first Australian transfer is scheduled for 2032.

For that period, and for every visiting boat thereafter, the instrument that assigns nuclear liability does not apply. What applies instead is the Force Posture Agreement, in force since March 2015, whose claims provisions have not been examined in public in this context, and the general law of a country which, as recorded at C-8, has no nuclear liability regime.

The register does not assert that nothing covers it. It records that the agreement written for the purpose expressly does not, that no published document identifies what does, and that no minister has been asked.

Read more: category DReferences[350] Revamped AUKUS document reveals how the United States and United Kingdom can walk away from the nuclear submarine deal ABC News, 12 August 2024[347] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australian Submarine Agency, published treaty text, tabled in Parliament 12 August 2024[227] Evidence of Dr Colin Hughes to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Former Head of Public Health, Perth; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026[354] Australia's nuclear frontier: key contractual considerations for AUKUS industry participants Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, August 2026. Cited as advice prepared for industry participants in the programme[369] First US submarine assigned to SRF-West Australian Submarine Agency, joint statement of the AUKUS defence ministers, 26 October 2026↑ Back to the boat

Japan imposes unlimited operator liability and has spent about 12.1 trillion yen. America caps industry liability at about $15.5 billion. Australia has neither a cap nor a fund.

The purpose of this entry is scale, not prediction. A naval reactor is not a power station and the accident profile differs, so the figures below are not forecasts for an Australian event.

Japan's regime imposes a no-fault, unlimited liability on nuclear operators, with mandated insurance. The Government's 2016 estimate of the total cost of Fukushima Daiichi was 21.5 trillion yen, nearly double its earlier figure, of which about 8 trillion was decommissioning and 7.9 trillion compensation. The Board of Audit found about 12.1 trillion yen had already been spent by fiscal 2021, including 7.1 trillion in damages to people affected. Decommissioning alone reached 5.2 trillion yen spent or budgeted by 2025 against the 8 trillion estimate. One research institute puts the eventual total at 70 trillion yen. The costs are funded by government bonds, and operator repayment is estimated to take up to 42 years.

The United States takes the opposite approach and caps the exposure. Under the Price-Anderson Act, operators waive most legal defences after an extraordinary nuclear occurrence, a primary layer provides $500 million per site, a secondary industry layer assesses $158 million against each covered reactor, and the total available public compensation is about $15.5 billion, at which point industry liability stops.

Both are deliberate designs. One makes the operator liable without limit and funds it publicly; the other caps the liability and pools the insurance. Australia has adopted neither, and has no figure of any kind.

Read more: category RReferences[357] Fukushima Daiichi: total cost, expenditure to date, and Japan's liability regime Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimate of 2016; Board of Audit of Japan figures reported by The Asahi Shimbun; Nikkei Asia, August 2025; Japan Center for Economic Research; and the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center[356] Price-Anderson Act: nuclear power industry liability limits and compensation to the public after radioactive releases Congressional Research Service, United States[355] Australia's energy transition: a complex regulatory road to nuclear power Allens, April 2025[354] Australia's nuclear frontier: key contractual considerations for AUKUS industry participants Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, August 2026. Cited as advice prepared for industry participants in the programme↑ Back to the boat

Twelve hundred foreign personnel and families, a waste facility and a housing squeeze, five years before Australia owns a submarine.

From late 2027 up to four American and one British submarine rotate through HMAS Stirling. The Australian Submarine Agency states the government is investing up to $8 billion in the base. Submarine Squadron 3 has been re-established to oversee the American boats, a Lead Maintenance Activity stood up from mid-2026, and Naval Support Activity Stirling created to service United States personnel, contractors and their families.

The head of the agency has put the number at up to 1,200 United States and United Kingdom personnel and their families posted to Perth. It will be the second-largest American military footprint in Australia after the Marine rotation through Darwin.

They arrive into a housing market already under strain. Defence Housing Australia manages 640 properties near the base and plans to roughly double that over five years; 550 additional homes are contracted at Baldivis and surrounding suburbs. Perth was recently ranked the least affordable city in the country for renters, and Rockingham's population was already growing at fourteen people a day before any of this. A highway proposal intended to ease the resulting traffic was scrapped.

A small nuclear waste facility is being built on the island, together with an uninterrupted power supply. Residents raised the prospect of radiation release during consultation.

Every one of those things is in place before Australia owns a submarine, and two decades before it owns the fleet the arrangement was justified by.

References[1] Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australia, United Kingdom and United States; tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024[195] Press conference, Henderson Prime Minister of Australia, September 2025[198] New Defence precinct at Henderson Australian Submarine Agency↑ Back to the boat

The United States is developing a nuclear cruise missile designed specifically for the Virginia class.

The Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile was proposed in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. The Biden administration proposed cancelling it in its 2022 review; Congress refused and directed the programme to proceed. Prototype design contracts and launcher work were awarded during 2025, and the Navy's milestone decision falls in financial year 2026.

The Virginia class was not built to carry nuclear weapons. Custody, handling, training and mission planning would all have to change to field one from those boats.

References[4] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), IF12084 Congressional Research Service, United States[5] Sea Launched Cruise Nuclear Missile to Deliver in 2034, Says Admiral USNI News, 8 May 2025↑ Back to the boat

Statute requires limited deployment by September 2032 and initial operational capability by September 2034.

Section 1640 of the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act directed a programme to alter the W80-4 warhead and required initial operational capability no later than 30 September 2034. Section 1633 of the FY2026 Act requires a limited number of assets to enable limited operational deployment not later than September 2032.

References[4] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), IF12084 Congressional Research Service, United States[5] Sea Launched Cruise Nuclear Missile to Deliver in 2034, Says Admiral USNI News, 8 May 2025↑ Back to the boat

The director of Strategic Systems Programs lists it among his three top warfighting priorities.

Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe told a House Armed Services subcommittee in May 2025 that the programme had completed an industry day and was defining the system architecture, and that executing it requires careful balancing of resources against the attack submarine force.

References[5] Sea Launched Cruise Nuclear Missile to Deliver in 2034, Says Admiral USNI News, 8 May 2025[4] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), IF12084 Congressional Research Service, United States↑ Back to the boat

No United States attack submarine has carried a nuclear weapon since 1992. The missile does not yet exist.

President George H. W. Bush withdrew sea-based tactical nuclear weapons in 1991; the nuclear Tomahawk left the boats by 1992 and was retired outright in 2013. The SLCM-N remains in development: no warhead built, no missile built. Any claim that nuclear weapons are already at Australian ports is untrue, and this register does not make it.

References[4] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), IF12084 Congressional Research Service, United States[237] Australia will not acquire nuclear weapons: joint leaders statements and the Optimal Pathway Australia, United Kingdom and United States, September 2021 and March 2023↑ Back to the boat

The policy is not a refusal to answer a particular question. It is a standing refusal to answer the question at all.

United States practice is to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard any vessel, anywhere. The policy is deliberate and is not directed at Australia: it works by making the answer unavailable everywhere, so that an adversary cannot infer from a denial in one port what is true in another.

Applied here, it means no Australian government can state whether a particular submarine alongside at Cockburn Sound is carrying a nuclear weapon, and no Australian minister can be given that information in a form they are free to repeat. The question cannot be answered by an Australian official because the practice does not permit the answer to exist in public.

This region has already tested the policy once. New Zealand's refusal to accept vessels whose status could not be established is what ended its full participation in ANZUS in the 1980s, a suspension still in effect. The policy is not new, the consequence of refusing it is documented, and the choice of accepting it has never been put to an Australian parliament.

References[1] Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australia, United Kingdom and United States; tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024[237] Australia will not acquire nuclear weapons: joint leaders statements and the Optimal Pathway Australia, United Kingdom and United States, September 2021 and March 2023↑ Back to the boat

Polling shows about 68 per cent in favour of submarines the question describes as not carrying nuclear weapons. That is not the question this category asks.

Support for the acquisition is real and the register states it plainly. The Lowy Institute Poll has found around two-thirds in favour for several years running, most recently 68 per cent either strongly or somewhat in favour.

The wording matters. The question asks about submarines "powered by nuclear energy but which do not carry nuclear weapons", and in its later form about boats "conventionally armed but nuclear-powered". Every published measure of support rests on that description. No national poll has asked whether Australians accept hosting submarines that may carry a nuclear weapon, because until the missile exists the question has not been framed that way.

The defenders of the programme read the same number differently, and the register records their reading. The 2026 poll found 68 per cent support while confidence in the United States President stood at 21 per cent and trust in the United States at 31 per cent, which is taken to show that Australians distinguish a president from the capability. That reading is available on the figures. What is not available on the figures is a view about nuclear armament, because no question has asked about it.

The public position on scrutiny is clearer. In 2025, 66 per cent of respondents supported a parliamentary inquiry into the arrangement, up from 57 per cent in an earlier poll. Fewer than half, 49 per cent, thought it would make Australia safer.

There has been no election fought on it, no referendum, and no parliamentary inquiry.

References[138] Acquiring nuclear-powered submarines Lowy Institute Poll[139] Does AUKUS have public support? University of Technology Sydney, December 2024[140] Two-thirds of Australians want a review of AUKUS, while less than half think it will make us safer The Australia Institute, July 2025[235] Five years on, AUKUS has endured through extraordinary political change Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Professor, University of Western Australia Defence and Security Institute, and Non-Resident Fellow, Lowy Institute; Australian Financial Review, 15 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

Pine Gap, North West Cape, Tindal and Stirling. That they are targets has been accepted by Australian governments since the Cold War.

This is not a contested claim and it is not a new one. Kim Beazley, as opposition leader in 1997, told a parliamentary committee seminar that the joint facilities were accepted as probably being targets, and that the risk was accepted for the benefits it was thought to bring. Paul Dibb, a former director of Australia's Joint Intelligence Organisation and former deputy secretary of Defence, wrote in a 2022 policy paper that planning should proceed on the basis that Pine Gap continues to be a nuclear target, and not only for Russia, and that if China attacks Taiwan Pine Gap is likely to be heavily involved.

The institute that supports the programme says the same thing, and says the exposure has grown. Writing in March 2026 it assessed that installations such as Pine Gap are more than ever at risk of direct attack, and that as of 2025 they can be struck with conventional missiles without an adversary having to risk nuclear escalation.

The clearest statement came from a former Minister for Defence who supports the programme. Giving evidence at Fremantle in June 2026, she said that if kinetic war broke out to Australia's north the country would be subjected to precision kinetic attacks, that the joint facilities, bases and airfields across the approaches are already targets and a capable adversary would strike them early, and that a war that looked northern would not stay in the north. Asked whether stationing nuclear submarines near Fremantle would make Fremantle more of a nuclear target, she answered that of course it would.

In September 2026 two former departmental secretaries said publicly that Tindal, Stirling, North West Cape and Pine Gap could be targeted in a conflict with China.

The register records no view about anyone's intentions. It records that the sites the arrangement deepens are the sites already understood, by those who ran them, to be on someone's list.

References[134] Beijing's new missile threat to Australia ASPI The Strategist, March 2026[135] Pine Gap's secret expansion ICAN Australia, reproducing Paul Dibb's 2022 policy paper[136] Dangerous liaisons: Pine Gap as nuclear target, then and now Pearls and Irritations, reproducing the parliamentary record[137] AUKUS makes Australia a nuclear target, top experts warn The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 2026[225] Evidence of the Hon. Linda Reynolds CSC to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Brigadier (Ret'd); Minister for Defence 2019-2021; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026↑ Back to the boat

Six simultaneous warhead programmes, a pit capability that has slipped a decade, and an agency on the watchdog's high risk list since 1991.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's own budget justification records that it is executing six simultaneous warhead modernisation programmes, including the sea-launched cruise missile warhead and the B61-13, while rebuilding its production base.

That base is the constraint. The United States has not regularly manufactured plutonium pits since 1989. Statute requires a capability of no fewer than 80 a year by 2030; officials testified in 2022 that the target would not be met, and the Savannah River facility intended to supply 50 of them is now expected in September 2035 at over $22 billion. The Government Accountability Office has found the agency has neither a comprehensive schedule nor a credible cost estimate for that capability, and has kept the Department of Energy on its high risk list since 1991. The warhead for the air-launched cruise missile is a year behind its baseline.

The agency has stated how the new warhead is being resourced. As the W88 upgrade finished, it said the same staff were pivoting to accelerate the sea-launched programme.

References[130] Weapons Activities, FY 2026 Congressional Justification United States Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration[131] Nuclear Weapons: NNSA Does Not Have a Comprehensive Schedule or Cost Estimate for Pit Production Capability, GAO-23-104661 United States Government Accountability Office[132] NNSA charts buildup as delays mount Arms Control Association, April 2026, reporting the Government Accountability Office[133] NNSA completes last production unit of W88 nuclear warhead upgrade United States Department of Energy, March 2026↑ Back to the boat

The weapon is funded, dated and built for these boats. No Australian government has said what it would do if asked to host it.

The government's position is accurate as far as it goes. Australia's submarines will be conventionally armed. The naval nuclear propulsion agreement forbids Australia from arming them with nuclear weapons. The register records both and does not dispute either.

Neither addresses the question. The boats arriving at Stirling from late 2027 are American and British, and they are not covered by an undertaking Australia gave about its own. Congress has funded a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile for the Virginia class with limited deployment required by September 2032 and initial operational capability by September 2034. The architecture being fitted to those boats is the architecture that weapon uses.

What is absent is any Australian position on it. No minister has stated whether Australia would accept, refuse, or decline to ask. The question has not been put to either house. It was not among the matters on which the public was consulted, and the polling that shows two-thirds support describes boats that do not carry nuclear weapons. No published document records a request made, a request refused, or a policy to govern one.

The register makes no claim about what any government intends. It records that a weapon is being built for these boats on a published timetable, that the arrangement brings those boats here, and that the country hosting them has never said what it would do about it.

Read more: category CReferences[237] Australia will not acquire nuclear weapons: joint leaders statements and the Optimal Pathway Australia, United Kingdom and United States, September 2021 and March 2023[223] New AUKUS agreement signed Australian Defence Magazine, August 2024[238] Submarine Rotational Force-West and the presence of United States and United Kingdom submarines at HMAS Stirling Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, 12 August 2024[4] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), IF12084 Congressional Research Service, United States[5] Sea Launched Cruise Nuclear Missile to Deliver in 2034, Says Admiral USNI News, 8 May 2025[138] Acquiring nuclear-powered submarines Lowy Institute Poll↑ Back to the boat

In August 2026 the United States ordered a finished carrier design changed by memorandum. Australia's boats share that system.

A National Security Presidential Memorandum signed in August 2026 directs the Navy to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam catapults and hydraulic systems from CVN-81 onward, with a plan due within sixty days. The Ford class was designed around electrification from the outset; steam requires high-pressure piping, accumulators and machinery spaces that were engineered out of the design.

References[6] Trump orders return of steam catapults on carriers, fifth public shipyard Breaking Defense, August 2026[7] Full steam in reverse: Trump orders US Navy back to old-style aircraft catapults Navy Lookout, August 2026↑ Back to the boat

The carrier being redesigned is built at Newport News — the yard that also builds Virginia-class submarines.

CVN-81, the future USS Doris Miller, is under construction at HII Newport News Shipbuilding. Newport News is one of the two yards building the Virginia class. Engineering, trades and management capacity redirected to an unplanned carrier redesign is capacity not available to submarine production.

References[6] Trump orders return of steam catapults on carriers, fifth public shipyard Breaking Defense, August 2026[90] Trump-class battleships could come with a $275 billion price tag CNN, August 2026, reporting the Congressional Budget Office↑ Back to the boat

The catapult manufacturer states production is nearly half complete and reversal brings significant cost, schedule and integration risk.

General Atomics, the EMALS contractor, said publicly that with nearly 50 per cent of production complete, changing course would introduce significant cost, schedule and integration risks. Reporting indicates the change could add billions and push the ship's deployment into the late 2030s.

References[8] Trump's directive to revert to steam catapults on new aircraft carrier baffles naval experts CNN, 14 August 2026[6] Trump orders return of steam catapults on carriers, fifth public shipyard Breaking Defense, August 2026↑ Back to the boat

The United States Navy has not bought a steam catapult in more than twenty years.

Suppliers are unlikely to be able to build them without substantial up-front investment and time to establish production lines — the same constraint, in the same industrial base, that governs submarine output.

References[6] Trump orders return of steam catapults on carriers, fifth public shipyard Breaking Defense, August 2026[8] Trump's directive to revert to steam catapults on new aircraft carrier baffles naval experts CNN, 14 August 2026↑ Back to the boat

The same memorandum orders a fifth public shipyard, a submarine component repair centre and a NAVSEA reorganisation.

The memorandum directs the establishment of a fifth public shipyard to increase nuclear submarine and carrier readiness, a Component Repair Centre holding at least one ship set of spares for the Los Angeles, Virginia, Seawolf, Ohio and Columbia classes, and a review and reorganisation of Naval Sea Systems Command. Australia's transfer depends on the output of the system being reorganised.

References[9] Trump orders Navy to ditch EMALS for steam catapults on aircraft carriers The Hill, August 2026[6] Trump orders return of steam catapults on carriers, fifth public shipyard Breaking Defense, August 2026[8] Trump's directive to revert to steam catapults on new aircraft carrier baffles naval experts CNN, 14 August 2026↑ Back to the boat

The second Ford-class carrier's delivery moved to 2027, nearly three years later than planned.

The record of the yard Australia depends on is one of schedule growth before any of these changes were ordered.

The strain runs past delivery into sustainment. The Ford returned in 2026 from 326 days at sea, the longest post-Vietnam carrier deployment, with fire damage and plumbing failures. Its availability at Norfolk Naval Shipyard was expected to take ten months; the yard commander undertook to complete it in six.

References[7] Full steam in reverse: Trump orders US Navy back to old-style aircraft catapults Navy Lookout, August 2026[252] Despite fire, lengthy deployment, Navy expects only six-month maintenance for USS Ford Breaking Defense, 14 September 2026, reporting the Commander of Norfolk Naval Shipyard↑ Back to the boat

Three changes have been made without Australian agreement, each to a programme Australia funds or depends on.

Nothing in the arrangement requires Australia to be consulted before a partner alters a programme Australia pays for. The record shows what that means in practice.

In August 2026 a presidential memorandum directed the replacement of the electromagnetic catapult with steam on a carrier under construction at Newport News, one of the two yards that build Virginia-class submarines. In December 2025 a class of fifteen nuclear-powered battleships was announced, which a congressional committee warned could jeopardise carrier delivery at the same yard. In September 2026 the United Kingdom deferred its decision on how many SSN-AUKUS boats it will buy until 2028, a year after steel is cut, having taken $4.6 billion from Australia to expand the yard that builds them.

Australia was not a party to any of those decisions, and has not publicly objected to any of them.

References[89] Legislators demand Navy prove Trump-class battleships won't sink US nuclear shipbuilding The War Zone, June 2026[90] Trump-class battleships could come with a $275 billion price tag CNN, August 2026, reporting the Congressional Budget Office[210] Labour delays buying new attack submarines until 2028 The Telegraph, 12 September 2026, as reported by GB News, AOL and Express[164] British industry to receive nearly $5 billion from Australia to help build nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide ABC News, March 2024↑ Back to the boat

An American carrier and significant personnel and armaments have been moved from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East.

Allied presence in the theatre the plan is built around is not a fixed quantity. It is allocated by another government according to its own priorities, and in 2026 those priorities moved elsewhere.

References[12] Australia appears confused about its place in the global world order Laura Tingle, ABC News, 5 September 2026[88] The US Navy is retiring nuclear attack submarines faster than it can build them 19FortyFive, March 2026, citing the United States Naval Institute↑ Back to the boat

Two yards can build nuclear vessels and one reactor supplier serves them all. A new battleship class has been added to the queue.

The United States has two shipyards able to build nuclear-powered vessels, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Newport News. Only Newport News can build nuclear-powered surface ships. Both are already committed to Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, which are the Navy's top acquisition priority, and to the Virginia class Australia is buying from.

In December 2025 a new class of nuclear-powered battleships was announced, fifteen ships by 2055 with the first due in 2036. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the first at about ten billion dollars more than a Ford-class carrier, and the programme at up to $275 billion. Assembly would fall to Newport News, which would need Dock 12, currently committed for several years to three Ford-class carriers that are themselves behind schedule.

Congress has objected on capacity grounds. The House Armed Services Committee recorded that carrier delays driven by supply chain and workforce problems, coupled with a lack of physical shipbuilding capacity, could be worsened by a new nuclear surface programme and could jeopardise Ford-class delivery. It has blocked construction until the weapon systems are shown to be mature; the design includes rail guns that are not fully developed.

One supplier, BWXT, provides the reactors for all of it — carriers, Virginia boats, Columbia boats, and now battleships.

Read more: category FReferences[89] Legislators demand Navy prove Trump-class battleships won't sink US nuclear shipbuilding The War Zone, June 2026[90] Trump-class battleships could come with a $275 billion price tag CNN, August 2026, reporting the Congressional Budget Office[91] Analysts predict Newport News lacks room to build Trump's battleships VPM, August 2026, reporting the Congressional Budget Office↑ Back to the boat

Announced in June 2025, led by a declared sceptic, concluded in December with a single sentence naming no findings. Australia's schedule depends on it.

In June 2025 the United States Department of Defense began a formal review of its participation. It was led by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, described in reporting as a known sceptic of the pact, who had argued publicly that American domestic submarine production should take precedence and that it would be unwise for the United States to hold fewer attack submarines in a conflict with China. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the reassessment aligned with the administration's America First doctrine.

The announcement came as a surprise to Canberra, where the partnership is framed as a cornerstone of national strategic policy. An initial thirty-day timeframe extended into the autumn.

It concluded on 5 December 2025. The Pentagon's public statement was that, consistent with the President's guidance that AUKUS should move full steam ahead, the review had identified opportunities to put the partnership on the strongest possible footing. The spokesperson did not elaborate on what those opportunities were. The findings have not been released publicly. The Australian Defence Minister said the day before that he was working through them and thanked the United States for providing them.

A press report of the same week, resting on three unnamed sources, stated that the review had been rewritten to align with the President's enthusiasm, having initially been more sceptical of the pact. The register records that as a press report, not as an established fact, because its sourcing is anonymous.

What is established without it is enough. The country that decides whether Australia receives a submarine conducted a review of that question, announced a conclusion in one sentence, named no finding, published nothing, and Australia accepted the outcome without the document. The register records at C-4 that the transfer is conditional on American certification, and at C-6 that Australia signed a fifty-year treaty with Britain while this review was still under way.

Read more: category CReferences[366] Pentagon's AUKUS review finds areas to put nuclear submarine pact on 'strongest possible footing' ABC News, 5 December 2025[367] Pentagon's AUKUS review was rewritten for Trump, Sydney Morning Herald reports Bloomberg Government, 5 December 2025, reporting the Sydney Morning Herald. Cited as a press report resting on unnamed sources[368] The Trump administration's AUKUS review: trajectory and long-term implications Sasakawa Peace Foundation, International Information Network Analysis, September 2025[227] Evidence of Dr Colin Hughes to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Former Head of Public Health, Perth; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026↑ Back to the boat

A United States President must certify that transferring a submarine will not degrade American capability.

The authority to transfer is American and it is statutory. Section 10431 of Title 22 permits the President to transfer up to two Virginia-class submarines on a sale basis, and not more than one additional boat, within twenty years of December 2023. Anything beyond that requires a new Act of Congress.

The authority is also conditional, and the conditions are tested at the moment of transfer rather than at signature. Under section 8677 of Title 10 no President may transfer a second-hand hull if doing so would degrade United States undersea readiness. Under section 10431 the certification requires that Australia has demonstrated the domestic capacity to fully perform all the activities necessary to host and operate the boats. The schedule is further subject to a 270-day presidential certification clause.

The conditions apply to each hull separately, in 2032, 2035 and 2038. A transfer certified in one year does not certify the next.

No Australian decision, appropriation or performance can produce a boat. The register records at C-4 what the statutory tests require and at F-16 why they will be harder to satisfy in 2032 than they are now.

References[1] Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australia, United Kingdom and United States; tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024[221] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, treaty text Tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024; entered into force 17 January 2025[253] ‘Enduring’ US presence at WA’s HMAS Stirling a matter of semantics ABC News, 1 August 2026[280] The cost of Defence: ASPI Defence budget brief 2026-2027 Australian Strategic Policy Institute, August 2026. Cited as an institute that supports the programme making the criticism[278] A stable nuclear future? The impact of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence Michael C. Horowitz and others, arXiv↑ Back to the boat

Requirement 66, fleet 49. Building 1.2 a year, needing 2.33. Retiring two or three. Australia's boats come out of that.

The United States Navy's force-level goal is 66 attack submarines. It began the 2026 financial year with 49.

Production does not close the gap. The Congressional Research Service records Virginia-class construction since 2022 at about 1.1 to 1.2 boats a year, against the 2.33 a year the Navy states is needed to sustain two-a-year procurement, replace the three to five boats to be sold to Australia, and work off the backlog. The Government Accountability Office recorded 1.15 boats in 2024 against a Navy goal of 1.5. Procurement ran at two a year from 2011 to 2024 and dropped to one in 2025. The recovery plan reaches 2.0 boats a year by 2028 and 2.33 in the early 2030s, the year the first transfer is due.

Retirement is the other half of the sum, and it has begun. Sixty-two Los Angeles-class boats were built between 1976 and 1996; 42 had retired by the start of 2026. The driver is reactor life rather than policy, the cores having been designed for 35 to 40 years. Three more left in 2026 and a fourth, USS Boise, was retired early after its overhaul was cancelled at 25 per cent complete and $800 million spent.

Netted out, when two or three boats retire in a year and one enters service, the force loses one to two submarines annually despite continuous construction. It is projected to bottom at 46 to 47 boats around 2030 and to reach 66 in the mid-2050s.

Two independent assessments put the position more sharply than the official projection. Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry from a former Minister for Foreign Affairs cites a retired Rear Admiral's calculation that by 2032 the United States Navy will hold 41 boats, against a safe minimum of 48 and a target of 66. The same officer's own paper projects a fall from 49 boats to between 32 and 35 over that period. Those figures are his, and are more pessimistic than the Navy's published trough of 46 to 47; the register records the difference rather than choosing between them.

The clearest statement of the risk comes from a supporter of the acquisition. A former Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Defence and Ambassador to Washington told the AUKUS Public Inquiry that Australia absolutely needs a capable submarine force, that submarines give it an asymmetric advantage, and that they should absolutely be nuclear powered. On whether the boats arrive, his evidence was that it will be a political decision whether or not they turn up.

One further condition sits on the sale. It is expressly conditional on not degrading United States undersea capability.

Two dates finish it. The Navy's own projection of that trough does not account for selling three to five boats to Australia. And the mid-2050s, when the American fleet is forecast to reach its requirement, is when Australia's eight boats are also due.

Read more: category QReferences[85] Navy Virginia-Class Submarine Program and AUKUS Submarine (Pillar 1) Project: Background and Issues for Congress, RL32418 Congressional Research Service[86] The Navy built 62 Los Angeles-class submarines. It cannot replace them fast enough 19FortyFive, July 2026[87] US Navy submarine crisis worsens as USS San Juan retires Army Recognition, August 2026[88] The US Navy is retiring nuclear attack submarines faster than it can build them 19FortyFive, March 2026, citing the United States Naval Institute[209] US attack submarine output still short of Navy goal UK Defence Journal, September 2026[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026[218] AUKUS SSN: a flawed plan heading for the wrong destination Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), former submariner and submarine force commander, Pearls and Irritations, February 2025; submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing[219] Evidence of the Hon. Kim Beazley AC to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Former Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Defence and Ambassador to the United States; Canberra hearing, 3 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

The reactors run on highly enriched uranium Australia cannot produce, service or reprocess, and is forbidden by treaty from making.

The reactors run on uranium enriched to about 93 per cent. Australia cannot produce it, and the naval nuclear propulsion agreement forbids it from enriching, producing or reprocessing naval fuel domestically, or from acquiring it from anyone other than the United States or the United Kingdom.

Nothing about nuclear propulsion requires that. France and China operate boats on low-enriched fuel, which their own operators make and service. The prohibition is a term of the pathway Australia chose, recorded at C-3, not a property of the technology.

Read more: category LReferences[221] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, treaty text Tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024; entered into force 17 January 2025[223] New AUKUS agreement signed Australian Defence Magazine, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

The plant arrives as a sealed unit. Australia is not equipped to open it.

The constraint follows from the pathway rather than from nuclear propulsion. A retired Rear Admiral and former commander of Australia's submarine force records that France's experience with low-enriched uranium boats challenges the claim that Australia would have to send vessels overseas for reactor support. A sealed, unrefuellable, weapons-grade core is what cannot be serviced here. A refuellable low-enriched core is serviced by its operator.

References[221] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, treaty text Tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024; entered into force 17 January 2025[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[230] Australia's naval defence without AUKUS Pillar One Dr Michael Keating AC, former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance, and Employment and Industrial Relations, and eleven years on the Secretaries Committee on National Security including five as chairman; with Jon Stanford, former division head, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing, 3 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

American and British law governs what Australia may do with the equipment it owns.

The boats will be Australian-owned. What can be done with them is governed elsewhere.

The propulsion technology, the weapons, the launch tubes and the combat system are supplied under American and British law, and the transfers are made under the Arms Export Control Act. Changes to any of it require the supplying government's agreement.

No published document lists what Australia may modify on its own authority, or the process for seeking agreement to modify anything else.

References[224] AUKUS nuclear cooperation, IF11999 Congressional Research Service[221] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, treaty text Tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024; entered into force 17 January 2025↑ Back to the boat

“Integrated deterrence” and “pooled sovereignty” are the stated mechanisms. Both describe shared control, and neither describes sovereign control.

The government's own language describes the arrangement. The submarines are to be operated within a framework of integrated deterrence, and officials have used the term pooled sovereignty to describe how the three navies will work.

Both terms describe shared control. Neither describes sovereign control, and no published document reconciles them with the statement that the boats will be sovereign Australian assets.

The register records the words rather than inferring from them. They are the government's, and they have not been withdrawn.

References[1] Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australia, United Kingdom and United States; tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024[224] AUKUS nuclear cooperation, IF11999 Congressional Research Service↑ Back to the boat

Rotational American and British submarines and personnel are based at Garden Island from late 2027, years before any Australian hull.

Submarine Rotational Force-West begins at HMAS Stirling from late 2027 with up to four United States Virginia-class submarines and one United Kingdom Astute. On 26 October 2026 the three governments named the first boat: USS Colorado, a Block III Virginia commissioned in 2018. United States Submarine Squadron 3 has been re-established to oversee American boats operating from there, a Lead Maintenance Activity begins in Western Australia from mid-2026, and Naval Support Activity Stirling has been established to deliver services for American personnel, contractors and their families. The base expansion is put at about $8 billion. The United States Navy expects about 2,300 Americans in Western Australia by 2030, including sailors, civilian employees, contractors and family members. The Australian Submarine Agency has given a figure of up to 1,200 United States and United Kingdom personnel and families, recorded at D-1. No published document reconciles the two.

The Australian Submarine Agency states that the American elements of SRF-West are implemented under the 2014 Force Posture Agreement, and that Australia maintains a longstanding bipartisan policy of no foreign bases on Australian soil. In August 2026 the Chief of the Defence Force confirmed American attack submarines will retain enduring access, replacing earlier statements suggesting a five-year limit.

References[1] Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australia, United Kingdom and United States; tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024[22] Submarine Rotational Force West Australian Submarine Agency, Commonwealth of Australia[23] AUKUS partners take next steps towards Submarine Rotational Force West Minister for Defence, 12 June 2026[24] HMAS Stirling and Submarine Rotational Force West Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, citing the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works report on Submarine Rotational Force-West priority works, June 2024[372] US military opens support activity in Western Australia under Navy Region Japan Stars and Stripes, 9 June 2026[373] US Navy says 2,300 Americans expected at Perth AUKUS base Crikey, 7 August 2026, reporting The Australian[369] First US submarine assigned to SRF-West Australian Submarine Agency, joint statement of the AUKUS defence ministers, 26 October 2026[370] AUKUS: USS Colorado announced as first submarine for SRF-West Naval News, 26 October 2026↑ Back to the boat

Three senior American officials have said in public what the boats are expected to do. No Australian minister has contradicted them.

Australian governments state that the submarines will be operated under sovereign Australian control, and nothing in the arrangement says otherwise on paper.

Senior American officials have described the expectation differently. At the time of the announcement the Deputy Secretary of State observed that Australia was locked in for the next forty years. Two years later the same official said that when submarines are provided from the United States to Australia, it is not as though they are lost. Before his appointment to the senior policy role in the Pentagon, the official who later led the American review of the arrangement said that delivering any Virginia-class boat to Australia would be highly imprudent without an iron-clad guarantee that it could be deployed at the will of the United States. The Biden administration's lead official on the Indo-Pacific, visiting Canberra, spoke of the need for serious and deep alliance conversations about expectations around roles and missions.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry from a former Minister for Foreign Affairs draws the conclusion that it defies credibility to think Washington would proceed with the sale, or permit further access to the technology, absent an understanding about deployment.

No Australian minister has publicly rejected any of those three statements. The register records that the expectation has been put on the record by the party supplying the boats, and has not been answered by the party buying them.

Read more: category DReferences[216] Elbridge Colby on conditions for transferring Virginia-class submarines Quoted in evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, June 2026[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026[230] Australia's naval defence without AUKUS Pillar One Dr Michael Keating AC, former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance, and Employment and Industrial Relations, and eleven years on the Secretaries Committee on National Security including five as chairman; with Jon Stanford, former division head, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing, 3 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

No public document sets out how Australia would decline to participate in an allied operation.

Australian governments state that the decision to commit forces remains Australia's. Nothing in the record contradicts that as a statement of principle.

What does not exist is the machinery. No published document sets out who decides, on what advice, against what criteria, or in what time, when an ally requests the use of Australian-based submarines or the facilities that support them. No document describes how a refusal would be communicated, or what would follow it.

The entries on basing and on neither confirm nor deny record why the question is not hypothetical.

References[58] Securing Australia's sovereignty Minister for Defence, February 2023[59] AUKUS and US forces: the question of independence ASPI The Strategist, September 2024[60] From Pine Gap to HMAS Stirling: Australia must reclaim strategic authorship Defence Connect, March 2026↑ Back to the boat

Spares, expertise and certification come from two other countries for the life of the fleet.

A submarine consumes spares continuously and certification continuously. For the transferred boats, both come from the United States; for SSN-AUKUS, reactor plants and components come from Britain, the launch tubes from Scotland, and the combat system from a four-company arrangement spanning two continents.

Australia holds no second source for any of it, and the register records elsewhere that the supplying yards are carrying acute maintenance backlogs of their own.

The constraint reaches inside the American system as well. The four public shipyards that maintain the United States fleet, at Norfolk, Portsmouth, Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor, face administrative delay sourcing components and accessing software because the two private companies that build the Virginia class hold the technical data rights. A buyer outside that system has less standing again.

The dependency runs for the life of the fleet, which is to say into the 2070s.

References[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[218] AUKUS SSN: a flawed plan heading for the wrong destination Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), former submariner and submarine force commander, Pearls and Irritations, February 2025; submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing[269] The US shipyard crisis sinking AUKUS Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Australia's naval nuclear regulator was established in November 2025 and has never regulated a submarine.

The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator was established as an independent statutory agency on 1 November 2025 under the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act 2024. Its framework draws on United States and United Kingdom practice. Regulations covering submarine-specific activities — the acquisition and operation of the boats themselves — are still to be developed.

References[10] Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator Commonwealth of Australia[11] An AUKUS milestone: launch of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator Minister for Defence, 1 November 2025↑ Back to the boat

Asked why Washington would hand over a submarine, the Defence Minister answered that the arrangement benefits the United States Navy.

In Washington in September 2026 the Deputy Prime Minister was asked why any American president would give away a submarine the United States cannot build fast enough for itself. His answer was that the arrangement generates additional operational days for the Virginia-class fleet — his phrase was “sea days for the United States Navy” — and that Submarine Rotational Force-West and the Henderson precinct let American boats be maintained closer to their area of operation. That is the government’s own account of why the agreement is valuable to the seller.

References[12] Australia appears confused about its place in the global world order Laura Tingle, ABC News, 5 September 2026[1] Agreement for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australia, United Kingdom and United States; tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024↑ Back to the boat

What was announced as a transfer of capability is being described as an expanded American presence in Australia.

The clearest description came from a former Minister for Defence, who offered it as praise. Giving evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry in July 2026, he said the arrangement was not just a submarine procurement but was also creating a new United States submarine base in the Indian Ocean, and that for the Americans to be able to base their submarines there was a massive strategic advantage.

The same visit announced a further escalation of the United States military presence in Australia. The submarine presence in Western Australia sits alongside the annual rotation of American marines through Darwin and the American presence at the Tindal air base. The capability Australia was to acquire has not arrived; the presence has.

References[12] Australia appears confused about its place in the global world order Laura Tingle, ABC News, 5 September 2026[232] Adelaide hearings reveal key AUKUS insights Mirage News, 18 July 2026, reporting the AUKUS Public Inquiry↑ Back to the boat

The treaty governing the American presence runs 25 years, then continues by default. Nobody has to decide again.

Article XXI of the Force Posture Agreement provides that it remains in force for 25 years and thereafter continues in force, terminable at any time on one year's written notice. It entered into force on 31 March 2015, so the stated term expires in 2040. Australia's first transferred submarine is due in the 2030s and the sovereign build in the 2040s and 2050s. The instrument that authorises the presence therefore reaches the end of its term before the capability it supports is delivered, and then rolls on unless a government acts to end it.

Neither ANZUS nor the AUKUS arrangements authorise the American presence in Australia. The Force Posture Agreement does, and it was signed in 2014, seven years before AUKUS was announced.

Two ministers have given opposite answers. In late July 2026 the Minister for Defence Industry said from Washington that the rotational force was a time-limited rotation, a five-year commitment beginning in 2027 that would end in 2032. Days later the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence said it was intended to be an enduring feature of America's force posture in Australia. The Industry Minister then posted a statement agreeing that the presence would be enduring, which the national broadcaster noted carried no official signature or letterhead.

United States and Australian officials held a series of conversations in response, and the Opposition asked the Defence Minister to state whether American submarines are welcome in Western Australia beyond 2032. No answer has been published.

Neither position rests on an instrument. The Force Posture Agreement runs to 2040 and then continues by default; the rotational force is implemented under it; and no expiry for the presence appears in that agreement, in the naval nuclear propulsion agreement, or in any tabled document. The submarine agency's own diagrams show the force tapering off in the 2030s, which is a plan rather than a term.

References[19] Force Posture Agreement between Australia and the United States of America, [2015] ATS 1 Australian Treaties Database, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade[21] Force Posture Agreement, National Interest Analysis [2014] ATNIA 19 Australian Treaty documents, via AustLII[242] AUKUS Infrastructure, part 6: It is not too late to change course Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, August 2026[253] ‘Enduring’ US presence at WA’s HMAS Stirling a matter of semantics ABC News, 1 August 2026[254] Minister’s comments about AUKUS spark confusion, send US defence officials scrambling for answers The Nightly, 30 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Rotations at Stirling are American and British submarines under their own command. Presence is not the same as capability.

The arrangement between the retirement of the Collins boats and the arrival of Australian ones is Submarine Rotational Force-West, from late 2027: up to four United States Virginias and one British Astute operating from HMAS Stirling. HMS Anson has already visited and departed. The first boat was named on 26 October 2026, USS Colorado, in a statement that gave a start of late 2027 and no duration.

Those boats are not Australian capability. They are commanded, crewed and tasked by their own governments, and nothing published gives Australia authority to direct them or an assurance that a rotation will be present in a given month. If a boat is required elsewhere, Australia has neither the submarine nor a say in its absence.

The American boats are overseen at Stirling by Submarine Squadron 3, re-established on 10 June 2026 by the Commander of the United States Pacific Fleet Submarine Force to provide maintenance, logistics and operational support, working alongside the Royal Australian Navy. A former Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs and Deputy Secretary of Defence, Michael Pezzullo, wrote in July 2026 that the squadron will be able to be tasked to undertake wartime combat missions through the United States military command chain, and that there is an urgent need to clarify how such missions from Australia would be commanded and controlled. No published document sets out that arrangement.

The fleets they come from are not in a position to be generous. The Royal Navy has nine submarines in service, of which one Astute is at high readiness and four are assessed at low or very low; British attack submarine availability reached zero in 2026. The United States is seventeen boats short of its own requirement.

The stated purpose points the other way. Asked why an American president would transfer a submarine, the Deputy Prime Minister answered that the arrangement generates sea days for the United States Navy, and that Stirling and Henderson allow American boats to be maintained closer to their area of operation.

The House of Commons Defence Committee found in April 2026 that United Kingdom submarine availability is critically low, and that meeting the commitment to increase Astute-class visits to Australia comes against deepening concern about Royal Navy readiness.

Read more: category QReferences[98] UK submarine fleet House of Commons Library[99] The Royal Navy has only one combat-ready Astute-class nuclear attack submarine 19FortyFive, March 2026[22] Submarine Rotational Force West Australian Submarine Agency, Commonwealth of Australia[23] AUKUS partners take next steps towards Submarine Rotational Force West Minister for Defence, 12 June 2026[3] AUKUS, First Report of Session 2025-26, HC 841 House of Commons Defence Committee, United Kingdom Parliament, 28 April 2026[369] First US submarine assigned to SRF-West Australian Submarine Agency, joint statement of the AUKUS defence ministers, 26 October 2026[374] Pacific Submarine Force reestablishes Submarine Squadron 3 United States Pacific Fleet, 10 June 2026[375] Australia will soon host a US SSN force. We need to discuss war planning Michael Pezzullo AO, former Secretary of Home Affairs and Deputy Secretary of Defence, ASPI The Strategist, 25 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Two yards. Columbia first, Virginia at half the required rate, three late carriers, a new battleship class, and a maintenance backlog of 15,000 lost days.

Only two American yards can build nuclear vessels, and only one of them can build nuclear surface ships. Everything below runs through them.

Ahead of Australia, in order of priority: the Columbia ballistic missile submarines, which carry the American deterrent and are the Navy's stated top acquisition priority; Virginia-class construction for the United States Navy, running at 1.1 to 1.2 boats a year against the 2.33 the Navy says it needs; three Ford-class carriers at Newport News, all behind schedule; a new class of fifteen nuclear-powered battleships announced in December 2025, which a congressional committee has warned could jeopardise carrier delivery; and a maintenance backlog measured by the Government Accountability Office at about 15,000 lost operational days and $3.4 billion between 2016 and 2025, with fifteen further boats entering idle time by 2030.

Beneath all of it sits a single reactor supplier, serving carriers, Virginias, Columbias and now battleships.

The same yards are absorbing the pressure by shortening the work rather than adding capacity. In September 2026 the commander of Norfolk Naval Shipyard, one of the four public yards carrying the submarine backlog, said the availability for a carrier returning from a 326-day deployment with fire damage had been expected to take ten months, and that he had promised the fleet commander to complete it in six.

Against that queue, the attack submarine fleet is projected to bottom at 46 to 47 boats around 2030 and not to reach its requirement of 66 until the mid-2050s. That projection does not subtract the three boats promised to Australia.

The counter-case belongs here. Supporters of the arrangement argue that Australian maintenance capacity at Stirling and Henderson eases the American backlog rather than adding to it, and that this prospect caused even sceptics, including the official who later led the American review, to concede the arrangement can work. That argument is about maintenance capacity, not build capacity, and the queue above is a build queue.

The transfer is conditional on not degrading United States undersea capability. Every item above is a reason that condition will be harder to satisfy in 2032 than it is today.

Read more: category EReferences[85] Navy Virginia-Class Submarine Program and AUKUS Submarine (Pillar 1) Project: Background and Issues for Congress, RL32418 Congressional Research Service[82] Navy Readiness: Actions Needed to Address Costly Attack Submarine Maintenance Delays and Idle Time, GAO-26-109256 United States Government Accountability Office, August 2026[89] Legislators demand Navy prove Trump-class battleships won't sink US nuclear shipbuilding The War Zone, June 2026[218] AUKUS SSN: a flawed plan heading for the wrong destination Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), former submariner and submarine force commander, Pearls and Irritations, February 2025; submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing[234] There's no point dwelling on AUKUS paths not taken ANU National Security College, first published in the Australian Financial Review, 23 July 2024[252] Despite fire, lengthy deployment, Navy expects only six-month maintenance for USS Ford Breaking Defense, 14 September 2026, reporting the Commander of Norfolk Naval Shipyard↑ Back to the boat

The trade benefit required a change to Australian criminal law. The exclusion list it was meant to remove has still not been narrowed.

Moving defence technology between the three countries required each to change its own rules. The United States created an exemption under its arms regulations through the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act, with the implementing rule effective from September 2024 and finalised in December 2025. Britain issued an Open General Licence in August 2024.

Australia legislated. The Defence Trade Controls Amendment Act 2024 created new offences, which commenced on 1 March 2025, governing the supply of controlled technology to foreign persons. The liability falls on Australian researchers, universities and firms dealing with anyone outside the three countries.

The benefit purchased with it is incomplete. A list of excluded technologies remains, and in mid-2026 the three governments recorded a commitment to narrow it, five years after the partnership was announced. Published analysis continues to describe progress under the second pillar as constrained by American export controls.

The register records the exchange rather than judging it. Australia changed its criminal law to obtain a licence-free environment that still excludes technologies, and no published document lists what remains excluded.

Read more: category RReferences[259] AUKUS announces its first Pillar II signature project Squire Patton Boggs, June 2026[258] AUKUS Pillar 2 (Advanced Capabilities): Background and Issues for Congress, R47599 Congressional Research Service, United States[224] AUKUS nuclear cooperation, IF11999 Congressional Research Service↑ Back to the boat

Complete discretion, not subject to direction by any person, with one exception. The civilian regulator and a Senate dissenting report both said the exception matters.

The government's position is accurate and the register states it first. The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator is an independent statutory body established under its own Act. Its Director-General is appointed by the Governor-General. Neither the Director-General nor the Deputy may be a member of the Australian Defence Force, and both sit outside the chain of command. Its published position is that it has complete discretion in performing its functions and is not subject to direction by any person in relation to their performance.

There is one exception to that sentence, and it is the Minister for Defence. The Act contains a ministerial direction power. A dissenting report of the Senate committee that examined the bill found that the power further blurs the independence of the new regulator, and records that the same concern was raised by the Australian Shipbuilding Federation of Unions.

Two further matters bear on the question. The regulator was formed from within Defence: the civilian regulator's own account is that the Department's Nuclear Powered Submarine Regulatory Design team now forms the new body. And the civilian regulator, while accepting the statutory protections, submitted that demonstration of operational independence could be further strengthened by a legislated advisory body, which the Act does not require.

The objection put in the dissenting report is the structural one. It leaves Defence as both the operator of the nuclear programme and, within the same portfolio, the regulator of it, without ongoing advice from an independent body.

The regulator issued its first substantive licence on 12 June 2026, to Australian Naval Infrastructure, for site preparation at Osborne.

Read more: category SReferences[324] Frequently asked questions, and Who we are Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator[326] Dissenting report on the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill Australian Greens, Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, May 2024[325] ARPANSA supports new naval nuclear power safety regulator Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, and ARPANSA's submission to the Senate inquiry into the Bill[327] ANNPSR: building a nuclear regulator from scratch The Modern Regulator, July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Lombok is 250 metres deep, Ombai-Wetar is 3,250. Both are Indonesian archipelagic waters. No published document assesses transit, detection, or the route if they close.

The boats are to be based at HMAS Stirling, on the Indian Ocean. Reaching the Pacific submerged means crossing the Indonesian archipelago, and the geography is narrow.

Sunda is not an option for a submerged boat of this size. Its eastern half is shallow and studded with sandbanks, with a controlling depth in places as low as twenty metres, and it carries tidal currents above five knots, submerged rocks, oil platforms and volcanic debris.

That leaves two. Lombok is sixty kilometres long, twenty kilometres wide at its narrowest and about 250 metres at its deepest, which published analysis describes as one of the few Indonesian passages deep enough for a submarine to transit fully submerged at operational depth without surfacing. Ombai and Wetar, near Timor, reach 3,250 metres, and their deep channels have long been described as an undetected access route for submarines between the two oceans and an important waterway for American defence interests.

Both lie in Indonesian archipelagic waters. Indonesia is developing a submarine detection system, and analysis records that publishing transit data alone would compromise covert deployment. The competition over that water is already physical: in 2026 an Indonesian fisherman recovered a Chinese-made underwater glider in the northern Lombok Strait, carrying sensors and a current profiler, which is equipment for mapping the conditions a submarine needs in order to hide.

What has never been published is any Australian assessment of it. Not whether a boat of more than 10,000 tonnes can transit either strait safely and repeatedly. Not what detection by a third party would mean for a mission. Not what the alternative passage is, or how long it takes, if either strait is closed to Australian submarines. And not what the fleet is for if the answer is that it cannot reliably reach the ocean it is said to operate in.

The register records at A-11 that Malaysia has already stated a position on submarine transit through its waters.

Read more: category AReferences[288] Lombok Strait: the deep-water back door to the Pacific GEOPOL, May 2026[289] Maritime highways of Southeast Asia: alternative straits? S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, RSIS Commentary CO12024[290] Sunda Strait: the volcano's gate GEOPOL, August 2026[285] Technology unravels strategy and the weakness of AUKUS Pearls and Irritations, June 2026[34] China's Malacca Dilemma, After the Hormuz Blockade Foreign Policy, May 2026↑ Back to the boat

A fleet of eight puts two or three to sea. The deterrent described is American, and Australia's part in it is a contribution.

A former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet sets out the structure. Under integrated deterrence Australia does not acquire enough of any one asset to deter independently, but a smaller number of several assets to contribute to an American-led coalition. Eight boats yielding two at sea is a useful contribution to a larger United States force. It is not a self-reliant deterrent.

A supporter of the programme, a former deputy secretary of Defence, separates the two claims that official language runs together. Submarines in the archipelagic chokepoints make projection of force against Australia, and any attempt to cut its sea lanes, prohibitively costly, and that is deterrence by denial working as the strategy intends. The contribution to deterring a move against Taiwan is a different and more modest claim: real, but marginal, and running through the United States fleet rather than through anything Australia does independently. His observation is that the official rhetoric sometimes elides the two.

The institute that supports the programme concedes the underlying point, acknowledging that opponents have with some justification questioned the suitability of these boats for a strategy of denial in the sea-air gap, and that the objection weakens only if denial is redefined as a coalition activity at the edges of the first island chain.

No published Australian document states which of the two tasks the fleet is bought for. If it is the defence of Australia, the number to examine is two boats at sea. If it is contribution to an American coalition, then the deterrence is American, and what Australia is buying is a place in someone else's force.

Read more: category AReferences[286] AUKUS at the watershed Marc Ablong, former Deputy Secretary, Australian Department of Defence, June 2026. Cited as a supporter of the programme distinguishing the claims made for it[287] What exactly is Australia's strategy of denial meant to do? ASPI The Strategist. Cited as an institute that supports the programme conceding the point[230] Australia's naval defence without AUKUS Pillar One Dr Michael Keating AC, former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance, and Employment and Industrial Relations, and eleven years on the Secretaries Committee on National Security including five as chairman; with Jon Stanford, former division head, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing, 3 September 2026[236] Australia needs nuclear submarines — but not AUKUS Dr Michael Keating AC and Jon Stanford, Pearls and Irritations, 14 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

No navy has reopened a closed sea lane. Three closed in three years. The plan is built on transiting two.

Defence treats the Indonesian passages as a route. Every published statement of what the submarines will do assumes they can reach the Pacific through Lombok or Ombai-Wetar when required.

The register's own entries say otherwise. A-2 records that no navy has reopened a closed sea lane, that three closed in three years, and that none was reopened by force. A-19 records that cheap systems denied the Black Sea to a far larger fleet. A-17 records that merchant shipping cannot be escorted through contested water.

Mining a strait is among the cheapest military acts available. Lombok is twenty kilometres across at its narrowest and about 250 metres deep. The Hormuz episodes demonstrated that the threat alone is sufficient: traffic reroutes, insurers withdraw, and the passage closes commercially before a hull is lost.

A closed strait is therefore the prudent planning assumption rather than the unlikely case. What is absent is any published Australian document that plans on it. Nothing states what the fleet does if the passages shut in the first week. Nothing states whether a boat on the wrong side waits, transits at risk, or takes the southern route around the continent, which roughly doubles the distance to the South China Sea. And nothing states whether the fleet's task in that event becomes holding the passages rather than using them.

The strategy is named for denial, which is the denial of a defined area to an adversary. The two deep passages are the areas through which force would have to move against Australia's approaches. No published document sets out what would be required to hold them, or explains why the plan is built on passing through them instead.

Read more: category AReferences[288] Lombok Strait: the deep-water back door to the Pacific GEOPOL, May 2026[289] Maritime highways of Southeast Asia: alternative straits? S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, RSIS Commentary CO12024[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

Twelve missiles a boat, a wharf being dredged to load them, and no stated policy on whose weapons, whose stocks or whose certification.

An in-service Virginia of the kind being transferred carries twelve Tomahawk missiles in vertical launch and about twenty-five weapons in the torpedo room. Tomahawk reaches about sixteen hundred kilometres. A boat that empties its tubes cannot reload at sea.

Something is being built for this. The Submarine Rotational Force-West priority works at Stirling include completing the required dredging at the Explosive Ordnance Loading Wharf, alongside the berthing upgrades for nuclear-powered submarines.

What has not been published is the arrangement the wharf serves. Whether American and British boats rotating from Stirling will draw on weapons held in Australia, or carry their own. Whether Australia will hold a stock for its own boats, where, and at what capacity. Who certifies the handling, under which framework, and which regulator licenses it. Whether an Australian boat could be rearmed without American release, given that the weapons and the combat system are American and under American export control.

None of those questions requires an operational answer. Each asks what policy exists, and no published document contains one.

Read more: category KReferences[24] HMAS Stirling and Submarine Rotational Force West Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, citing the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works report on Submarine Rotational Force-West priority works, June 2024[244] United States Virginia-class submarine USS Vermont maintenance in Australia Army Recognition, November 2025[121] USS Virginia returns after a 36,000-mile European deployment Army Recognition, August 2026, citing the Congressional Research Service↑ Back to the boat

Three since 2024. An American shipyard ran two, a British agency the third. Australians attended all of them.

At least three maintenance periods have now been conducted at HMAS Stirling. The first, on an American nuclear-powered submarine, took place in August 2024 and is recorded in the leaders' statement of that year. In late 2025 the Virginia-class USS Vermont undertook one directed by Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, bringing together American maintainers, British specialists and a cohort of Australian technicians. In February 2026 the Astute-class HMS Anson undertook the first such activity on a British boat in Australia, with about a hundred personnel from the Royal Navy, the United Kingdom Submarine Delivery Agency, the Royal Australian Navy and ASC, and two Australian officers embedded aboard.

The government describes such visits as practical training that tests infrastructure and systems. That is a fair description and the register records it.

It also records what the arrangement shows. Each was planned, directed and certified by the navy that owns the boat, with Australians present to learn. Nothing published states when, or by what standard, that direction passes to an Australian authority, or what Australia will be certified to do without supervision by 2032.

Read more: category FReferences[244] United States Virginia-class submarine USS Vermont maintenance in Australia Army Recognition, November 2025[245] Australia confirms enduring access for United States Virginia-class submarines at HMAS Stirling Army Recognition, August 2026[256] AUKUS enters new era with the arrival of UK submarine into Western Australia Australian Submarine Agency and Defence Ministers, February 2026[261] Joint Leaders Statement to mark the third anniversary of AUKUS Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, September 2024↑ Back to the boat

Maritime programmes take 41 per cent of future investment, more than Army, Air Force, space and cyber combined, and those budgets are locked for decades.

The 2026 Integrated Investment Program runs to about $425 billion over the decade, inside an annual defence budget of $62.6 billion rising past $100 billion by the mid-2030s.

Analysis of where it goes finds that the maritime programmes, being the submarines and the Hunter and Mogami frigates, take 41 per cent of the total future investment funding. That is a larger share than Army, Air Force, space and cyber capabilities combined, and those budgets are locked decades into the future.

The criticism is made by the institute that supports the programme. Its budget brief states that Pillar 1 has become its own funding centre of gravity and risks crowding out the connective capabilities needed to deliver an integrated force, and that the sustainment and operating reductions are buying a future force at a cost to the current one, a cost which should be acknowledged and bounded.

Published analysis sets out the mechanism. Once the submarine programme reaches annual figures of the order of $10 billion, additional funding required in a particular year is drawn from other projects, inflicting scope and schedule impacts on them.

The Army has already been scaled back in the reprioritisation toward Navy, including through LAND 400 Phase 3 and LAND 8113 Phase 2. The Air Force is retiring its C-27J Spartan transports on sustainment cost.

The register records elsewhere that the Review called for a maritime strategy and that the force structure did not follow. This entry records the arithmetic underneath that: one part of the plan is funded decades ahead, and the rest competes for what is left.

Read more: category AReferences[279] Australian defence business outlook 2026: growing budgets, harder markets Strategic Analysis Australia, September 2026[280] The cost of Defence: ASPI Defence budget brief 2026-2027 Australian Strategic Policy Institute, August 2026. Cited as an institute that supports the programme making the criticism[282] National Defence Strategy 2026: what's in, what's out and where to from here? Defence Connect, May 2026[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[336] Getting a clear view of the cloudy budget for Australia's nuclear submarine program Strategic Analysis Australia, updated after Senate estimates hearings on the Defence portfolio, 14 February 2024↑ Back to the boat

Of the $53 billion additional decade investment announced, about four cents in the dollar appears in the budget. The rest is intention.

The 2026 National Defence Strategy announced an additional $14 billion over four years and $53 billion over the decade, with cumulative defence expenditure of $887 billion and spending reaching 3 per cent of GDP by 2033 on the NATO methodology.

Analysis of the budget papers finds that of every dollar of that $53 billion, only about four cents is appropriated. The remaining 96 cents sits in forward estimates promises, decade out-year profiles, Contingency Reserve allocations and alternative financing intentions that the budget papers do not specify.

There is a precedent for what happens to money in that condition. The 2009 Defence White Paper carried roughly $48 billion of committed funding that was later abandoned.

The register does not assert that this money will not arrive. It records that it has not been appropriated, that the papers do not say where it comes from, and that the last plan of this shape lost a comparable sum without a decision being announced.

Read more: category RReferences[281] 2026 cost of Defence: the budget is a promise to the future paid for by the present ASPI The Strategist, May 2026[279] Australian defence business outlook 2026: growing budgets, harder markets Strategic Analysis Australia, September 2026[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

A purpose-built mothership for extra-large undersea drones is under construction in Shanghai. Australia's first second-hand submarine is due in 2032.

Satellite imagery analysed in September 2026 shows a vessel under construction at a Shanghai shipyard, designed to carry uncrewed undersea vehicles. It resembles a dock landing ship, with a well dock open at the bottom, a transport cradle lowered below the hull on twelve jack-up mechanisms, and a hangar forward. The assessment is that it can carry up to four extra-extra-large vehicles, or more of the smaller kind.

The vehicles exist. Two types have been observed in testing, at 35 and 45 metres, which is six to eight times the overall dimensions of the American Boeing Orca. The same assessment records that China is significantly outpacing any other country in this area.

The register records the sourcing plainly: this is commercial satellite imagery interpreted by naval analysts, not an official statement by any government.

Set against it are the dates recorded elsewhere in this register. The first second-hand Australian submarine is due in 2032, the first Australian-built boat in the early 2040s, and the fleet of eight in the 2050s. The mothership is being built now.

Read more: category AReferences[275] China builds large mothership for submarine drones Militarnyi, 15 September 2026, reporting satellite-imagery analysis by Naval News of commercial imagery[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

Some assessments put the oceans transparent by the 2050s. Others say that overstates it. No Australian document examines either.

The case that undersea stealth is ending is made by serious people. A former deputy secretary-general of NATO has said that the stealth of submarines will be difficult to sustain as sensing of all kinds becomes more ubiquitous. Chinese researchers have reported a drone-mounted quantum magnetometer as sensitive as the system NATO uses but far cheaper, and workable from a single unit, which is what permits deployment at scale. Distributed acoustic sensing can measure strain in the optical fibres of ordinary undersea cables, so that a single transoceanic cable becomes, in effect, an enormous underwater microphone. One assessment puts the oceans as transparent to sensors by the 2030s as the skies became to radar in the twentieth century.

The case against is also serious, and the register records it at the same length. To be cheap, an uncrewed vehicle must be small, which limits its sensor range whatever physics it uses; covering even a small area of ocean therefore requires very large numbers of them; and endurance is limited by batteries. One assessment concludes that quantum sensing will have little effect on ballistic missile submarines. Submarines are also improving, through pump-jets, hull coatings and signature management.

The register does not adjudicate. What it records is the collision of dates. The debate is about the 2030s to the 2050s. Australia's fleet of eight is complete in the 2050s, and the boats are designed for a 33-year life beyond that.

No published Australian document assesses what the undersea environment is expected to look like when the fleet is finished, or what would be done if the answer is the unfavourable one.

Read more: category AReferences[277] Is the stealth submarine era over? National Security Journal, December 2025[276] AI, drone ships and new sensors could leave submarines with few places to hide in the ocean The Conversation, October 2025[278] A stable nuclear future? The impact of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence Michael C. Horowitz and others, arXiv[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

The 2023 plan was two used boats and one new. In May 2026 the new boat was taken out and a third used one put in its place.

The Optimal Pathway announced in March 2023 named three Virginias from the early 2030s, with up to two more if needed. In November 2023 the United States submarine force commander specified two in-service boats in 2032 and 2035 and a newly built Block VII in 2038; the in-service boats were reported as Block IV. On 30 May 2026, at the Shangri-La Dialogue, the arrangement was revised. The option to buy two new boats in 2041 and 2044 if required was retained.

What the joint statement says is that the approach "would enable Australia to acquire three in-service VCS in lieu of a mixture of new and in-service VCS variants." It names no production block. Trade reporting adds that the three are to come from the same block, without identifying which.

The block has since been supplied by others rather than by government. An institute that supports the programme has written that the boats will be Block IV standard. A retired submarine force commander has analysed the transfer on a Block III baseline. Both are inferences, and they differ by roughly a decade of hull age.

In June 2026 the Minister for Defence Industry said the boats would be six or seven years old at delivery, with 25 to 27 years of life remaining, and that the first is a new submarine rolling off the production line in 2026. A retired submarine force commander has analysed the transfer on a Block III baseline, where a boat delivered in 2032 is about 17 years old. In October 2026 the first boat named for the rotational force was USS Colorado, a Block III commissioned in 2018, which is not for sale. No government has named the block or the hulls of the boats Australia is buying.

That is the hole. Australia has agreed to buy three second-hand submarines whose variant has not been stated, and the variant determines how much life each one has left.

The stated reason is simplification, and it is a real one: operating a single class avoids running four submarine types at once. The cost is measurable. The same institute puts a new-build boat at 33 years of service and an in-service transfer at closer to 23, so the third boat's service life ends around 2061 rather than around 2071. The programme's risk also moves from American production capacity, which is short, onto the remaining life of hulls not yet identified.

References[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026[123] Why Australia dropped new Virginia-class submarines for three used US Navy units Army Recognition, June 2026[124] Why is Australia buying used submarines? A naval expert answers key AUKUS questions The Conversation, July 2026[125] Here is when the US Navy plans to sell subs to Australia under AUKUS Defense News[271] Joint Statement, AUKUS Defence Ministers' Meeting, Singapore Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, 30 May 2026[369] First US submarine assigned to SRF-West Australian Submarine Agency, joint statement of the AUKUS defence ministers, 26 October 2026[370] AUKUS: USS Colorado announced as first submarine for SRF-West Naval News, 26 October 2026[268] Second-hand submarines: a sovereign flaw Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 3 June 2026[376] Pat Conroy reveals why Australia wanted three used US Virginia-class submarines under AUKUS The Nightly, 3 June 2026[377] Joint Leaders Statement on AUKUS President of the United States, Prime Minister of Australia and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 13 March 2023[378] US Navy sub boss reveals new details on AUKUS Virginia class sub sales to Australia Breaking Defense, 8 November 2023, reporting Vice Admiral Bill Houston, Commander, Submarine Forces, at the Naval Submarine League↑ Back to the boat

Thirty-three years of design life, an unstated amount of it gone on arrival, and no way to refuel the reactor.

A Virginia is designed for about 33 years and its reactor core lasts the life of the hull. It cannot be refuelled. When the core is exhausted the boat retires, whatever condition the rest of it is in.

The three boats arrive in 2032, 2035 and 2038. How much of their life is already gone depends on which hulls they are, and as recorded above the production block has not been stated. An institute supporting the programme estimates that an in-service transfer leaves closer to 23 years against the 33 of a new boat. On a Block III baseline the figure is lower again.

Whatever the number, the boats must serve until the Australian-built submarines arrive, the first in the early 2040s and the rest through the 2050s.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry put the practical consequence at a remaining life for the Australian navy of no more than fifteen to twenty years for each transferred boat.

Calendar age is also the wrong measure. Core life is counted in effective full power hours, so a boat that has been worked hard has less remaining than one of the same age that has not. Which hulls Australia receives, and how hard each has been run, has not been published.

Read more: The Island Castle §18References[125] Here is when the US Navy plans to sell subs to Australia under AUKUS Defense News[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026[124] Why is Australia buying used submarines? A naval expert answers key AUKUS questions The Conversation, July 2026[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026[271] Joint Statement, AUKUS Defence Ministers' Meeting, Singapore Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, 30 May 2026↑ Back to the boat

Two versions of the Virginia and a third, new British design, for a navy that has never operated a nuclear submarine.

The transferred boats are in-service Virginias of a block the government has not named. The option retained for 2041 and 2044 is for newly built boats, which would be a later block again. The five built at Osborne are SSN-AUKUS, a different design with a different reactor.

A retired Rear Admiral and former submarine force commander put the consequence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry: that mixing two versions of the Virginia class with a third, new United Kingdom design is unworkable logistically and impractical for Australia.

Each design carries its own reactor, spares, training pipeline, safety case and regulatory approval. Australia has operated none of them. The fleet those three designs are meant to produce is eight boats.

Read more: category NReferences[218] AUKUS SSN: a flawed plan heading for the wrong destination Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), former submariner and submarine force commander, Pearls and Irritations, February 2025; submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

The joint design is larger than both the Astute and the Virginia it draws from.

SSN-AUKUS is the larger of the designs it draws on. Defence has stated it will displace more than 10,000 tonnes, against about 7,900 for an in-service Virginia of the kind being transferred and roughly 7,400 for the Astute whose design it succeeds.

Neither its length nor its beam has been published, and the submarine agency's brief to Senate estimates did not state them.

Size sets the dock, the lift, the channel depth and the crew. Australia is building the infrastructure for a boat whose dimensions have not been made public.

References[37] Nuclear versus diesel-electric: the case for conventional submarines for the RAN Hans Ohff, former managing director of ASC, in ASPI The Strategist[38] Ask an expert: why are submarines so important? University of New South Wales↑ Back to the boat

Australia's northern approaches are shallow and confined. The boat is built for open ocean.

SSN-AUKUS will displace more than 10,000 tonnes, against about 7,900 for the in-service Virginias being transferred and roughly 7,400 for the Astute it succeeds. Its length and beam have not been published, as recorded at K-5.

The water it must cross to reach the Pacific is narrow and shallow. Submerged transit through the Indonesian archipelago is possible at two points, recorded at G-1: the Lombok Strait, about twenty kilometres wide at its narrowest and 250 metres at its deepest, and the Ombai and Wetar passages near Timor. Sunda is excluded for a boat of this size, with a controlling depth in places as low as twenty metres.

Australia's own northern approaches are shallower again. The Torres Strait and the Arafura and Timor seas are the water an adversary would move through, and they favour mines, uncrewed systems, sensors and smaller boats over a large ocean-going submarine.

The register records the consequence at T-2 rather than asserting it here: the attributes a nuclear attack submarine is bought for are transit speed and endurance at range, and those are not the attributes that decide whether a shallow chokepoint can be held.

Read more: The Island CastleReferences[37] Nuclear versus diesel-electric: the case for conventional submarines for the RAN Hans Ohff, former managing director of ASC, in ASPI The Strategist[38] Ask an expert: why are submarines so important? University of New South Wales[39] The deterrence advantage of nuclear-powered submarines in a contested Indo-Pacific Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia[300] International opportunities ASC Pty Ltd recruitment material[302] Rolls-Royce charts SSN-AUKUS reactor progress Janes, September 2025, reporting Rolls-Royce at DSEI[321] Inquiry into the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 and Transitional Provisions Bill Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Legislation Committee; bills referred 16 November 2023, final report tabled 13 May 2024↑ Back to the boat

Full strength is reached three decades after the threat that justified it was declared urgent.

The Review that justifies the programme named 2023 to 2025 as the period requiring urgent attention, and 2031 and beyond as its third and last. The submarines deliver nothing in the first two.

The arrival sequence runs from there. Three second-hand Virginias in 2032, 2035 and 2038. The first Australian-built boat in the early 2040s. The remaining four through the 2040s and 2050s, with the fleet of eight complete in the 2050s.

Thirty years separate the declaration of urgency from the capability it produced. No published document states what covers the interval, beyond the Collins extension recorded at Q-3 and the foreign rotations recorded at F-15.

References[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026[175] AUKUS security partnership House of Lords Library[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023↑ Back to the boat

The later boats are a first-of-class design that does not yet exist anywhere, and Australia is building its own in parallel rather than after.

SSN-AUKUS exists as a design under development. No hull has been laid. The United Kingdom's Defence Nuclear Enterprise annual update of September 2026 records that steel is to be cut on the first British boat in 2027.

Australia has committed to build five of them, at a yard still under construction, with a workforce still being recruited, to a design whose component selection is recorded at N-3 as still outstanding.

The register records elsewhere that the two first-of-class programmes run concurrently, so the usual protection of following a proven build does not apply.

Read more: category NReferences[156] SSN-AUKUS: a mature design, just with many defining things not settled Strategic Analysis Australia, August 2024[174] SSN AUKUS is at the back of the queue ASPI The Strategist, February 2024[273] AUKUS meets waterfront reality: the United Kingdom all in a mess, part 2 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, December 2025, quoting a retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral[304] Defence Nuclear Enterprise 2026 Annual Update to Parliament Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom, 15 September 2026, as reported by Naval Technology↑ Back to the boat

The two first-of-class programmes run concurrently. A fault found at Barrow lands on a hull already being built at Osborne.

Australia is often described as the second customer of a first-of-class design. It is not. Construction of the first British boat begins at Barrow in the late 2020s and the first Australian boat at Osborne on a similar timescale.

That removes the benefit usually attached to following. A second customer waits, watches the lead ship's trials, and incorporates what is learned. Australia will be cutting steel on its own hulls while the first British boat is still being built, and taking delivery of British-made reactor plants and components throughout.

The exposure is therefore to the faults rather than to the lessons. A design or fabrication problem found at Barrow in the 2030s arrives at a yard that has already committed structure, and at a programme with no schedule margin, as recorded in the entry above.

References[174] SSN AUKUS is at the back of the queue ASPI The Strategist, February 2024[188] Building SSN-AUKUS: Australia's nuclear submarine yard at Osborne Navy Lookout, February 2026[156] SSN-AUKUS: a mature design, just with many defining things not settled Strategic Analysis Australia, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

A nuclear submarine needs a larger, differently trained crew than Australia has ever manned.

A Virginia carries about 135 crew, against roughly 58 on a Collins. The submarine service must grow from about 800 people to around 3,000, and every one of them qualified on a nuclear plant.

The complication is that three classes will overlap: the extended Collins, the transferred Virginias, and SSN-AUKUS. Each has its own plant, its own qualification pipeline and its own sea-time requirement.

Training is running, and the register records that personnel equivalent to three Collins crews have passed through the Virginia pipeline. What has not been published is the plan for crewing three classes at once.

Read more: category PReferences[235] Five years on, AUKUS has endured through extraordinary political change Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Professor, University of Western Australia Defence and Security Institute, and Non-Resident Fellow, Lowy Institute; Australian Financial Review, 15 September 2026[189] Why Australia's AUKUS plans could be derailed by worker shortages The Canberra Times, December 2025↑ Back to the boat

The weapons, the launch tubes and the combat system are American, and cannot be changed without American approval.

The submarines are Australian-owned. What they fight with is not.

The Virginia class carries American torpedoes, American Tomahawk, and the American AN/BYG-1 combat system. SSN-AUKUS takes American vertical launch tubes and a combat system evolved from the same AN/BYG-1, developed under a four-company teaming arrangement agreed in November 2025. All of it sits under United States export control.

The consequence is recorded rather than asserted. Australia cannot alter the weapons a boat carries, integrate a weapon of its own or of a third country, or modify the combat system, without American approval. No published document sets out what Australia may change unilaterally, or the process for seeking agreement to change anything else.

Read more: category FReferences[176] Confirmation that next generation Royal Navy attack submarines are to have vertical launch tubes Navy Lookout, March 2026[177] SSN-AUKUS: Australia announces infrastructure work at Osborne and a first long lead order Future Warfare Magazine, March 2026[224] AUKUS nuclear cooperation, IF11999 Congressional Research Service↑ Back to the boat

Two or three boats at sea, twelve missiles apiece on the earlier blocks, and a return to port to reload.

The submarines carry three things that matter: torpedoes, cruise missiles and the ability to watch without being seen. The third is real and is not in question here. The second is what the strike case rests on, and it can be counted.

The in-service blocks carry twelve vertically launched Tomahawks, through two payload tubes of six, with about twenty-five weapons in the torpedo room. The stretched Block V and VI, with the Virginia Payload Module, carry forty. Australia is receiving in-service boats, not the later blocks. The revision of May 2026 removed the one new-build boat from the plan, and with it the possibility of the larger magazine. Tomahawk reaches about fifteen hundred kilometres.

Set that against the availability arithmetic. Two or three Australian boats at sea is between twenty-four and thirty-six cruise missiles in the water at any time. A submarine that empties its tubes cannot reload at sea; it must reach a port or a tender, and from the South China Sea that is a transit of thousands of kilometres each way.

No published document states what target set those missiles are meant to hold at risk, or how many salvoes the strategy assumes.

Read more: category GReferences[119] Virginia class SSN Submarine Industrial Base Council[120] Stretched Virginia class recategorised as guided missile submarines The War Zone, August 2026[121] USS Virginia returns after a 36,000-mile European deployment Army Recognition, August 2026, citing the Congressional Research Service[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

A former submarine force commander puts the sustainable minimum at twelve boats to keep four deployable. The plan is eight.

The arithmetic of availability is recorded above. The separate question is whether eight is enough to run a force at all.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry from a retired Rear Admiral and former commander of Australia's submarine force states that a fleet of eight is below critical mass for generating the experienced personnel needed to oversee its operation, and inadequate for a country whose responsibilities run across the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans. His figure for a sustainable force able to keep up to four boats deployable is twelve.

The same evidence holds that Australia will find eight large boats too expensive in manpower and funds to operate, before any question of twelve arises.

No published Australian document states the number of boats required to sustain a nuclear submarine force, as distinct from the number to be acquired.

Read more: category AReferences[218] AUKUS SSN: a flawed plan heading for the wrong destination Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), former submariner and submarine force commander, Pearls and Irritations, February 2025; submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026↑ Back to the boat

The transferred boats cannot be refuelled. They retire on a schedule set by their cores, and the Australian-built replacements must arrive before it.

The reactor in a Virginia lasts the life of the hull and cannot be refuelled. That fixes when each boat stops, regardless of the condition of anything else aboard.

A retired Rear Admiral and former commander of Australia's submarine force sets out the consequence for a second-hand fleet: the boats retire systematically between 2047 and 2053, which imposes a rigid and non-negotiable deadline on the domestic replacement programme.

The first Australian-built SSN-AUKUS is due in the early 2040s and the fleet of eight in the 2050s. The two schedules therefore cross somewhere in that window, and the margin depends on Britain delivering a mature, debugged design against the industrial backlogs at Barrow.

The same assessment records the standard a buyer should apply: a conservative safety margin of at least ten years of remaining reactor life at the time of sale. The stated basis for the AUKUS transfers is boats in date for maintenance with fifteen years remaining, which the same author judges ever more unlikely as the American fleet tightens.

No published Australian document states what happens to the fleet if the replacement arrives after the bridge ends.

Read more: category NReferences[268] Second-hand submarines: a sovereign flaw Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, June 2026[269] The US shipyard crisis sinking AUKUS Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, July 2026[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026↑ Back to the boat

Collins carries about 56. A Virginia carries 132. More sailors are entering the nuclear pipeline than the Collins pipeline, six years before the first boat.

A Collins-class submarine carries a complement of about 56 sailors and officers, and six boats therefore require in the order of 336 sea billets. Published assessment records that the Navy has always struggled to fill those ranks, and that Collins availability problems were compounded by retention and recruitment difficulties such that even when a submarine was available, the Navy may not have had a complete crew to operate it.

A Virginia-class submarine carries 132. Eight nuclear-powered boats therefore require in the order of 1,050 sea billets, before instructors, shore staff, and the margin needed to cover leave, injury and attrition. That is roughly three times a requirement the Navy has not consistently met at its current size.

The transition is already visible in the numbers. Six or more years before Australia receives its first nuclear submarine, the Chief of Navy has stated that more sailors are entering the nuclear submarine pipeline than the Collins pipeline. Published analysis draws the consequence: the need to siphon personnel into the nuclear pipeline means the retention difficulties of the Collins era could return to the Collins class itself.

That matters because of what Collins is for in this plan. The register records at Q-8 that the machinery replacement for the life-of-type extension was cancelled in May 2026 after the engines had been bought, and at K-15 that the transferred boats retire between 2047 and 2053. Collins is the bridge. Its crews are being recruited away from it to build the thing it is bridging to.

No Australian document states the total crewing requirement for a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines, the number of qualified submariners available today, or the trajectory between them. The register records at M-2 that no equivalent figure has been published for the industrial workforce either.

Read more: category PReferences[359] AUKUS submarines: United States and United Kingdom partners show the realities facing Australia's small fleet Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia, March 2026[360] Indecision and delays leave the Australian submarine force at risk of a decade-plus capability gap Andrew McLaughlin, PS News and Riotact[240] South Australia to deliver nuclear-powered submarine build Minister for Defence Industry, March 2023[190] Critical worker shortage menaces nuclear-powered submarine workforce Defence Connect, May 2024, reporting the nuclear-powered submarine taskforce's civilian nuclear workforce study↑ Back to the boat

Design authority, forging, core assembly, testing and certification. Australia has none of the five.

A description of the British programme sets out what sovereignty in naval nuclear propulsion consists of. Rolls-Royce Submarines Limited is the design authority for the Royal Navy's reactor plants. It operates two nuclear licensed sites at Raynesway in Derby: the Neptune reactor, which is a testbed, and the Nuclear Fuel Production Plant, which handles the highly enriched uranium and assembles the core that goes into the pressure vessel. Britain can forge, assemble and test its own cores, which the same account describes as a rare capability that very few nations possess. Its conclusion is that United Kingdom sovereignty lies in the integration and the authority: the ability to put it all together and certify it as safe without needing a United States official to turn the key.

Australia will hold none of those five. The design authority is Rolls-Royce. The forging is at Raynesway. The core assembly is at the Nuclear Fuel Production Plant. The testing is at Neptune. The certification of the plant as safe is not an Australian act.

The register records at F-3 that Australia is forbidden by treaty from making or reprocessing the fuel, at F-4 that the sealed core cannot be serviced here, and at N-5 that the unit arrives welded shut.

The consequence is that the word sovereign is doing different work in each country. In Britain it means the ability to build and certify the plant without another government's approval. In Australia it means owning and crewing a sealed unit that another country designed, forged, fuelled, assembled, tested and certified.

Read more: category FReferences[303] The evolution of United Kingdom nuclear submarine reactors and Rolls-Royce's central role Navy Lookout, April 2026[221] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, treaty text Tabled in the Australian Parliament 12 August 2024; entered into force 17 January 2025[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

One unit every eighteen months from the mid-2030s. Four Dreadnoughts, the last Astute and up to twelve British boats are in front. Which boats are Australian is not decided.

Every reactor for every Australian submarine will be made at one site, by one company. Rolls-Royce plans to begin delivering SSN-AUKUS reactors in the mid-2030s at intervals of eighteen months, reducing to twelve months in the late 2030s. Raynesway is doubling in size to support that rate, with financial support from Australia.

The work in front of those deliveries is substantial. The company is simultaneously building reactors for four Dreadnought ballistic missile submarines, which carry the British deterrent, and completing the last of the Astute class. Behind those sit up to twelve British SSN-AUKUS boats and then Australia's five. At one unit every eighteen months, twelve boats alone occupy eighteen years.

What has not been decided is the order. Component production has begun on the second boat, and major materials for the sixth and seventh have been released into the supply chain. The manufacturer's own position, stated in 2025, is that the build order of boats for the United Kingdom and Australia is yet to be confirmed. Australia placed its first direct order for long-lead reactor components in February 2026, covering its first two submarines.

The register records at N-7 that Australia's construction timeline depends on reactor plants arriving from Britain on schedule. This entry records the narrower fact: the schedule depends on a queue position that has not been allocated, at a single site, for a programme where the customer ahead of Australia is the government that owns the factory's only other customer.

Read more: category NReferences[301] Update: SSN-AUKUS nuclear reactors well in production Naval Technology, April 2026, reporting Rolls-Royce Submarines at a defence conference[302] Rolls-Royce charts SSN-AUKUS reactor progress Janes, September 2025, reporting Rolls-Royce at DSEI[304] Defence Nuclear Enterprise 2026 Annual Update to Parliament Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom, 15 September 2026, as reported by Naval Technology[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

PWR2 was designed for Vanguard and forced Astute to become a new class. PWR3 was designed for Dreadnought at 17,200 tonnes and goes into a boat of 10,000.

Astute was specified as a low-risk improvement on the Trafalgar class, with costs controlled by reusing the Trafalgar propulsor, gearbox and steam turbines. The PWR2 reactor, then in production for the Vanguard ballistic missile submarines, had to be incorporated.

The consequence is recorded in the programme history. On commencing detailed design, the size of the PWR2 was found to require a much larger boat in beam and length, together with significantly improved acoustic quieting, and the Ministry and the contractor reached a new understanding that this would be an entirely new class, far more complex than originally envisioned. A modest upgrade became a clean-sheet submarine.

The mismatch then appeared where it had been created. Published assessment of the programme names the most serious issue as the mismatch between the powerful PWR2 reactor and the steam turbines and gearbox derived from Trafalgar. HMS Astute was unable to reach its intended top speed of 29 knots, which left it unable to match the carriers it was built to escort.

A second and separate failure ran alongside it. A Ministry memorandum obtained by a newspaper attributed corrosion across the class to cost-cutting and ignored quality controls. A cap required to meet the highest quality standard was made from substandard metal, corroded, and allowed a seawater pipe to the reactor to leak, forcing an emergency surfacing. A lead-lined jacket around the reactor core was fitted with substandard metal, creating a risk of false readings in the instruments monitoring the reactor. Neither of those follows from the reactor choice.

The pattern is what matters here. PWR3 was developed for the Dreadnought class, which displaces 17,200 tonnes. SSN-AUKUS displaces more than 10,000. The register records at K-5 that neither its length nor its beam has been published, and at L-4 that the differences between PWR3 and the PWR3+ variant fitted to it have not been published either.

Read more: category NReferences[305] The Royal Navy's Astute class submarines, part 1: development and delivery Navy Lookout, October 2025[306] Astute class submarine programme history, citing RAND Corporation analysis RAND Corporation study of the United Kingdom submarine industrial base, as recorded in the published programme history[307] Design and construction failures afflict HMS Astute Nuclear Information Service, citing a confidential Ministry of Defence memorandum obtained by The Guardian[273] AUKUS meets waterfront reality: the United Kingdom all in a mess, part 2 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, December 2025, quoting a retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral↑ Back to the boat

SSN-AUKUS uses PWR3+. What distinguishes it from PWR3 has not been stated, in a boat whose dimensions have not been stated either.

The reactor for SSN-AUKUS is described as PWR3+, an enhanced version of the Dreadnought plant, arrived at by what the manufacturer calls spiral development from the original design.

What the enhancement consists of has not been published. No output figure, no dimensions, no statement of what differs from the plant it derives from, and no statement of whether the difference is in power, in safety systems, in manufacturing method or in all three. The critical design review was reached at the end of 2025 and is described as creating a clear design baseline, which has not been published either.

That sits alongside the absence recorded at K-5, where neither the length nor the beam of the submarine has been stated. Australia is building the docks, the lift, the channel depth and the handling facilities for a boat of undisclosed dimensions carrying a reactor variant of undisclosed difference.

Read more: category KReferences[301] Update: SSN-AUKUS nuclear reactors well in production Naval Technology, April 2026, reporting Rolls-Royce Submarines at a defence conference[303] The evolution of United Kingdom nuclear submarine reactors and Rolls-Royce's central role Navy Lookout, April 2026↑ Back to the boat

Turbo-electric removes the gearbox that crippled Astute. It is also the arrangement the Americans abandoned on speed grounds, and France will not use alone at high speed.

The Astute drivetrain is mechanical. Two turbines feed a reduction gearbox, a single shaft and a pump-jet, and the gearbox and turbines were inherited from Trafalgar. That is where the mismatch recorded at L-3 occurred.

SSN-AUKUS is reported to use turbo-electric propulsion. The turbines drive generators and electric motors turn the shaft, so there is no main reduction gearbox and the Astute failure cannot repeat in the same form. The register records that, because it is the programme correcting the previous one.

The arrangement has a history. The United States built two turbo-electric attack submarines, Tullibee in 1960 and Glenard P. Lipscomb in 1975, the latter a one-off using the standard reactor and a similar turbine but a generator and motor in place of the double-reduction gearing. When the Navy considered electric drive for surface warships in the early 1990s it dropped the idea, in the words of a professional journal, partly because it had been given an object lesson in the problems of the arrangement in the form of Lipscomb. France, the most experienced user, does not rely on it alone: the Barracuda class is a hybrid, using electric propulsion for economical cruise and turbo-mechanical propulsion for higher speeds. The United States is returning to electric drive on the Columbia class, which is a ballistic missile submarine rather than an attack boat.

The American comparison extends to how it is proved. All prototype components of the Columbia electric drive completed full power endurance testing at the Navy's land-based test facility in 2020, and operational testing continued from there. The British equivalent, a new submarine propulsion testing facility at Barrow known as SMITE2, reached completed concept design in early 2026. Steel is cut on the first boat in 2027.

No design speed for SSN-AUKUS has been published by either government. The register draws no conclusion about what the speed will be. It records that the boat is bought for transit speed and persistence at range, as recorded at T-2, that the class it replaces cannot reach its own design speed of 29 knots, and that the figure measuring the first of those attributes has not been stated.

Read more: category NReferences[309] World naval developments: Navy commits to electric drive United States Naval Institute Proceedings, April 2000[310] Leonardo DRS ships first production main propulsion motor for the Columbia-class submarine Leonardo DRS, August 2022[311] SSN Barracuda nuclear-powered attack submarine Naval Technology project profile, France[178] United Kingdom begins SSN-AUKUS nuclear submarine production Army Recognition, 2025, reporting Babcock International preliminary results[304] Defence Nuclear Enterprise 2026 Annual Update to Parliament Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom, 15 September 2026, as reported by Naval Technology[308] SSN Astute class nuclear submarines: propulsion and machinery Naval Technology project profile↑ Back to the boat

An assessment by a retired submarine force commander puts the margin at five to six hours for low-enriched fuel and describes the highly enriched case as narrow and unforgiving.

The reactors Australia is buying use uranium enriched to about 93 per cent, and each holds between 200 and 500 kilograms of it. The register records the proliferation and disposal consequences at C-5 and O-2. This entry records an operational one.

In a loss-of-cooling event, the time available to restore cooling before damage begins is a design characteristic, and it differs by fuel and core design. A retired commander of Australia's submarine force, assessing the two pathways, describes the low-enriched alternative as securing forgiving safety margins of five to six hours, and the highly enriched case as accepting unforgiving, narrow margins during reactor testing.

The register does not adopt his recommended alternative, which is a policy proposal. What it records is the variable. The response time available in an accident determines what the shore establishment must be able to do, and how quickly: the power supply that must not fail, the cooling that must not stop, the crew that must be present, and the distance an emergency service can be from the berth.

No published Australian document states that figure for the reactors Australia is acquiring. The register records at P-16 that the state emergency arrangements provide for iodine tablets, sheltering or evacuation, and at P-6 that the population nearest the base is five kilometres from the wharf. None of those arrangements can be assessed without knowing how long they have.

Read more: category PReferences[364] AUKUS infrastructure, part 5: the highly enriched uranium problem Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 1 August 2026[225] Evidence of the Hon. Linda Reynolds CSC to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Brigadier (Ret'd); Minister for Defence 2019-2021; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026[174] SSN AUKUS is at the back of the queue ASPI The Strategist, February 2024↑ Back to the boat

Master planning, site characterisation, dry dock design, the yard joint venture and the combat system are all led by American or British companies.

The counter-case is real and the register records it first. The Defence Industry Vendor Qualification Program has put Australian firms into United States Navy supply chains, with the first contracts, to HIFraser, Mack Valves, Bale Defence and STAUFF, covering the manufacture of sample standard Navy valves. Australian firms hold places on the approved vendor lists of both American submarine primes, which gives them access to work outside the SSN-AUKUS scope, including Virginia and Columbia programmes. By April 2024 Australia had received about $1.6 billion in United States defence contracts in the AUKUS context.

The design of the Australian facilities is another matter. Master planning of the Henderson precinct is led by Bechtel. Site characterisation across Cockburn Sound is by AECOM. The preliminary design of the contingency dry dock was awarded to Leidos Gibbs and Cox. The Osborne yard is a joint venture between ASC and BAE Systems. The combat system is being developed by BAE Systems, Raytheon, General Dynamics Mission Systems and Thales.

The financing runs in both directions. Export Finance Australia has extended a loan facility to help build a new assembly facility, waterfront improvements and a ship lift at Austal's yard in Mobile, Alabama. The announcement describes this as complementing Australia's investments into the sovereign industrial bases of AUKUS partners.

The plainest statements of the arrangement come from the two partner governments. The United States trade promotion service records that Australia is spending more than $200 billion on defence acquisition to 2030 and is delivering major opportunities for United States industry, and that Australia is arguably the second largest American defence customer of the past five years. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, announcing the selection of BAE Systems to build Australia's boats, said the partnership could be worth billions of pounds in a major boost to the United Kingdom's defence industry, that thousands of jobs would be created across Britain, and that opportunities through the supply chain for British industry could be worth billions across the life of the Australian submarine programme.

Read more: category RReferences[291] Australia defense market developments International Trade Administration, United States Department of Commerce[292] Albanese Government support for Austal's United States expansion Minister for Defence Industry and Minister for Trade and Tourism, 27 June 2025[293] First AUKUS Defence Industry Vendor Qualification contracts awarded to Australian businesses Minister for Defence Industry, December 2024[170] Statement on new AUKUS contract award for Electric Boat Congressman Joe Courtney, April 2026[297] United Kingdom firm appointed to build Australian AUKUS submarines Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom, March 2024↑ Back to the boat

Twenty thousand jobs are claimed. What proportion of a submarine is made in Australia, and under what terms, has never been stated.

The programme is described as building an Australian industrial capability, and the employment figures are published: about 20,000 workers over thirty years, a peak industrial workforce of up to 8,500, and 4,000 to 5,500 shipyard jobs at the peak of construction.

Four things about that work have not been published.

There is no stated Australian industry content requirement for the submarines, expressed as a percentage of value, weight or components, and no published figure for what proportion of a boat built at Osborne will be manufactured here rather than imported and assembled. The register records at N-5 and N-7 that the reactor plants and major components come from Derby and Barrow, and at K-12 that the weapons and combat system are American.

There is no published statement of the terms on which the jobs are created: whether the workforce is directly employed, contracted through the primes, or engaged through labour hire, and what wage and conditions floor applies.

There is no published plan for imported expertise. The taskforce's own study found many of the required roles in national shortage, and the register records at P-8 that the state hosting the construction yard has the smallest relevant feeder workforce in the country. Nothing states how many of the 20,000 are expected to be recruited from overseas, on what visas, or for how long.

And there is no published measure by which any of it would be assessed. No document states what proportion of the expenditure is expected to be captured in Australia, or what would follow if the proportion turned out to be low.

Read more: category PReferences[293] First AUKUS Defence Industry Vendor Qualification contracts awarded to Australian businesses Minister for Defence Industry, December 2024[189] Why Australia's AUKUS plans could be derailed by worker shortages The Canberra Times, December 2025[190] Critical worker shortage menaces nuclear-powered submarine workforce Defence Connect, May 2024, reporting the nuclear-powered submarine taskforce's civilian nuclear workforce study[191] Nuclear submarine capability requires a new skills training workforce Asia Pacific Defence Reporter↑ Back to the boat

The Hunter class carries a contractual minimum and a published plan. The submarine programme, five times the cost, states no figure.

Australian Industry Capability is an established Defence programme with published requirements. Its stated purposes include influencing foreign prime contractors and original equipment manufacturers, and facilitating the transfer of technology and access to intellectual property rights.

The Hunter class frigates show what that looks like applied. The programme will achieve a minimum of 58 per cent Australian industry content over the life of the acquisition contract. The builder expects 65 to 70 per cent for the build itself. An Australian Industry Capability Public Plan is published on the Defence website, setting out the road map through design, prototyping, construction and sustainment, and requiring content plans from tier one manufacturers.

The comparison is close. The frigates are built at Osborne, by ASC, under a British prime, on a British design modified for Australia. The submarines are built at Osborne, by ASC, under the same British prime, on a British design modified for Australia.

The submarine programme has no equivalent. The submarine agency's industry strategy, published in 2025, describes opportunities, gives an indicative view of demand over time, and states that additional detail will be made available to industry as design and planning work evolves in the coming months and years. It states no percentage, sets no floor, and imposes no requirement.

The frigate programme is costed at about $45 billion. The submarine programme is costed at $268 to $368 billion. The smaller programme has a contractual content minimum and a published plan; the larger one has neither.

Read more: category RReferences[294] Hunter Class Frigate Program engagement with Australian industry grows Minister for Defence Industry and Minister for Defence, October 2020[295] Hunter Class Frigate Program — ASC Shipbuilding — Australian Industry Capability Public Plan Department of Defence, published on defence.gov.au[296] Australia's AUKUS Submarine Industry Strategy Australian Submarine Agency, March 2025[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

The United Kingdom Defence Committee recommends an AUKUS visa. Australia's trades shortfall is put at 110,000. The academy opens in 2028.

The government's position is recorded first. An AUKUS Submarine Workforce and Industry Strategy has been commenced, with the stated aim of attracting, recruiting, developing, qualifying and retaining the workforce, worked through with states, industry, unions and training institutions. A Skills and Training Academy is being built beside the Osborne yard, funded at $480 million and opening in 2028, and a $200 million training centre is planned at Stirling. About 20,000 direct jobs are projected over thirty years.

The difficulty is the kind of worker required and the time it takes to make one. An assessment by a retired submarine force commander states that building a nuclear submarine is not an entry-level endeavour and demands a high proportion of master-level trades with decades of precision manufacturing experience. The register records at P-8 that qualifying a welder for nuclear submarine work takes at least ten years, and that the taskforce's own study found the state hosting the construction yard has the smallest relevant feeder workforce in the country.

The shortfall is national. Published analysis puts Australia's shortage at about 110,000 skilled trades workers, with Osborne and Henderson competing for the same finite pool as the resources, infrastructure and energy sectors, in two states already at historically low unemployment. One assessment states plainly that there is no surplus workforce waiting to be mobilised.

Two statements bear on where the people are expected to come from. The United Kingdom Defence Committee, reporting in April 2026, recommended that the three governments design a dedicated AUKUS visa with pre-approved security clearances and mutual recognition of qualifications, on the finding that existing immigration channels are too slow to support joint construction and maintenance. And the Premier of the state building the submarines told a defence conference in 2026 that AUKUS is housing policy, education and skills policy, and migration policy.

The recruitment already runs the other way as well. The builder's international programme requires applicants to be Australian citizens, hold a defence security clearance, and be willing to live and train in Hawaii for between one and three years before returning to Henderson.

What has not been published is the number. No document states how many of the 20,000 are expected to be recruited from overseas, on what visa, for how long, or what proportion of the workforce is expected to be Australian at any point in the programme.

Read more: category PReferences[298] An AUKUS visa could ease submarine skills shortages Cherie Wright and Penny Harris, ASPI The Strategist, February 2026[299] AUKUS Pillar One will be won or lost on workforce Raelene Lockhorst, Deputy Director of National Security Programs, ASPI The Strategist, July 2026[194] AUKUS infrastructure, part 4: Australia's dual-site labour trap Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, August 2026[300] International opportunities ASC Pty Ltd recruitment material[3] AUKUS, First Report of Session 2025-26, HC 841 House of Commons Defence Committee, United Kingdom Parliament, 28 April 2026[189] Why Australia's AUKUS plans could be derailed by worker shortages The Canberra Times, December 2025↑ Back to the boat

Construction is in Adelaide, maintenance in Perth, and the qualified workforce cannot move between them. Groton reassigns people between halls and docks in a day.

The two yards do different work and are 2,600 kilometres apart. Osborne in South Australia is the sole nuclear construction yard. Henderson in Western Australia is to carry heavy depot maintenance, emergency docking and operational support.

A mature naval shipyard treats those as one labour pool. At General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, shipbuilders and specialised engineers are reassigned between new construction halls and repair dry docks during surge periods, because the yard holds both functions on one site.

Australia has separated them by a continent. A retired submarine force commander sets out the consequence: a high-pressure pipe welder, a system integrator or a nuclear quality-assurance technician certified at Osborne cannot easily assist with an emergency docking or a heavy overhaul at Henderson without interstate relocation. The certification is site-specific, the housing is elsewhere, and the person has a family.

The two states are also drawing from the same shortage. Both face severe demographic constraints and acute trade shortages, and both compete with high-paying commercial resource sectors, which at Henderson means mining, liquefied natural gas and offshore resources directly.

The same assessment records the concentration risk on the other side: placing all domestic nuclear fabrication capital in Adelaide is single-site exposure, with no subassembly work distributed to other industrial centres.

Its conclusion is the entry. Without a distributed national build strategy or a realignment of maintenance expectations, the dual-site workforce plan risks becoming the primary single-point failure of Pillar 1.

The register records at M-4 that no figure has been published for how many of the workforce are expected to come from overseas, and at K-16 that the crewing requirement has not been published either.

Read more: category PReferences[363] AUKUS infrastructure, part 4: Australia's dual-site labour trap Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[312] Australia to get nuclear-powered submarines, will scrap $90b program to build French-designed subs ABC News, 16 September 2021[190] Critical worker shortage menaces nuclear-powered submarine workforce Defence Connect, May 2024, reporting the nuclear-powered submarine taskforce's civilian nuclear workforce study↑ Back to the boat

Britain proved every previous naval reactor at a land-based prototype. It elected not to build one for this design.

SSN-AUKUS is to be powered by the Rolls-Royce PWR3, manufactured at Raynesway in Derby, where the plant is roughly doubling in size. The United Kingdom chose not to construct a land-based prototype for it, relying instead on computer simulation. Every previous British naval reactor design was proved at a shore facility before going to sea.

Australia has no capacity to manufacture naval reactor cores or primary steam plant machinery, and no shore test facility of its own.

The consequence falls at Osborne. A generic design or fabrication flaw that appears at initial criticality in an Australian-built hull has no established land-based site against which to diagnose or correct it. The first time this reactor design operates outside simulation is inside a submarine.

Read more: category LReferences[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[156] SSN-AUKUS: a mature design, just with many defining things not settled Strategic Analysis Australia, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

Both countries begin construction in the late 2020s. Australia will not have the benefit of Britain's first-of-class lessons.

The arrangement is often described as Australia following Britain. It is not. Construction of the first British boat begins at Barrow in the late 2020s, and construction of the first Australian boat at Osborne on a similar timescale, taking longer and delivering in the early 2040s. An assessment by the institute that supports the programme states plainly that Australia is unlikely to benefit from the lessons learnt in the United Kingdom's construction of the first boat, because the two builds run in parallel.

A former Minister for Foreign Affairs, himself a South Australian, has described building nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide as a fairytale in 2023 and, in June 2026, as a mirage which is just not going to happen. He entered government with the party that signed the arrangement.

The British yard is also carrying three programmes at once. BAE Systems at Barrow must complete the Astute class, build four Dreadnought ballistic missile submarines, which are the higher priority and are urgently required to relieve the ageing Vanguards, and begin SSN-AUKUS. Britain's most recent attack submarine took about twelve years from keel to commissioning. The programme assumes a delivery cadence far faster than that.

Read more: category KReferences[174] SSN AUKUS is at the back of the queue ASPI The Strategist, February 2024[175] AUKUS security partnership House of Lords Library[217] Alexander Downer on building nuclear submarines in Adelaide Former Minister for Foreign Affairs, quoted in The Australian, 6 June 2026, and in evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry↑ Back to the boat

No government has stated how many launch tubes the boat carries, and component selection remains outstanding.

Detailed design and long-lead activity began in March 2023. The date has now been stated to Parliament. The United Kingdom's Defence Nuclear Enterprise annual update of 15 September 2026 records that on current plans steel will be cut on the first British boat in 2027, with contracts worth four billion pounds already placed. An earlier review of the programme had reported the construction commencement target slipping from 2028-29 to the early 2030s, and the House of Commons Defence Committee found in April 2026 that investment in upgrading the Barrow yard had already slipped. The register takes the report to Parliament as the current position and records the earlier assessment alongside it. Published descriptions of the armament, six torpedo tubes and three payload bays of seven vertical launch tubes each, are derived from concept illustrations and analysis rather than official documentation.

No government has confirmed the number of tubes or launchers. Analysis by a defence research body records that the selection of many components still appears outstanding, and that a design with such matters unresolved is not mature. Neither the United Kingdom nor Australia has published the length or beam of the submarine, and the submarine agency's brief to Senate estimates was silent on its dimensions.

Australia has committed to build five of them.

Read more: category QReferences[178] United Kingdom begins SSN-AUKUS nuclear submarine production Army Recognition, 2025, reporting Babcock International preliminary results[156] SSN-AUKUS: a mature design, just with many defining things not settled Strategic Analysis Australia, August 2024[155] Submarine agency chief: Australia's SSNs will be bigger, better, faster ASPI The Strategist, May 2024[273] AUKUS meets waterfront reality: the United Kingdom all in a mess, part 2 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, December 2025, quoting a retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral[3] AUKUS, First Report of Session 2025-26, HC 841 House of Commons Defence Committee, United Kingdom Parliament, 28 April 2026[304] Defence Nuclear Enterprise 2026 Annual Update to Parliament Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom, 15 September 2026, as reported by Naval Technology↑ Back to the boat

The launch tubes, the weapons and part of the combat system are American, approved through foreign military sales and integrated by four companies.

The design is British-led, and the United Kingdom holds design approval. The systems that make it a warship are not all British.

In March 2026 the United States approved a foreign military sales package of about $1.5 billion covering AUKUS-specific vertical deployment tubes, common weapon launchers, technical assistance and embedded personnel. The tubes themselves are manufactured by Babcock at Rosyth, already in production for British, American and Australian programmes. The combat system is to be developed by evolving the existing AN/BYG-1, under a teaming arrangement between BAE Systems, Raytheon Australia, General Dynamics Mission Systems and Thales agreed in November 2025.

One stated reason for adopting vertical launch is that future American land-attack missiles may not have a horizontal launch option. That architecture is the same one for which the United States is developing its nuclear sea-launched cruise missile. Whether Australian-built boats will be physically capable of carrying that weapon has not been stated by either government, and the question has not been put to the Australian Parliament.

Read more: category CReferences[176] Confirmation that next generation Royal Navy attack submarines are to have vertical launch tubes Navy Lookout, March 2026[177] SSN-AUKUS: Australia announces infrastructure work at Osborne and a first long lead order Future Warfare Magazine, March 2026[156] SSN-AUKUS: a mature design, just with many defining things not settled Strategic Analysis Australia, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

The reactor ships from Derby as a sealed, welded unit containing weapons-grade uranium. The safeguards arrangement permitting the transfer is not yet concluded.

Australia's reactors will be built by Rolls-Royce at Derby and shipped as complete, welded power units. The United States has told the Non-Proliferation Treaty review process that the partners will only provide Australia with nuclear fuel in that form: a sealed unit encasing the fuel and control rods, designed as a lifetime core of about thirty-three years.

The register records the reassuring part first, because it is true. Before initial criticality a new naval core generates no decay heat and no fission-product radiation. It is radiologically benign in an industrial setting. The issue at Osborne is not radiation.

It is custody. The unit contains weapons-grade uranium, and from the moment it arrives the shipyard requires absolute physical isolation, strict chain of custody and international non-proliferation protocols. A commercial waterfront in South Australia becomes a high-value security site years before a submarine is launched there.

Two things are unsettled. The naval nuclear propulsion agreement requires an arrangement under Article 14 of Australia's safeguards agreement, meeting the highest non-proliferation standard, to be in place with the International Atomic Energy Agency before any transfer of nuclear material. The Agency's Director General has confirmed those consultations are continuing. And nothing has been published about how the units travel, by what route, under whose escort, or where responsibility sits in transit.

Read more: category CReferences[179] Before the AUKUS submarines arrive, Australia inherits the risks Pearls and Irritations, July 2026[180] Nuclear safeguards and the Non-Proliferation Treaty: AUKUS side event United States Department of State, May 2025[181] Director General statement on the agreement related to naval nuclear propulsion International Atomic Energy Agency, June 2025↑ Back to the boat

In Britain the sequence from fuel to installed reactor runs within one country, one regulator and sixty years of practice. For Australia every link changes.

The established sequence is domestic. Highly enriched uranium is processed at Aldermaston, cores are fabricated and test-assembled at Derby, and the unit is transported to Barrow for final assembly and insertion into the hull ring. The insertion is a nuclear-rated lift performed in a clean room over an open submarine, using cranes upgraded specifically to nuclear safety standards and fitted to prevent contamination from dropped articles.

For Australian-built boats, three links in that chain become new.

The transport leg ceases to be a domestic movement inside one jurisdiction and becomes an international transfer of weapons-grade material to another hemisphere. Nothing has been published about the route, the escort, the carrier, or where legal responsibility sits in transit.

The receiving facility does not exist. Osborne must reproduce a nuclear-rated lifting and clean-room capability that Australia has never operated, on a site still under construction.

And the regulator is new. The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator began operating on 1 November 2025 with no operating history, and the submarine-specific regulations under its Act have not yet been made.

The insertion facility is specialised, licensed and expensive, and Australia has never built or operated one. It does not appear as a separate item in the published plan for the yard, alongside the fabrication hall, the blast and paint workshops, the consolidation hall, the shiplift and the graving dock. Its cost, its schedule and its certification path are not on the public record.

The spending is gated by the regulator, phase by phase. Capital cannot legally be spent until the naval nuclear regulator and the civilian radiation agency formally approve the safety case for each successive phase of construction. The register records at F-11 that the naval regulator was established in November 2025 and has not yet regulated a submarine.

Read more: category PReferences[182] The Royal Navy's Astute class submarines: platform design Navy Lookout, October 2025[183] Nuclear submarine crane refurbishment, BAE Marine Systems SCX Specialist Handling Solutions[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[365] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 30 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Australia assembles hulls with reactor plants and components delivered from a yard that has two higher-priority programmes ahead of it.

Australia's construction timeline depends on BAE Systems at Barrow and Rolls-Royce at Raynesway delivering reactor plants and components on schedule. Barrow is simultaneously completing the Astute class, building four Dreadnought ballistic missile submarines, and starting Britain's own SSN-AUKUS hulls. Dreadnought carries the national deterrent and is the higher priority; an institute supporting the programme states plainly that any delay to Dreadnought risks disruption to the attack submarine programme. A schedule slip at either British site lands directly on assembly in Adelaide.

The wider British enterprise is carrying more than two submarine programmes. It is managing hundreds of projects across two construction programmes, a third class in design, a replacement warhead and a new nuclear fuels programme, in a reprioritisation the Ministry of Defence describes as being on a scale not seen since the end of the Cold War.

The response is a workforce expansion. Barrow employs about 13,500 people and is growing toward 17,000, with about 5,000 added between 2023 and 2027, aiming at a delivery drumbeat of one submarine every eighteen months against the Astute class's twelve years apiece.

That case deserves a hearing. Analysts supporting the programme argue Barrow's problems are legacy failures from the 1990s now being addressed, that the design skills gap which plagued early Astute construction has been overcome, and that Dreadnought has run more smoothly. Against it, the House of Commons Library has recorded assessments that the eighteen-month drumbeat is too optimistic without significant further expansion, and one analyst has argued that BAE Systems will not commit private capital to expanding Barrow without a production contract in hand.

Australia's hedge if the schedule slips is the option to buy up to two more Virginia-class boats, from the yards described in F-2.

Read more: category QReferences[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[184] AUKUS submarine programme: progress, pressure and realities Navy Lookout, January 2026[185] New Dreadnought funding tranche underlines commitment to Trident Navy Lookout, July 2026[186] Britain expands nuclear submarine production for Dreadnought and SSN-AUKUS Defence Industry Europe, September 2026[187] UK recommits to 12 SSN-AUKUS submarines in the Defence Investment Plan Calibre Defence, July 2026[188] Building SSN-AUKUS: Australia's nuclear submarine yard at Osborne Navy Lookout, February 2026↑ Back to the boat

Up to twelve was announced in 2025, reconfirmed in 2026, and is still not an order five years on.

The Royal Navy operates seven Astute-class boats. No figure for their replacement was published when the programme began in 2018, when AUKUS was announced in 2021, or in the optimal pathway of 2023.

In June 2025 the Prime Minister announced that the fleet would be significantly expanded with up to twelve SSN-AUKUS boats, and said the number would be settled by the time the Defence Investment Plan appeared. That plan was published on 30 June 2026, about a year late, and reconfirmed up to twelve without naming a hull number.

In September 2026 the Defence Secretary wrote to his opposite number that the intention to buy up to twelve was clear, but that a decision on exact hull numbers did not need to be taken at this stage, and that the figure would be confirmed before the design phase ends in 2028.

The size of the order is to be settled in 2028. The Defence Nuclear Enterprise annual update of September 2026 records that steel is to be cut on the first British boat in 2027, as noted at N-3. On that timetable construction begins the year before the quantity is known.

An analyst has argued separately that the yard's expansion will not attract private capital without a production contract in hand, which is what an order would be.

The same letter moved another figure. The capacity to deliver a submarine every eighteen months is stated to arrive from the mid-2030s. It is not a current rate.

Read more: category QReferences[210] Labour delays buying new attack submarines until 2028 The Telegraph, 12 September 2026, as reported by GB News, AOL and Express[211] UK unveils plans for 12 new nuclear submarines under AUKUS deal June 2025[187] UK recommits to 12 SSN-AUKUS submarines in the Defence Investment Plan Calibre Defence, July 2026[273] AUKUS meets waterfront reality: the United Kingdom all in a mess, part 2 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, December 2025, quoting a retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral[304] Defence Nuclear Enterprise 2026 Annual Update to Parliament Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom, 15 September 2026, as reported by Naval Technology↑ Back to the boat

The plan commits 63.6 billion pounds to the nuclear enterprise over four years and attaches no cost to SSN-AUKUS. Of the 15 billion uplift it claims, the Treasury has confirmed 10.3 billion.

The Defence Investment Plan commits 297.7 billion pounds over the four years to 2029-30. Within it the Defence Nuclear Enterprise is ring-fenced at 63.6 billion, between a fifth and a quarter of the whole defence budget and more than 20 billion above the previous four years, of which 47 billion covers submarines including maintenance and infrastructure.

That 47 billion must carry four submarine programmes at once: completing the final Astute, building four Dreadnought ballistic missile boats, beginning SSN-AUKUS, and defining the Dreadnought successor.

No cost for SSN-AUKUS itself appears in it. The House of Commons Library records that an overall programme cost has not been provided by the government. Independent estimates put twelve boats above 40 billion pounds.

The headline uplift is also incomplete. The plan claims 15 billion pounds above the previous settlement. The Treasury has confirmed 10.3 billion of it, leaving about 4.7 billion falling due at a Budget a future government will have to deliver. Two warship classes were removed from the plan.

Australia's five boats are built to the same design, from the same reactor line, behind this order book.

Read more: category RReferences[212] Confirmed but not funded: the Defence Investment Plan lands a year late Calibre Defence, July 2026[213] Defence Investment Plan: key decisions House of Commons Library, July 2026[214] UK nuclear deterrent gets 63.6 billion pounds with the Defence Investment Plan Calibre Defence, July 2026[187] UK recommits to 12 SSN-AUKUS submarines in the Defence Investment Plan Calibre Defence, July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Political leadership has faded, submarine availability is critically low, and investment at the yard that builds the boat has already slipped.

The House of Commons Defence Committee reported on AUKUS on 28 April 2026, the first British parliamentary inquiry directed at its delivery. It found that the promise of the partnership remains valid and the rationale still holds, and the register records that first.

It then found the rest. The inquiry revealed shortcomings and failings in delivery which threaten to prevent that promise becoming a reality. Political leadership, which it calls essential to a programme of this length, cost and complexity, has faded, and the Committee called on the Prime Minister to counter a political drift that could see the programme derailed. Its chair put the conclusion plainly: without clear political direction, the Committee has serious doubts that AUKUS can be delivered.

Three findings bear directly on Australia. United Kingdom submarine availability is critically low, against what the Committee describes as deepening concern about Royal Navy readiness. Timely investment in upgrading the yard at Barrow where SSN-AUKUS is to be built is crucial and has already slipped, with any further failure risking delay to the submarine. And without urgent infrastructure improvements at Devonport and Clyde, the Government risks being unable to meet its obligations under the partnership at all.

Evidence to the Committee from the chief executive of BAE Systems Submarines was that a ten-year plan with two hundred million pounds allocated is not enough to revitalise Barrow.

A retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral, quoted in a separate review, puts it further: that Dreadnought is late, Astute delivery is getting later, the maintenance backlog is massive and worsening, and that Britain is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine programme. That review records five of seven Astutes delivered with none appearing operational, and one that has not been to sea in over three years and is said to have been stripped for spares.

The government's answer is recorded at N-9. Australia's five boats are of the design that sits behind all of it, in the same yard.

Read more: category KReferences[3] AUKUS, First Report of Session 2025-26, HC 841 House of Commons Defence Committee, United Kingdom Parliament, 28 April 2026[283] AUKUS: Government must do more — and do it faster Defence Committee news release and statement of the Chair, Tan Dhesi MP, 28 April 2026[284] Critical report highlights AUKUS shortcomings and failings Business Crack, April 2026, reporting evidence given to the House of Commons Defence Committee[273] AUKUS meets waterfront reality: the United Kingdom all in a mess, part 2 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, December 2025, quoting a retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral[274] United Kingdom all in on AUKUS submarine and tech delivery as partnership powers full steam ahead Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom↑ Back to the boat

Britain has 23 retired nuclear submarines in storage, 12 still fuelled, and has not completed the disposal of a single boat in 43 years.

The United Kingdom stopped sinking retired reactors at sea when the London Dumping Convention prohibited it in 1983, and has been storing the boats afloat ever since. The latest Defence Nuclear Enterprise inventory records 16 at Devonport and seven at Rosyth. There are more decommissioned submarines in storage than there are in the operational flotilla.

Twelve of them still hold irradiated reactor fuel. Defuelling stopped in 2004 when the regulator judged the Devonport facilities short of modern standards. Restart was expected in 2012, then 2023, and is now 2026. A parliamentary answer in December 2025 gave no completion dates for the twelve.

HMS Swiftsure was decommissioned in 1992 and is the pilot for the dismantling process, which began at Rosyth in 2016, about fifteen years late. It is not finished. The National Audit Office found the whole-life cost had risen by £0.8 billion, or 50 per cent, and the Ministry of Defence has spent more than £500 million simply holding the boats in place.

A retired Rear Admiral and former commander of Australia's submarine force draws the conclusion for Australia. The Royal Navy has not completely dismantled a single decommissioned boat; the systemic failure is documented in a 2019 National Audit Office report; and the British record therefore reflects decades of industrial delay rather than an established, repeatable template that Australia could follow.

Disposal of the eventual total is put at £10.4 billion over 25 years. Final disposal of the intermediate-level waste depends on a geological facility not expected to accept it until the 2050s.

Read more: category NReferences[126] The Royal Navy has taken 43 years to dispose of one nuclear submarine and 22 more need to be broken up 19FortyFive, August 2026[127] Project to dismantle ex-Royal Navy nuclear submarines inches forward Navy Lookout, January 2026[128] HMS Swiftsure drydocked in Rosyth for recycling Naval Technology, citing the National Audit Office[129] The painfully slow process of dismantling ex-Royal Navy nuclear submarines Navy Lookout[251] AUKUS leaves Australia with the long nuclear goodbye, part two Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Over three tonnes of weapons-usable uranium across eight boats, to be buried in Australia, with no right to send any of it back.

Each reactor holds between 200 and 500 kilograms of uranium enriched to about 93 per cent. That is weapons-grade material, and enough fissile inventory for dozens of weapons, sealed inside a single hull.

Under the AUKUS agreements and the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act 2024, Australia must permanently dispose of all of it domestically. There is no provision to return spent fuel to the United States or the United Kingdom. Across eight submarines that is a sovereign liability of more than three tonnes of weapons-usable uranium-235, requiring isolation for millennia.

The government's position narrows the obligation and the register records it. The Deputy Prime Minister has stated that Australia will not be responsible for managing or disposing of high-level waste from other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and will be responsible only for spent fuel from its own submarines. That is the liability described above, not a smaller one.

Australia is also forbidden from reprocessing the fuel, by the treaty text and by its commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Reprocessing would reduce the volume requiring long-term storage. Without it, a geologically suitable site must be found to bury the fuel in the state it left the submarine.

The two supplying countries manage their own unwanted weapons-grade material in maximum-security facilities built for the purpose. Australia would need to develop the specialist capabilities found in the nuclear weapons industries of great powers to do the same.

The register records at A-14 that no site has been chosen and no cost established. This entry records what the site is for.

Read more: category SReferences[262] AUKUS infrastructure, part 5: The HEU problem Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, August 2026[263] Trillion dollar AUKUS subs plus nuclear waste in perpetuity? Michael West Media, July 2025, drawing on documents released under freedom of information[222] Revamped AUKUS document reveals how the United States and United Kingdom can walk away from the nuclear submarine deal ABC News, 12 August 2024[323] Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023: statement on waste responsibility Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, as recorded in parliamentary material on the Bill↑ Back to the boat

Cutting the hull, flooding the compartment, lifting out a thousand-tonne monolith. None of it can be done anywhere in Australia today.

Decommissioning is not storage. It is an industrial process, and the American precedent sets out what it involves: containment structures erected over the hull cuts, the reactor compartment flooded with borated water as a shield for remote tool work, and the fuel drawn out into a shielded transfer container.

What remains afterwards is a monolithic waste package containing the activated pressure vessel and its internals, weighing well over a thousand tonnes. Moving and permanently isolating one requires dedicated heavy-lift infrastructure, specialised docks and custom engineering.

Australia's own documents describe the two streams that come out: spent fuel roughly the size of a small hatchback, which is high-level waste, and a reactor compartment roughly the size of a four-wheel drive, which is intermediate-level.

The United States shows what the answer looks like when it exists. Every retired American nuclear vessel is dismantled at one yard, Puget Sound at Bremerton. The sealed compartment is barged out through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, south along the coast, and 310 miles up the Columbia River through locks to the Port of Benton, towed by a commercial tug with a second tug and a naval or coast guard escort, a licensed bar pilot for the river mouth and river pilots for the passage, about five days in all. At Benton a crane lifts it onto a transporter thirty feet by sixty with 320 wheels, which tractors haul twenty-five miles to Trench 94 at Hanford, fifty feet deep and about the size of two football fields, where it is set on columns and welded in place. They have done this since 1986, for 123 submarines and eight cruisers.

Almost all of that route is water. Twenty-five of the seven hundred miles are overland, on a road inside a federal site. Australia has no navigable river running inland to remote country, and the land described as remote is inland desert. A disposal site near the yards would minimise the overland movement of a thousand-tonne package; a remote site would maximise it. No published document addresses the choice, or the transport task either choice creates.

None of the facilities to do any of it has been built, sited or costed. No published document names where a submarine would be cut up, where the fuel would go, or where the compartment would be isolated. The submarine agency can identify a site and the Minister can compulsorily acquire it, anywhere in the country. Evidence to the Senate committee examining the safety bill established that its provisions are not limited to low or intermediate level material but extend to high-level waste including weapons-grade uranium, and that a site can be declared by regulation. The official's answer was that the Bill enables the management of radioactive waste, and that what policy or plans attach to it is a separate question.

The partners are not ahead of Australia here. British high-level waste goes to Sellafield, but each British boat still holds about a tonne of intermediate-level waste awaiting an underground facility the United Kingdom does not expect before the 2040s. American spent fuel and intermediate waste remain in temporary storage.

Read more: category PReferences[251] AUKUS leaves Australia with the long nuclear goodbye, part two Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, July 2026[263] Trillion dollar AUKUS subs plus nuclear waste in perpetuity? Michael West Media, July 2025, drawing on documents released under freedom of information[107] Australia hasn't figured out low-level nuclear waste storage yet, let alone high-level waste from submarines The Conversation[264] Naval nuclear transport: reactor compartment shipments to Hanford Oregon Department of Energy, and United States Department of Energy environmental assessments[265] Spent naval nuclear reactor compartments: part of Hanford's complicated issues Columbia Insight, and reporting in The Spokesman-Review[322] Evidence to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, 13 March 2024 Official Committee Hansard, Parliament of Australia↑ Back to the boat

Muckaty, Napandee, Lyndhurst, Wallerberdina. The commitment now is to site a high-level one.

Australia has been trying to establish a national facility for low and intermediate level radioactive waste for decades. The waste is civilian, most of it from medical isotope production at Lucas Heights.

Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory was abandoned in 2014. In November 2021 the Commonwealth acquired Napandee, a 211-hectare property near Kimba in South Australia, and named it as the site. In July 2023 the Federal Court set that decision aside, finding apprehended bias and pre-judgement in the process, the traditional owners having been excluded from the community ballot that was said to show local support. Work on the site had continued throughout the proceedings.

In August 2023 the government abandoned Napandee and confirmed it would not pursue the two other shortlisted sites, Lyndhurst and Wallerberdina, either. It has since named none.

That is the record at the least demanding level of waste. The commitment recorded at O-2 is to permanently dispose of spent naval fuel, which is the most demanding level, on a site that must also satisfy the security requirements attaching to weapons-grade material. One assessment of the method used so far is that deciding on a site and then defending it against the community has not worked anywhere.

Read more: category AReferences[266] Government abandons plan to dump nuclear waste near Kimba ABC News, 10 August 2023, and Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC v Minister for Resources [2023] FCA 809[250] Australian ruling party lawmaker raises concerns on nuclear submarines Bloomberg, reporting a speech to the House of Representatives by Josh Wilson MP, Member for Fremantle, Western Australia, of the governing party[263] Trillion dollar AUKUS subs plus nuclear waste in perpetuity? Michael West Media, July 2025, drawing on documents released under freedom of information↑ Back to the boat

Osborne is fifteen kilometres from the Adelaide CBD. The disposal site is to be on remote defence land. No published document connects the two.

Both ends of the chain have been chosen, on opposite principles.

The yards are metropolitan. Osborne is about fifteen kilometres from the centre of Adelaide, in a city of 1.4 million. Henderson is twenty-three kilometres south of Perth, in a metropolitan area of 2.1 million. Stirling is five kilometres off Rockingham, where 130,000 people live. Every east coast candidate is a working commercial port inside a city.

The disposal site is to be on remote defence land, which in Australia means inland.

Nothing published joins them. The American route, described above, is a water route: a barge from the yard to a river port, and twenty-five miles of road inside a federal site. Australia has no long navigable river running inland. The Murray is shallow, locked and weired, and its mouth requires continuous dredging to stay open. Every other river runs a short distance from a port into a city, which is the wrong direction.

That leaves coastal shipping to a remote port and an inland leg by road or rail. A deep-water industrial port in the north-west could receive a package of this mass, and the Pilbara operates the heaviest-haul railways in the world. Those railways are privately owned, built for ore trains of many wagons rather than for a single indivisible load, and the constraint for one thousand-tonne package is axle loading, bridge rating and clearance rather than total train mass.

No published document examines any of it: not the route, not whether the rail network can carry an indivisible load of that mass, not what it would cost to build a port or a line that could, and not the alternative of a site near the yards. The register records that the two ends were announced and the middle was not.

Read more: category PReferences[267] Managing radioactive waste from nuclear-powered submarines Australian Submarine Agency and Department of Defence statements, March 2023 onward[264] Naval nuclear transport: reactor compartment shipments to Hanford Oregon Department of Energy, and United States Department of Energy environmental assessments[265] Spent naval nuclear reactor compartments: part of Hanford's complicated issues Columbia Insight, and reporting in The Spokesman-Review↑ Back to the boat

A high-level waste site needs consent from the people whose country it sits on. The last attempt was struck down for excluding them, and this one has not begun.

The facility will be somewhere, and wherever it is, someone holds native title or heritage interests in it. That is not a peripheral consideration. It is what defeated the last attempt.

The Federal Court set aside the Napandee decision in 2023 because the traditional owners had been excluded from the process, and because the decision-maker had pre-judged it. Napandee was for low and intermediate level waste. The AUKUS commitment is for the highest level there is.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry in 2026 records that there has been no consultation with First Nations peoples on whose land the high-level waste would be stored, and no willingness to release what the government has already developed about that storage.

The second half of that matters as much as the first. The register records at O-3 that no site has been named. This entry records the claim that material exists and is not being released, which is consistent with what is recorded at S-1, where three freedom of information requests have been refused and the department is contesting a ruling that would grant access.

A site also requires the acceptance of whichever community lives nearest to it. Nothing published describes how that consent is to be sought, or what happens if it is not given.

Read more: category SReferences[272] AUKUS is being exposed, but will anything change? Pearls and Irritations, July 2026, reporting evidence given to the AUKUS Public Inquiry[266] Government abandons plan to dump nuclear waste near Kimba ABC News, 10 August 2023, and Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC v Minister for Resources [2023] FCA 809[228] Rex Patrick warns AUKUS is too costly, too risky and too secretive The Point, 17 July 2026, reporting evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Adelaide hearing↑ Back to the boat

In 2021 the non-proliferation case rested on the reactor going back to the supplier. The agreements signed since contain no return provision.

The case made for AUKUS on non-proliferation grounds in 2021 was specific, and it was made by people qualified to make it. The former Director-General of Australia's own safeguards office wrote two days after the announcement that the reactor would be supplied already fuelled and that, at the end of the submarine's operating life, the submarine with its reactor would be returned to the supplier, being the United States or possibly the United Kingdom.

That was the reason the precedent was said to be a safe one. In the same assessment: Australia would in effect be acquiring a submarine with a nuclear battery, to which it would under no circumstances have access, and which would be returned at the end of its life. The contrast drawn was with a state that handles naval fuel itself, or operates a fuel cycle to make it.

The agreements concluded since contain no such provision. As recorded at O-2, Australia must permanently dispose of all spent fuel domestically, and there is no return provision to either supplier. The feature that distinguished this case from the ones the non-proliferation community worries about is absent from the instruments.

A route back has been proposed by others. Analysis published in 2023 suggested Australia offer to pay the two suppliers to take the spent fuel and to strengthen its non-proliferation commitments in exchange, noting that the United States already holds more than 250 cores of spent naval fuel and the United Kingdom about ninety, that Australia would add perhaps ten or fewer, and that the saving to Australia would be measured in billions because it removes the need for a repository whose cost is dominated by fixed outlays before any fuel is buried. A separate recommendation was that the United States create a legal avenue for the return, in parallel with the programme under which it already takes back irradiated highly enriched uranium from research reactors around the world.

The two problems are one problem. With a return provision, paragraph 14 does very little work: the material arrives sealed, leaves sealed, and is accounted for at both ends by a state that already holds hundreds of such cores. The suspension of routine inspection then covers a sealed unit in transit and in service, which is the practical difficulty the paragraph was written to solve. Without a return provision, three tonnes of weapons-usable uranium enter a non-nuclear-weapon state permanently, with no accounting endpoint in another country's inventory, and must be verified where they sit for as long as they exist. The register records at C-5 that no method exists to test such a claim. A return provision would have removed the need to test it.

The register records no view on whether such an arrangement should be sought. It records that the argument which justified the precedent assumed one, that no instrument provides for it, and that no published document explains why it was not obtained.

Read more: category CReferences[333] AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal: non-proliferation aspects John Carlson, former Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office; Asia-Pacific Leadership Network, 17 September 2021, and Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation[334] How to solve the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal's nuclear fuel problem Carnegie Endowment for International Peace[335] AUKUS as a non-proliferation standard? Arms Control Association, July 2023[270] AUKUS is heading for the rocks: the statutory bar on degrading United States readiness Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, September 2026, citing 10 U.S.C. § 8677↑ Back to the boat

Submarine Squadron 3, a Lead Maintenance Activity and Naval Support Activity Stirling are United States commands on an Australian base.

The United States has re-established Submarine Squadron 3 to oversee the operation of its submarines rotating from Stirling. A Lead Maintenance Activity was stood up in Western Australia from mid-2026 to maintain American boats. Naval Support Activity Stirling was formally created on 30 May 2026, under Commander, Navy Region Japan, to deliver services and programmes to United States personnel, contractors and their families.

The government states the base remains Australian-owned and operated, and that access is at Australia's invitation with full respect for Australian sovereignty. That is the legal position and the register records it.

What sits alongside it is a permanent American command structure, a permanent American maintenance authority and a permanent American support activity, on an island the Australian Navy has occupied since 1978.

Read more: category FReferences[23] AUKUS partners take next steps towards Submarine Rotational Force West Minister for Defence, 12 June 2026[141] Inside the $8b plan to station American sailors and subs near Perth through AUKUS ABC News, September 2025↑ Back to the boat

The federal police created an AUKUS Command to guard the programme. No figure for it appears in the budget papers.

The Australian Federal Police has established an AUKUS Command to protect and secure the nuclear submarine programme, describing this as a Commonwealth responsibility. It states that protecting and escorting submarines at HMAS Stirling requires enhanced capabilities, and has written a concept of operations for the armed protection of Submarine Rotational Force-West.

This is a permanent federal policing function created for a single programme, standing up armed protection at a naval base and continuing for as long as the boats are there.

No cost for it appears in the portfolio budget statements of the federal police or of Defence.

References[62] China submarine capabilities Nuclear Threat Initiative[146] ARPANSA responses to public comments on the ASA licence application Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, July 2024↑ Back to the boat

Between seven hundred and twelve hundred foreign personnel and their families, into a city ranked least affordable in Australia for renters.

Figures for the incoming contingent vary by what is counted. The submarine agency has cited five to seven hundred American personnel for the facilities work; reporting has put the resident American population at more than a thousand; and the head of the agency has said up to 1,200 United States and United Kingdom personnel and their families would be posted to Perth. Most British personnel come on shorter rotations without families.

They arrive into a market already stretched. Perth has been ranked the least affordable city in the country for renters. The City of Rockingham was growing at fourteen people a day and 3.5 per cent a year before any of this, and its mayor has said the pressures already being experienced are significant and likely to be accelerated. A highway proposed to carry the additional traffic was scrapped.

The government does not dispute the pressure. Its own announcement commits Defence and the submarine agency to work with the United States on integrating its personnel while minimising impact, including on housing, transport and healthcare. Against that it projects around 3,000 direct Australian jobs from the works.

References[141] Inside the $8b plan to station American sailors and subs near Perth through AUKUS ABC News, September 2025[142] Rockingham's leap to major AUKUS defence hub leaves some locals trepidatious ABC News, December 2025[143] Most people don't visit here, but AUKUS might make it Perth's most important place ABC News, December 2024[152] AUKUS to deliver housing demand boom for Rockingham Property Council Australia, January 2026↑ Back to the boat

The explanatory memorandum states the amendments have no financial impact. Their stated purpose is housing the rotational force.

The Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025 expanded the agency's remit under the Defence Housing Australia Act 1987 to provide housing to members of foreign militaries. Introducing it, the Minister for Defence Personnel said it would directly support the requirement to house personnel coming to Australia as part of Submarine Rotational Force-West.

The explanatory memorandum sets the standard to be met: that United States and United Kingdom personnel and their families have an equivalent standard of housing and support as their counterparts in the Australian Defence Force. Its financial impact statement reads, in full, that the amendments in the bill have no financial impact.

The delivery is not nominal. Defence Housing Australia holds about 670 homes around Rockingham and its head of commercial has said it intends to reach 1,200 or 1,300 within five or six years. Three contracts with Western Australian builders cover 550 new dwellings at Wellard, Baldivis and Mundijong, the first completed in 2025-26.

The bill also implements a 2020 recommendation of the Auditor-General, which proposed extending the agency's functions to foreign exchange and visiting personnel. That recommendation is real and predates the partnership. It does not explain why housing a rotational force of this size registers as nil.

No figure attributable to the submarine programme has been published for any of it.

References[150] Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025, explanatory memorandum Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia[151] Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025, second reading House of Representatives, 24 July 2025[152] AUKUS to deliver housing demand boom for Rockingham Property Council Australia, January 2026↑ Back to the boat

The regulator assessed the waste facility and published the finding. It did not publish the application, or the 165 submissions about it.

The submarine agency applied to the radiation regulator in March 2024 to prepare a site for a Controlled Industrial Facility at Stirling, for low-level waste from submarine maintenance. The regulator published its responses to public comment, concluded the facility could be built and operated safely, and stated that in a worst case any radiological doses off site were negligible, its worst cases including earthquake, bushfire, flood and security events. The register records that finding.

Three things were not published. A submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works states that the regulator withheld the agency's application from the public. The 165 submissions received during the consultation were not released. And no modelling of a reactor accident, as distinct from the waste facility, has been made public.

The regulator has since changed. Licences relating to Stirling transferred to the new naval nuclear regulator on 1 November 2025, a body with no operating history.

Read more: category OReferences[146] ARPANSA responses to public comments on the ASA licence application Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, July 2024[147] HMAS Stirling nuclear waste management facility approval has Rockingham residents worried ABC News, July 2024[148] Submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, SRF-West Priority Works Parliament of Australia[149] ARPANSA supports new naval nuclear power safety regulator Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency↑ Back to the boat

Two emergency power stations, embedded generation and anti-islanding protection. No published account of what it is for.

Assured power is a requirement of nuclear maintenance and the works reflect it. Engineering records for the site describe upgrades to eleven and twenty-two kilovolt switchgear, refurbishment of Central Emergency Power Station 1, development of a second station, diesel and solar generation on the island, and certification of an embedded generation scheme with anti-islanding protection, the arrangement that allows a site to disconnect from the state network and run alone. Reporting has described the result as an uninterrupted power supply.

None of that is unreasonable. A reactor under maintenance should not depend on a suburban distribution network.

A plan now exists for the radiological case, and the register records it. In August 2026 Western Australia published a state hazard plan, prompted by the increased rotation of nuclear-powered vessels, mapping the response if gamma radiation or radioactive iodine escaped during a reactor accident. It covers Stirling, Henderson, the Port of Fremantle and Albany, and provides for iodine tablets, sheltering or evacuation. Its worst case warns that a plume could contaminate vegetables from local gardens and milk from cows grazing several kilometres downwind.

The gap is what sits beside it. A facility built to operate through an extended loss of regional supply is a facility whose design allows for one, and no document has been published describing that scenario or its consequences for the mainland five kilometres away, where 130,000 people live in Rockingham.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry from a former head of public health in Perth described what a reactor accident would involve, including the breach of tanks holding contaminated water and radiation entering the ocean, and stated that no plan is in place to evacuate the population of Fremantle the twenty-five kilometres that would be required.

References[144] Support facilities and infrastructure, HMAS Stirling Industry Capability Network project record[145] HMAS Stirling Garden Island Partum Engineering[147] HMAS Stirling nuclear waste management facility approval has Rockingham residents worried ABC News, July 2024[227] Evidence of Dr Colin Hughes to the AUKUS Public Inquiry Former Head of Public Health, Perth; Fremantle hearing, 29 June 2026[351] Emergency plan for 'unlikely' AUKUS nuclear accident mapped out by Western Australian authorities ABC News, 27 August 2026, reporting the Western Australian state hazard plan published that month↑ Back to the boat

Submarines, an expanding container port and all of Perth's refined fuel are to share one channel in Cockburn Sound.

Cockburn Sound is a semi-enclosed embayment with two entrances. In the Second World War both were physically closed with anti-submarine nets, the northern boom running 9.37 kilometres and believed to be the longest in the world, and a shipping channel was dredged through the Parmelia and Success sandbanks to admit larger ships at all. The nets remained until 1964 and their remains are still on the seabed.

Into that basin the plan puts progressively larger boats. Collins displaces about 3,300 tonnes. A Virginia displaces 7,900, and a Block V about 10,200 with a draft of 9.8 metres. The head of the submarine agency has said SSN-AUKUS will exceed 10,000 tonnes, though neither government has published its length or beam.

The sound also carries the western fleet, a major industrial port and the state's Westport container development. An assessment published in 2025 records that the project will funnel submarine traffic and rapidly expanding commercial shipping through the same narrow channel. Citing the 2011 grounding of the MV Rena, where removing cargo alone took six to seven weeks, it observes that a comparable blockage would not merely trap submarines: it would halt refined fuel deliveries to Perth, which depends entirely on imports through the sound. A Western Australian member of parliament went outside normal channels to brief officials in Washington on the risk, supported by documentation from the Maritime Union of Australia.

Not everyone reads the location as a liability. A professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre has called the sound a calm waterway and, after Pine Gap, the second suitable piece of real estate on the continent.

Read more: category KReferences[154] Cockburn Sound's World War II anti-submarine boom defence Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology Bulletin[155] Submarine agency chief: Australia's SSNs will be bigger, better, faster ASPI The Strategist, May 2024[156] SSN-AUKUS: a mature design, just with many defining things not settled Strategic Analysis Australia, August 2024[157] A second suitable piece of real estate Lowy Institute, July 2024[153] How Australia's port development threatens its nuclear submarine future Second Line of Defense, August 2025↑ Back to the boat

The taskforce's own study found South Australia has the smallest relevant feeder workforce in the country. Osborne is in South Australia.

The government estimates about 20,000 skilled workers are needed over thirty years, with a peak industrial workforce of up to 8,500 specialised trades, engineers and nuclear technicians. Around 4,000 are required simply to design and build the yard, and 4,000 to 5,500 shipyard jobs at the peak of construction, in roles described as requiring skills not found domestically.

The taskforce's own civilian nuclear workforce study found a domestic feeder pool exists in welders, engineers and mechanical fitters, and that vocational qualifications cover foundational competencies for about two-thirds of civilian nuclear roles. It also found many of those roles are in national shortage, with an average supply and demand gap of 125 per cent across electronic engineers, engineering managers and mechanical engineers.

And it found the greatest feeder workforce is in New South Wales, then Victoria and Queensland, and that the state with the fewest of those skills is South Australia, where the construction yard is being built.

The timeline compounds it. The chief executive of Weld Australia has said it takes at least ten years to qualify a welder to safely maintain and repair a nuclear submarine. The training academy at Osborne opens in 2028. The first Australian-built boat is due in the early 2040s.

The response is real and the register records it. The Commonwealth has committed $480 million to a Naval Shipbuilding Skills and Training Academy at Osborne, opening in 2028, and $200 million to a submarine training centre at Stirling. A twelve-month paid traineeship began its first intake in March 2025. Weld Australia called the training investment encouraging, while adding that the country is starting from behind.

Two further demands sit alongside. Construction at Osborne and sustainment at Henderson are separated by 2,700 kilometres, which prevents skilled labour moving between them. And the Navy's own submarine service must more than triple, from about 800 people to around 3,000, beyond the 2040s.

Read more: category NReferences[189] Why Australia's AUKUS plans could be derailed by worker shortages The Canberra Times, December 2025[190] Critical worker shortage menaces nuclear-powered submarine workforce Defence Connect, May 2024, reporting the nuclear-powered submarine taskforce's civilian nuclear workforce study[191] Nuclear submarine capability requires a new skills training workforce Asia Pacific Defence Reporter[192] Jobs and careers Australian Submarine Agency[193] Welder shortage threatens nation's nuclear submarine ambitions Defence Connect, June 2025[194] AUKUS infrastructure, part 4: Australia's dual-site labour trap Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, August 2026↑ Back to the boat

Landing craft, frigates, Collins sustainment, contingency docking and depot maintenance for three navies' submarines, on one site.

The Henderson Defence Precinct is to deliver, concurrently: construction of the Army's landing craft, medium and heavy; construction of the Navy's future Mogami-class frigates once that work transfers from Japan; sustainment of the Collins class; a surface fleet sustainment yard; contingency docking for Australia's future nuclear-powered submarines; and depot-level maintenance for the submarines of Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Prime Minister put the whole precinct at around $25 billion over a decade and more, of which $12 billion has been committed. A year later the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed that further investment would be required, and that this had been made clear from the outset.

Some of the work has begun before its home exists. The first batch of eight heavy landing craft, contracted with Austal in February 2026 for $4 billion, is to be built at the Common User Facility before the programme moves to a permanent location. Master planning is led by Bechtel, and site characterisation across Cockburn Sound to establish engineering, environmental and marine baselines is still under way.

The milestones overlap. Frigate and landing craft milestones fall in the early 2030s. Full submarine depot-level maintenance is required from the late 2030s. The same workforce must deliver all of it, in the state recorded above as competing with the resources sector for the same trades.

Trade reporting on the programme states the position plainly: the concurrency illustrates the scale of the challenge in executing several ambitious shipbuilding programmes at once.

Read more: category QReferences[195] Press conference, Henderson Prime Minister of Australia, September 2025[196] Press conference, Henderson Deputy Prime Minister, August 2026[57] Australian naval shipbuilding at the Henderson Defence Precinct Naval News, July 2026[197] The dry-dock decision turns Henderson into a system of projects DECnet, August 2026[198] New Defence precinct at Henderson Australian Submarine Agency↑ Back to the boat

Five square kilometres, more than 150 businesses already there, bounded by roads, housing and shallow water. The tenants cannot move until somewhere else is built for them.

The Australian Marine Complex is not a greenfield site. It is a live industrial ecosystem of roughly five square kilometres with more than 150 businesses, which the state government credits with more than 50,000 jobs and over $3 billion to the state economy across two decades.

The status is a planning status. $127 million was committed in October 2024 to progress planning, alongside a cooperation agreement with the state. $12 billion followed for early works, against advice that the precinct will need about $25 billion over the decade. The site and boundary were announced on 24 August 2026. The departmental page still records that Defence will select an industry partner to create the high-level master plan, and that planning, design and feasibility studies will confirm the boundaries and the facilities required.

The precinct must be inserted into it. Assessment of the site records that it is bounded by existing road corridors, residential buffers and shallow water approaches, and lacks an easily expandable footprint. The nuclear sustainment facilities must share that constrained waterfront with the surface fleet programmes.

The ownership is the obstacle, not the acreage. The departmental page states, twice, that much of the land at Henderson is owned by the Western Australian Government and managed through leases with multiple entities. Delivering a consolidated Commonwealth precinct therefore requires amalgamating separate land titles, negotiating lease buyouts, and relocating working businesses.

Those businesses are named and large. Austal holds the northern end with six production bays and has been the contracted Strategic Shipbuilder for Henderson since 28 August 2025. BAE Systems operates the Marine Support Facility in the centre. Civmec runs a final assembly hall big enough for a destroyer and a frigate at once. ASC is on site. The complex was built in 2003 around a government-owned Common User Facility. On leased crown land nearby sit 173 shacks, known as the Naval Base Shacks, which are a designated heritage site.

The Review that started the programme put the underlying problem plainly: there is not enough work to sustain the number of shipbuilders located at Henderson. Consolidation therefore means displacement, not just construction.

The state must build before the Commonwealth can. To keep Western Australian maritime capacity running, replacement quays and laydown areas must be constructed elsewhere along the Western Trade Coast before existing tenants can be moved off the waterfront the precinct needs.

The sequencing problem follows from the tenancies. Established commercial operators cannot simply be moved: to preserve regional maritime capacity, replacement quays and laydown areas must be designed, funded and built elsewhere along the Western Trade Coast before anyone is displaced. That work takes years, which pushes the start of heavy nuclear-certified civil works into the late 2020s or early 2030s.

The graving dock at the centre of it is not expected to commission before the late 2030s on the shipbuilding group's own three-phase timeline. Depot-level submarine maintenance is required from the late 2030s.

As one account of the problem puts it, Defence is trying to insert a much larger and more secure precinct into an existing maritime economy without collapsing the ecosystem that made Henderson attractive in the first place.

Read more: category QReferences[199] Henderson: rebuilding the shipyard mid-voyage DECnet, April 2026[200] AUKUS infrastructure, part 2: the Henderson bottleneck Pearls and Irritations, July 2026[197] The dry-dock decision turns Henderson into a system of projects DECnet, August 2026[345] Henderson Defence Precinct: land tenure, status and facilities Department of Defence, Henderson Defence Precinct programme page, and Defence Ministers' announcement of 24 August 2026[346] Australian Marine Complex: tenants, facilities and the ship-lift Naval News, July 2026, and published descriptions of the Australian Marine Complex↑ Back to the boat

More than 100 hectares, over 50 new structures, more than $30 billion. The $8.5 billion committed covers enabling works in Area 1.

Osborne is credited, fairly, with tangible physical progress where Henderson has land-tenure difficulties. The scale is the issue.

The yard is projected at over $30 billion across more than 100 hectares, managed by Australian Naval Infrastructure on behalf of the submarine agency. The master plan requires over fifty new structures, including a 420-metre fabrication hall, heavy module outfitting facilities, specialised plate-rolling shops, and a consolidation and launch berth.

The $8.5 billion committed to date, being $3.9 billion in February 2026 and $4.6 billion in July, is absorbed by preliminary site enabling works, heavy civil piling, road access, land acquisitions, utility relocations and the first fabrication halls in Area 1.

The remaining sum, and the other forty-odd structures, are not yet committed. The yard is to be complete in 2040.

Read more: category NReferences[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[152] AUKUS to deliver housing demand boom for Rockingham Property Council Australia, January 2026↑ Back to the boat

Nineteen sites reviewed, three shortlisted, the shortlist scrapped. Defence's own studies called Port Kembla small and congested with little space for substantial expansion.

A future east coast submarine base was announced in March 2022 to complement Stirling and home-port part of the fleet. Defence reviewed nineteen potential sites and three were named: Brisbane, Newcastle and Port Kembla. In May 2023 the shortlist was abandoned and all options were returned to the table. The government now states that a decision is not expected until the mid-2030s; the original announcement had expected the initial work to be complete by the end of 2023. No site has been announced.

Defence's own earlier work does not match the shortlist. Planning studies from 2011 to 2017, released under freedom of information, repeatedly placed Sydney Harbour first, then Jervis Bay, then Newcastle, with Brisbane last of nine. Port Kembla was described in that work as small and congested with little space for substantial expansion. Newcastle's inhibitors were recorded as planned increases in coal carrier traffic, a highly visible location and a sometimes hazardous port entrance.

New South Wales government documents tabled in May 2026 nonetheless identify Port Kembla's outer harbour as the preferred option, and record that government's own expectation of the reaction: that residents are likely to perceive the base as a source of risk, that in the event of a military conflict it could be a target for adversaries, and that residents may regard it as they would a nuclear power station.

Australia has had no dedicated east coast submarine base since HMAS Platypus closed in 1999. The Defence Force has not constructed a major new base since the 1990s.

Read more: category DReferences[201] Australia to build additional submarine base Minister for Defence, March 2022[202] All options on the table for east coast subs base, as government scraps shortlist ABC News, May 2023[203] Navy studies show Port Kembla unsuitable for east coast submarine base The Canberra Times[204] Port Kembla identified as preferred east coast nuclear submarine base PS News, May 2026[205] Australia to establish new east coast nuclear sub base Australian Defence Magazine[249] Air Power Precinct strengthens Fortress Newcastle as possible east coast submarine base Defence Connect, July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Certification by 2031. Emergency docking by 2032. A graving dock by about 2040. Waste storage throughout. The first is at preliminary design.

Most of the public argument is about when the submarines arrive. The harder question is what has to exist on shore before they can, and the answer is four separate things on four separate clocks.

**Pier-side servicing, from 2027.** Berthing, shore power, cooling water, security and emergency response for visiting American and British boats. This is the least demanding tier and it is the one being built at Stirling now.

**Certification, by 2031.** The United States decision to sell the first hull is scheduled for 2031, and as recorded at C-4 American law requires Australia to have demonstrated the domestic capacity to fully perform every activity necessary to safely host and operate the boats. A retired commander of Australia's submarine force assesses that the late start on master planning at Henderson guarantees nuclear-ready certification will not be achieved by that date. **This is the binding date, not 2032, because the decision to sell comes before the delivery.**

**Emergency out-of-water access, from 2032.** Once a boat is Australian-owned, something must be able to lift it clear of the water at short notice for a damaged propeller, a sonar dome, a hull leak or tile loss. The Henderson plan calls this contingency docking. A designer was appointed in July 2026 for the preliminary design. Designing, procuring and certifying a nuclear-capable floating dock takes seven to ten years and costs more than $1 to $2 billion, which places it in 2033 to 2036 at the earliest.

The lift that already exists cannot do it. The Australian Marine Complex holds Australia's second largest ship-lift, with a nominal capacity of 8,065 tonnes. SSN-AUKUS is to displace more than 10,000, so it cannot take the boat at all.

A larger lift would not solve it either. Lifts are used for access and for non-intrusive work, and Britain operates one at Faslane rated at 16,000 tonnes which takes a Vanguard. What they are not used for is intrusive nuclear work: they lack the rigidity required when a pressure hull is cut and carry seismic risk, which is why Britain's Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator forbade intrusive nuclear work on the Faslane lift, the concept was abandoned, and British overhauls go to Devonport instead.

**A graving dock, from about 2040.** A Block IV boat is built for three depot overhauls across a 33-year life, one every eight to ten years, and an overhaul cuts the pressure hull open to reach the primary reactor loops and the steam plant. That cannot be done in a floating dock: docks flex under wave motion and ballast shifts while a hull ring is being cut, and a shut-down core generates one to two megawatts of decay heat requiring unbroken, redundantly powered shore cooling. Only a permanent concrete graving dock will do, rock-anchored, with integrated backup power, drainage and cooling. The United States Navy budgets fifteen to eighteen months for each such availability; Congressional Budget Office analysis puts the average at 760 days. Three transferred hulls mean three overhauls between the late 2030s and the 2050s.

**And waste storage, throughout.** Every one of those operations generates radioactive waste, and the register records at O-2 and O-3 that no site has been named and no facility exists at any level.

None of the four beyond the first has been built. The site and boundary at Henderson were announced in August 2026, the master plan has no industry partner, and the dock is at preliminary design. Preliminary design in mid-2026 plus seven to ten years is 2033 to 2036. The certification is needed in 2031 and the emergency dock in 2032.

The assessment drawn by the same retired commander is the consequence. If Henderson's land tenure, environmental approvals and civil construction slip past 2032, Australia faces a multi-year capability vacuum, and Washington retains both the legal duty and the political justification to defer or cancel the transfers altogether.

**→ Expanded:** category Q

References[243] AUKUS infrastructure, part 1: The docking gap that could sink Pillar 1 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd) — two submarine commands, Commander of the RAN Submarine Squadron, Director of Submarine Policy and Warfare, and Head of the Submarine Capability Team established to rectify Collins introduction into service; Pearls and Irritations, 29 July 2026[197] The dry-dock decision turns Henderson into a system of projects DECnet, August 2026[195] Press conference, Henderson Prime Minister of Australia, September 2025[200] AUKUS infrastructure, part 2: the Henderson bottleneck Pearls and Irritations, July 2026[255] Australia advances AUKUS capability with dry dock design appointment Minister for Defence and Minister for Defence Industry, 29 July 2026[345] Henderson Defence Precinct: land tenure, status and facilities Department of Defence, Henderson Defence Precinct programme page, and Defence Ministers' announcement of 24 August 2026[346] Australian Marine Complex: tenants, facilities and the ship-lift Naval News, July 2026, and published descriptions of the Australian Marine Complex↑ Back to the boat

A fourth nuclear site, with no stated capability, no cost, no date and no location. The leading candidate's port is half Chinese-owned until 2112.

Australia is building three nuclear submarine sites at once. Stirling is the operating base, at $8 billion over a decade. Henderson is depot maintenance and contingency docking, at $12 billion committed against an estimated $25 billion. Osborne is construction, at $8.5 billion committed against more than $30 billion, complete in 2040.

The east coast base would be the fourth. What has never been published is what it does. Whether it home-ports boats, as Stirling does, and therefore needs the same nuclear-certified berthing, emergency response, shore power, security, waste handling and trained workforce. Whether it maintains them, and therefore needs what Henderson is spending $25 billion to acquire. Or whether it is a port of call.

No cost has been published, because no capability has been specified. New South Wales analysis of a Newcastle base refers to hundreds of millions for port upgrades and the construction of specialised shipyards and nuclear-certified facilities, and estimates 3,000 to 5,000 skilled jobs over several decades against a fall of about a billion dollars in local property values and incompatibility with the deep-water container terminal the city has long sought.

The location carries its own difficulty. Government briefing papers record that the Port of Newcastle is half owned by China Merchants Port Holdings, on a lease running to 2112.

Three sites are funded, none is finished, and the fourth is undefined. A decision is now not expected until the mid-2030s, having been expected by the end of 2023.

Read more: category QReferences[247] AUKUS: Australian city of Newcastle favoured for future nuclear-powered submarine base The Nightly, June 2026, citing government briefing papers of 2022-2023[248] Newcastle nuclear sub base to stop city's container terminal, lower house prices Newcastle Herald, May 2026, reporting 217 pages of New South Wales Cabinet Office and Premier's Department documents obtained under privilege[249] Air Power Precinct strengthens Fortress Newcastle as possible east coast submarine base Defence Connect, July 2026[195] Press conference, Henderson Prime Minister of Australia, September 2025[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

A construction yard with no graving dock. Once a reactor goes critical, the nearest certified out-of-water facility is three thousand kilometres away, and does not exist yet either.

A submarine yard does not finish its work at launch. The boat is fitted out, its reactor is brought to criticality for the first time, and it is tested. Faults found at that stage are the reason first-of-class programmes run long.

The master plan for Osborne does not co-locate a nuclear-certified graving dock at the build site. A retired Rear Admiral and former commander of Australia's submarine force records the consequence: the yard is left without the certified out-of-water infrastructure required to safely inspect or repair a submarine with a live reactor.

The register credits the progress at Osborne, as he does. Land has been acquired, piling is under way and the first halls are funded. What is not funded, and not in the plan, is the facility that would let a fault in a newly built Australian submarine be fixed where it was built.

The fallback is Henderson, 2,700 kilometres away, where the dock is still in preliminary master planning and at least seven years from operating. The same assessment lists this among the programme's single-point vulnerabilities, describing it as an unaddressed post-criticality safety vacuum.

The assembly plant is also dependent on American and British supply chains that are themselves carrying acute maintenance backlogs and equipment constraints.

Read more: category HReferences[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[243] AUKUS infrastructure, part 1: The docking gap that could sink Pillar 1 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd) — two submarine commands, Commander of the RAN Submarine Squadron, Director of Submarine Policy and Warfare, and Head of the Submarine Capability Team established to rectify Collins introduction into service; Pearls and Irritations, 29 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

The tablets are to be pre-positioned "as required". Ireland gives them to every household. The Commonwealth signs the treaty; the State supplies the ambulances.

Potassium iodide blocks radioactive iodine from being taken up by the thyroid. The national radiation protection agency describes it as a short-term measure, and it is the one intervention a household can use in the first hours of a release.

Asked in the Western Australian Parliament in June 2026 what arrangements exist, the Minister for Health answered that the Department of Health has established plans and exercised processes to pre-position and distribute supplies of stable iodine to local hospitals, as required, based on needs and relevant circumstances.

The answer did not state which hospitals would hold the tablets, or how many would be available. Reporting of the plan describes hospitals in Perth's southern suburbs as able to distribute tablets rather than as holding them. In Australia the tablets are not sold in pharmacies and are stockpiled by police and by local and national authorities for distribution only once an emergency is declared.

Other countries with nuclear facilities near populations do it differently. Ireland distributes tablets to every household. France and Switzerland pre-distribute to communities near nuclear sites. Germany holds stockpiles in schools, public shelters and pharmacies. Japan holds them with local authorities for distribution at public shelters. Parts of Canada pre-distribute to residences within about eight kilometres of a plant.

The second half of the entry is the division of responsibility. The Commonwealth negotiated the agreement, accepted the indemnity recorded at C-7, and owns the submarines. The response named in the Minister's answer runs through the state health department, the State Emergency Management Committee, the Western Australia Police Force, St John Ambulance and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, with the national radiation agency coordinating.

No published document states which government funds that response, at what level, or who compensates a resident, a grower or a port operator for loss. The register records at C-7 that Australia has no nuclear third party liability statute of any kind.

**→** A member of the Western Australian upper house has stated that the state government lacks a clear emergency plan for Rockingham, Cockburn and Kwinana.

References[352] The plan to stock anti-nuclear pills at hospitals in Perth's southern AUKUS suburbs WAtoday, 26 August 2026, and the Western Australian Minister for Health's answer to a question on notice from Dr Brian Walker MLC, June 2026[353] Distribution and administration of potassium iodide in the event of a nuclear incident: international practice National Academies Press, comparative survey of national arrangements[351] Emergency plan for 'unlikely' AUKUS nuclear accident mapped out by Western Australian authorities ABC News, 27 August 2026, reporting the Western Australian state hazard plan published that month[347] Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Australian Submarine Agency, published treaty text, tabled in Parliament 12 August 2024↑ Back to the boat

The threat is described as immediate. The first transferred submarine is due in the 2030s.

The Review that justifies the programme named 2023 to 2025 as the period requiring urgent attention. The first transferred submarine is due in 2032.

Nothing in the programme delivers a submarine before then. The rotational force at Stirling from late 2027, whose first boat was named in October 2026, consists of American and British boats under their own commands, recorded at F-15. The Collins extension, recorded at Q-3 and Q-8, is intended to hold the line rather than add capability.

Seven years separate the announcement of urgency from the first hull, and nine from its arrival.

References[175] AUKUS security partnership House of Lords Library[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026[369] First US submarine assigned to SRF-West Australian Submarine Agency, joint statement of the AUKUS defence ministers, 26 October 2026↑ Back to the boat

The sovereign capability the programme exists to create arrives twenty years after the announcement.

The stated purpose of the programme is a sovereign capability: boats built in Australia, by Australians, at Osborne.

The first of them is due in the early 2040s, with the yard complete in 2040 and the fleet of eight in the 2050s. That is about twenty years from the announcement and thirty from the declaration of urgency.

Everything before it is either second-hand or somebody else's. The register records that no published document states what sovereign capability Australia holds in the interval.

References[175] AUKUS security partnership House of Lords Library[188] Building SSN-AUKUS: Australia's nuclear submarine yard at Osborne Navy Lookout, February 2026↑ Back to the boat

Without extension the Collins boats retire from 2026. The programme bridging to AUKUS began before its design was complete.

The Collins class has a design life of 28 years. Without extension the six boats were to be withdrawn between 2026 and 2036, and on that path Australia reaches two boats when the first Virginia arrives and none by the second. The life-of-type extension exists to prevent that. It began at the end of May 2026 with HMAS Farncomb, at up to $11 billion over ten years, and is intended to add about ten years to each boat, carrying the last into the late 2040s.

The Australian National Audit Office has examined it. One of five key design reviews was achieved on schedule. Accumulated delays contributed to a decision to reduce the scope planned for Farncomb, and design work for the full core work package was not complete as at early 2026 — the year the work started. No separate performance management framework was established for the extension, and no project-specific performance measures were written into either the support contract or the design contract.

Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry described the class as already on geriatric life support, and stated that even with the extension it cannot be operationally sustained beyond the early 2040s.

A former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, who chaired the Secretaries Committee on National Security, put it to the same inquiry that with the Collins class almost certainly unable to be sent into harm's way by the early 2030s, the situation has created an existential threat to the Navy's future submarine capability.

The boats themselves are not a known quantity. Defence disclosed severe corrosion in Farncomb and separate structural defects in Sheean, and because the class was built under varying conditions each hull presents differently. The full extent of the work becomes clear only after each boat is opened up.

Read more: category KReferences[95] Defence's Collins Class Submarines Life of Type Extension: Planning and Implementation Australian National Audit Office[96] Australian Government launches A$11 billion Collins-class submarine extension programme The Defense News, May 2026[97] What role should the Collins Life of Type Extension play in Australia's submarine transition? Strategic Analysis Australia, August 2024[215] The case against the AUKUS submarine project Submission by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Melbourne hearing, 11 June 2026[230] Australia's naval defence without AUKUS Pillar One Dr Michael Keating AC, former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance, and Employment and Industrial Relations, and eleven years on the Secretaries Committee on National Security including five as chairman; with Jon Stanford, former division head, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Submitted to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Canberra hearing, 3 September 2026↑ Back to the boat

Elements of the pathway have shifted since the 2023 announcement, including the class of boat transferred.

The pathway announced in March 2023 has already been altered.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue at the end of May 2026 the composition of the transfer changed: three used boats of a single unnamed block, where the earlier plan had been two used boats and one newly built. The block was still unnamed when the first rotation boat was named in October 2026, recorded at K-1. The east coast base shortlist was abandoned in 2023 and the decision has moved to the mid-2030s. Britain deferred its own order to 2028.

None of those changes was presented as a delay. Each was presented as the plan.

References[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026[210] Labour delays buying new attack submarines until 2028 The Telegraph, 12 September 2026, as reported by GB News, AOL and Express↑ Back to the boat

Yards, wharves, waste facilities and training establishments must exist before a submarine can be based here.

The sequence is fixed by physics rather than by policy. A nuclear submarine cannot be based somewhere that cannot berth it, service it, dock it, hold its waste or crew it.

That means the wharves, the shore power, the emergency response complex, the waste facility, the graving dock, the training establishment and the qualified workforce must all exist before the boat, not alongside it.

The register records the state of each elsewhere in this category and in the entries on bases. None of them is complete, and the dates for several sit after the first boat is due.

References[197] The dry-dock decision turns Henderson into a system of projects DECnet, August 2026[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Late equipment delays the yard, which delays the crew pipeline, which delays the boat.

The programme is not one schedule but several, and each depends on the others. Published assessment lists them: the availability of three transferable American boats, American replacement production, Australian crew training, the development of the nuclear regulator, maintenance capacity at Stirling and at Henderson, and the transition to SSN-AUKUS.

The consequence is stated in the same terms. A delay in any one of those can leave completed infrastructure without enough submarines, or submarines without enough trained personnel.

The register records both failure modes elsewhere. Stirling is to be ready in 2027 for boats due in 2032. The academy opens in 2028 for a trade that takes ten years. The Henderson dock is seven years from operating against a first boat in 2032. Britain settles its order in 2028, a year after cutting steel.

No published document identifies which of those schedules is the binding constraint, or what the plan is if one slips.

References[245] Australia confirms enduring access for United States Virginia-class submarines at HMAS Stirling Army Recognition, August 2026[189] Why Australia's AUKUS plans could be derailed by worker shortages The Canberra Times, December 2025[243] AUKUS infrastructure, part 1: The docking gap that could sink Pillar 1 Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd) — two submarine commands, Commander of the RAN Submarine Squadron, Director of Submarine Policy and Warfare, and Head of the Submarine Capability Team established to rectify Collins introduction into service; Pearls and Irritations, 29 July 2026↑ Back to the boat

Defence assessed motors, engines and generators as the medium-to-high risk to reaching the extended life. In May 2026 it cancelled their replacement.

The core work package of the extension was the machinery: main motors, diesel engines, electrical generators, power conversion and distribution, and the cooling system. Defence's stated reason for replacing them was that those items presented a medium-to-high risk of the boats not meeting their planned withdrawal dates. An optronics mast was also in scope, and was removed in mid-2024 after $33 million had been spent on it.

In March 2026 Defence proposed refurbishing and maintaining the existing systems instead of replacing them, for up to five of the six boats. The Auditor-General records that this represented a fundamental shift in the delivery strategy. Government agreed in May, announcing a conditions-based approach in which each boat is assessed individually and base components are retained and restored. Most or all of the boats will now run their original engines until retirement in the 2040s.

Long-lead items had already been bought. Approved funding of $1.8 billion included the procurement of new diesel motors and generators for Farncomb and Collins.

The hull is not the concern. That assessment was done, was favourable, and was peer-reviewed by the United States Navy's NAVSEA and by Saab-Kockums. What is being asked to last another decade is the machinery inside it, which Defence itself identified as the thing most likely to fail first.

Read more: category KReferences[100] Planned upgrades to Collins Class submarines scaled back ABC News, 19 May 2026[101] Submarines sail troubled waters Australian Defence Magazine, May 2026, reporting the Australian National Audit Office[102] An update on the Collins class life extension program Defense.info, November 2021[103] First Collins LOTE may be descoped Australian Defence Magazine↑ Back to the boat

The treaties are signed and the training is running. The order size, the steel, the yard, the workforce and the machinery are not.

The most substantial published defence of the programme argues that being on track does not mean being risk-free, but that known risks are acknowledged and are being mitigated. The claim deserves testing against dates rather than adjectives.

What is on schedule is real and the register records it. The optimal pathway was agreed within eighteen months. The treaties are signed and in force. Training is running, with personnel equivalent to three Collins-class crews having passed through the Virginia-class pipeline. The rotational force is on schedule: the first boat was named in October 2026 for late 2027.

What is not on schedule is the rest. Britain will not decide how many SSN-AUKUS boats it is buying until 2028, a year after steel is cut at Barrow. The replacement of the Collins motors, engines and generators, which Defence itself assessed as the medium-to-high risk to the boats reaching their withdrawal dates, was cancelled in May 2026 after the engines had been bought. The Auditor-General found one of five key design reviews achieved on schedule and the design of the full work package incomplete in the year the work began. United States production runs at about 1.2 boats a year against the 2.33 the Navy states it needs. Osborne requires more than fifty structures and has funding for enabling works in one area. Heavy nuclear-certified work at Henderson cannot begin until existing tenants are relocated to facilities not yet built. The training academy opens in 2028 for a trade that takes ten years to qualify.

The same author notes that the most significant challenge is the submarine industrial base and workforce across all three countries, and that expanding that base is itself an objective of the programme. Both are correct. An objective is not a capacity, and a risk that is acknowledged is not thereby mitigated.

Read more: category NReferences[235] Five years on, AUKUS has endured through extraordinary political change Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Professor, University of Western Australia Defence and Security Institute, and Non-Resident Fellow, Lowy Institute; Australian Financial Review, 15 September 2026[95] Defence's Collins Class Submarines Life of Type Extension: Planning and Implementation Australian National Audit Office[101] Submarines sail troubled waters Australian Defence Magazine, May 2026, reporting the Australian National Audit Office[85] Navy Virginia-Class Submarine Program and AUKUS Submarine (Pillar 1) Project: Background and Issues for Congress, RL32418 Congressional Research Service[173] AUKUS infrastructure, part 3: the Osborne construction enterprise Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, 31 July 2026[369] First US submarine assigned to SRF-West Australian Submarine Agency, joint statement of the AUKUS defence ministers, 26 October 2026↑ Back to the boat

The American decision to sell the first hull is scheduled for 2031. Australia must be certified nuclear-ready by then.

The transfer is not automatic. A United States decision to sell the first Virginia-class hull is scheduled for 2031, and Australia must by then hold the certification and the facilities to receive and sustain it.

A retired Rear Admiral and former commander of Australia's submarine force has assessed that the belated start to master planning at the Henderson Defence Precinct guarantees that nuclear-ready certification will not be achieved by that date, and that the same delays mean Australia will be unable to provide the certified depot-level maintenance and contingency docking required to support the rotational force that arrives from 2027.

The register records the supporting dates elsewhere and they do not contradict him. Master planning at Henderson was still under way in 2026, site characterisation across Cockburn Sound was incomplete, heavy nuclear-certified civil works cannot begin until existing tenants are relocated to facilities not yet built, and the graving dock is not expected to commission before the late 2030s.

The gate is therefore a year in which two things must both be true: that the United States is willing to sell, and that Australia is certified to receive. No published Australian document states what happens if the second fails.

Read more: category PReferences[241] AUKUS is heading for the rocks: why Australia must pivot to a sovereign LEU submarine fleet Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, September 2026, ahead of his appearance at the AUKUS Public Inquiry[197] The dry-dock decision turns Henderson into a system of projects DECnet, August 2026[200] AUKUS infrastructure, part 2: the Henderson bottleneck Pearls and Irritations, July 2026[195] Press conference, Henderson Prime Minister of Australia, September 2025↑ Back to the boat

$244.7 billion, $268 to $368 billion, and $71 to $96 billion over ten years. No published document connects them.

The defence of the headline figure deserves stating first, because it is a real one. The project carries a fifty per cent contingency: about $123 billion of the $368 billion is margin, more than ten times the usual allowance on a large project. On that reading the top of the range is a deliberate overestimate, not an underestimate, and the risk is already priced. The same analysis notes the figure covers whole-of-programme costs to 2055, including workforce, infrastructure, regulation and sustainment, not eight hulls.

What follows is not a claim that the number is too low. It is that there is more than one number.

The same paper that sets out the contingency gives the cost of the optimal pathway as $244.7 billion until 2055. The government's own range is $268 to $368 billion over thirty years to 2054-55. The National Defence Strategy of April 2026 revised the ten-year submarine figure from $53 to $63 billion up to $71 to $96 billion, a rise of about a third in two years. Published analysis records that it cannot be established whether the cost of the submarine construction yard sits inside the thirty-year range or in addition to it.

The agency responsible has also declined to use the headline figure. In October 2023 its head brought a 178-page briefing pack to Defence Estimates which omitted the $368 billion entirely, stating that a range of complex variables would affect costs over the life of the programme. The pack was released later under freedom of information.

For comparison, the estimate for a new submarine fleet was above $50 billion in 2016 and $77 billion, or up to $171 billion allowing for inflation, in 2021.

Read more: The AUKUS Cost BlowoutReferences[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024[160] Defence figures show AUKUS submarine budget blows out by one third and may reach $96 billion The Nightly, April 2026[161] Getting a clear view of the cloudy budget for Australia's nuclear submarine program Strategic Analysis Australia, updated after Senate estimates of 14 February 2024[162] AUKUS will cost Australia $368bn. What if there was a better, cheaper defence strategy? The Guardian, June 2025↑ Back to the boat

The largest procurement in Australian history has not been assessed by the body that assesses procurements, and the government has not said how it is paid for.

The Productivity Commission has historically challenged defence procurement on value-for-money grounds as industry policy. Published analysis records that defence spending, and Australian builds in particular, avoid the scrutiny a cost-benefit analysis would impose. None has been published for this programme.

Two consequences follow.

The first is that the industrial case rests on unexamined numbers. The cost per direct job created by the local build has been estimated at upward of $18 million. Because the skills involved are in demand across other industries, the net gain in employment is lower than the headline, which raises the cost per job further. For the local build to be worth its premium, the spill-over benefits to other industries would have to be very large. No published analysis establishes that they are.

The second is that the funding source has never been stated. Australia has not been told whether the programme is to be met through higher taxes, reductions in other government expenditure, or borrowing. The one clear indication points inward: of the $9 billion committed over the first forward estimates, $6 billion was already earmarked for submarines and $3 billion came from savings found inside the existing Defence portfolio.

The programme is forecast to lift defence spending from 2.05 to 2.20 per cent of gross domestic product, about seven per cent of the defence budget.

Read more: The AUKUS Cost BlowoutReferences[14] The economics of AUKUS Lowy Institute, March 2023[163] Explainer: AUKUS economics, the forward estimates United States Studies Centre, March 2023[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre↑ Back to the boat

About $3 billion has been delivered to the United States and $4.6 billion committed to Britain. One instalment was paid a month into an American review of whether to proceed.

To the United Kingdom, Australia has committed $4.6 billion over ten years to expand production capacity at Rolls-Royce Submarines in Derby and to fund design work on SSN-AUKUS, with a further $310 million committed in February 2026 for long-lead nuclear propulsion components for the first two Australian-built boats. Reporting at the time of the original commitment described its purpose as clearing bottlenecks on the Rolls-Royce reactor line, where doubts had already been raised about whether cores would be ready for Britain's own first Dreadnought.

To the United States, Australia has committed about $4.6 billion to the submarine industrial base. The first instalment, about $760 million, was paid in February 2025 after a call between the two defence ministers. Meeting his Australian counterpart days later, the United States Defense Secretary remarked that the cheque had cleared. A second instalment of $800 million followed in July 2025. By April 2026 a member of the United States House of Representatives stated that about $3 billion had been delivered, of the roughly $4.6 billion committed.

The second instalment was paid a month after the United States began a formal review, led by an official who had expressed scepticism about the arrangement, of whether it met American criteria. Asked about the timing, the Prime Minister said there was a schedule of payments to be made.

Read more: The AUKUS Cost BlowoutReferences[164] British industry to receive nearly $5 billion from Australia to help build nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide ABC News, March 2024[165] Albanese Government announces acquisition of long-lead items for AUKUS nuclear propulsion systems Minister for Defence Industry, 24 February 2026[166] Australia moves to prop up AUKUS with $4.6bn pledge to help clear Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor bottlenecks in UK The Guardian, March 2024[167] Australia pays US second $800m for AUKUS amid review Australian Associated Press via The Canberra Times, July 2025[168] Australia pays US another $525 million to bolster AUKUS industrial base Breaking Defense, July 2025[169] US defense secretary hosts Australian counterpart Voice of America, 7 February 2025[170] Statement on new AUKUS contract award for Electric Boat Congressman Joe Courtney, April 2026↑ Back to the boat

About $3 billion delivered into American submarine yards. The capacity it buys belongs to General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.

The first major contracts under the arrangement went to General Dynamics Electric Boat, which builds submarines in Connecticut: one of about $420 million in April 2026, and a further $300 million in the same month.

The money expands privately owned capacity. Electric Boat's Groton yard is hiring thousands of additional workers against production backlogs, and needs several thousand more on a net basis over the decade. Huntington Ingalls builds at Newport News. BAE Systems builds at Barrow. Rolls-Royce makes reactors at Derby. None of the resulting plant, tooling or trained workforce is an Australian asset, and none of it is subject to Australian direction.

There is a return and the register records it. A submission to the United Kingdom Parliament notes that Australian government support has secured Australian firms places on the approved vendor lists of both American prime contractors, giving them access to United States Navy programmes beyond the scope of SSN-AUKUS, including Virginia and Columbia class work. The submission's complaint is that Britain has not matched that effort.

References[170] Statement on new AUKUS contract award for Electric Boat Congressman Joe Courtney, April 2026[171] Pentagon awards submarine contract in first for AUKUS pact ABC News, April 2026[172] Australian Government support for defence contractors Written evidence to the United Kingdom Parliament↑ Back to the boat

Each time the last submarine programme was repriced, the government said the new figure was a different measure rather than a higher cost. Both were true.

The Attack class was announced in 2016 at about $50 billion. In 2019 Defence told Senate Estimates the build alone would be $80 billion, with a further $145 billion to sustain the boats to 2080. By 2020 the programme was carried at $89.7 billion.

The government's answer at each step was that this was not a blowout: the higher figure was the cost over the life of the project once inflation and exchange rates were included. That answer was correct. It was also unfalsifiable, because no two of those figures were struck on the same basis.

That is the pattern worth recording, rather than cost growth as such. The contingency now carried on the submarine programme is real and is recorded above. What a contingency does not address is that three figures are again in circulation on three different bases, which is the condition under which the last programme's cost became impossible to track.

The partner's record supplies the other half. The Astute programme was valued at 11.256 billion pounds in March 2024 and 12.2 billion by May 2025, a rise of about a billion in a year, attributed to inflation and delivery cadence within the shipyard. The body that reported those figures is the only non-ministerial source for them: the Ministry of Defence has not permitted the National Audit Office to report on the progress of major defence equipment projects for more than two years.

Read more: The AUKUS Cost BlowoutReferences[206] Australia's Attack Class submarine project faces criticism over rising costs and milestone delays ABC News, January 2021[207] Australia's Attack-class submarine programme to cost $152bn Naval Technology, December 2019[208] Astute costs escalate, again Defence Eye, May 2025↑ Back to the boat

The figure is stated to cover sustainment to 2055. No document states how much of it that is.

An institute that supports the programme sets out what the figure is meant to cover. The $244.7 billion base estimate, before the contingency recorded at R-1, is said to account for much more than eight submarines: the whole of programme costs, including workforce, infrastructure, regulatory requirements, and the cost of sustaining the boats and their supporting facilities until 2055.

The register accepts that description and records what follows from it. If the figure covers three decades of operation as well as construction, then the acquisition is a minority of it, and the larger part is a running cost Australia has never carried before for any nuclear system.

What has not been published is the split. No document states what proportion of the estimate is acquisition, what proportion is sustainment, what the annual sustainment cost is expected to be at steady state, or what it is based on. Analysis of the budget papers finds no breakdown of either the ten-year figure or the thirty-year one.

References[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre[336] Getting a clear view of the cloudy budget for Australia's nuclear submarine program Strategic Analysis Australia, updated after Senate estimates hearings on the Defence portfolio, 14 February 2024[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre↑ Back to the boat

One analysis says infrastructure is included. Another says it is not clear whether the yard is in the figure or off budget.

The question is simple and it has no published answer. Osborne is costed at more than $30 billion, Henderson at an estimated $25 billion, and Stirling at about $8 billion. Those are the three sites the programme requires.

One reading is that they sit inside the headline figure. An institute that supports the programme states that the base estimate covers the whole of programme costs including infrastructure.

Another reading is that nobody knows. Analysis published after Senate estimates in February 2024 records that there is no breakdown of the ten-year or thirty-year figures, and states directly that it is not clear whether the cost of the submarine construction yard is part of those estimates or in addition to them as an off-budget amount.

The register does not resolve it, because the material that would resolve it has not been released. It records that two informed readings of the same published figures disagree about whether $30 billion of shipyard is inside them, and that the disagreement exists because no composition has been published.

References[161] Getting a clear view of the cloudy budget for Australia's nuclear submarine program Strategic Analysis Australia, updated after Senate estimates of 14 February 2024[195] Press conference, Henderson Prime Minister of Australia, September 2025[336] Getting a clear view of the cloudy budget for Australia's nuclear submarine program Strategic Analysis Australia, updated after Senate estimates hearings on the Defence portfolio, 14 February 2024[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre↑ Back to the boat

No published provision exists for dismantling the boats, storing the reactor cores, or the site that would hold them.

The base estimate is described by its supporters as covering whole of programme costs to 2055. Disposal does not fall inside that window. The boats transferred from 2032 retire between 2047 and 2053, as recorded at K-15, and the Australian-built boats serve into the 2070s.

Nothing published costs what happens then. There is no figure for dismantling a hull, none for the facility that would do it, none for transporting a reactor compartment, and none for the site that would hold the fuel. The register records at O-3 that none of those facilities has been built, sited or costed, and at A-14 that the submarine agency was asked for its cost estimates for a waste facility and answered that they could not be found.

The register records at O-1 that Britain has spent forty-three years on this problem without completing a single dismantlement, and has put the eventual disposal cost of its own backlog at over £10 billion across twenty-five years.

Read more: category OReferences[107] Australia hasn't figured out low-level nuclear waste storage yet, let alone high-level waste from submarines The Conversation[126] The Royal Navy has taken 43 years to dispose of one nuclear submarine and 22 more need to be broken up 19FortyFive, August 2026[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre[270] AUKUS is heading for the rocks: the statutory bar on degrading United States readiness Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO CSC RAN (Ret'd), Pearls and Irritations, September 2026, citing 10 U.S.C. § 8677↑ Back to the boat

No published comparison shows what the same money would buy in fuel, refining, munitions or transmission.

The programme is the largest single capital commitment in Australian history. Nothing published sets it against the other shortfalls the same government has identified.

The clearest of those is liquid fuel. Australia holds reserves reported at 22 days of diesel against a 90-day international obligation, retains two refineries from eight in 2005, and imports roughly 90 per cent of its transport fuel. In May 2026 the government announced a Fuel Security and Resilience Facility of $14.8 billion, establishing the first government-owned reserve of about a billion litres and targeting 50 days, still short of the obligation.

The two figures are not struck on the same basis: one covers a decade of fuel measures, the other thirty years of submarines. Even allowing for that, the difference is an order of magnitude, and both address shortfalls the government has itself declared. Others sit alongside them, including guided weapons manufacture, transmission capacity and the refining base.

The register takes no position on which is the better use of the money. It records that no published document places them on the same page, and that the comparison an independent review would ordinarily impose has not been made.

References[209] US attack submarine output still short of Navy goal UK Defence Journal, September 2026[14] The economics of AUKUS Lowy Institute, March 2023[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre↑ Back to the boat

No published threshold requires the programme to be re-examined if the estimate rises, by any amount.

Large programmes normally carry a reconsideration point: a cost or schedule threshold at which the decision itself is re-examined rather than merely reported.

No such threshold has been published for this one. The estimate has already moved from $268 to $368 billion, and the ten-year figure from $53 to $96 billion, without triggering any published review of the acquisition.

The register records the absence rather than proposing a number. What is missing is a stated point at which the answer could change.

References[160] Defence figures show AUKUS submarine budget blows out by one third and may reach $96 billion The Nightly, April 2026[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

The claimed industrial and economic returns have not been published as a costed forecast.

The returns are stated as counts. Twenty thousand direct jobs over thirty years, a peak industrial workforce of up to 8,500, about 3,000 direct jobs from the Stirling works, 4,000 to 5,500 at Osborne during construction, and 30,000 jobs claimed across the British programme.

None of that is a forecast. A costed industrial case would set the expenditure against the output it generates, over a defined period, with assumptions that can be tested. No such document has been published, and as recorded at R-2 no cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken at all.

The only figure that approaches one runs the other way, and it is a division rather than a study: the programme's headline cost set against the jobs claimed gives upward of $18 million per direct job.

The scale of the sector receiving them is also smaller than the announcements imply. Evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry put it plainly: more people work in legal and accounting than in defence, and more people make beer and wine than are employed in shipbuilding.

References[189] Why Australia's AUKUS plans could be derailed by worker shortages The Canberra Times, December 2025[14] The economics of AUKUS Lowy Institute, March 2023[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024[272] AUKUS is being exposed, but will anything change? Pearls and Irritations, July 2026, reporting evidence given to the AUKUS Public Inquiry↑ Back to the boat

$151.6 million over the forward estimates against $268 to $368 billion over thirty years. No published document explains the ratio.

AUKUS has two pillars. The first buys submarines. The second covers artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, hypersonics, electronic warfare, advanced cyber and undersea autonomy, and is the part that would build an Australian technology base.

The budget treats them differently. Initiatives under the second pillar were given $151.6 million over the forward estimates. The first is costed at $268 to $368 billion over thirty years. Annualised, that is roughly $38 million a year against about $12 billion.

The innovation money is also not new money. The Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator was allocated $3.4 billion over a decade, and the portfolio statement records that it is to be met entirely from funds repurposed from other Defence projects.

The American side is the same shape. The FY2025 request for AUKUS under the International Innovation Initiatives program was about $79.8 million, of which $10 million was for a shared computing environment. The FY2024 request was $25 million and $12.5 million was provided.

The two figures are not struck on the same basis, and the register says so: one covers four years of a technology programme, the other three decades of a platform acquisition. The order of magnitude survives the correction. No published document explains the ratio, or states what capability the second pillar is expected to produce for what it is given.

Read more: category JReferences[257] Defence commits $151m to AUKUS pillar two InnovationAus, reporting the Defence portfolio budget statement[258] AUKUS Pillar 2 (Advanced Capabilities): Background and Issues for Congress, R47599 Congressional Research Service, United States[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

Three refusals, a cost estimate the agency says it cannot find, and a department seeking costs against the applicant.

A former senator and Royal Australian Navy submariner has sought the location and cost of the facility that will hold spent naval fuel. Three freedom of information requests were refused. A request to the submarine agency for its latest cost estimates was answered with a statement that they could not be found.

The matter is now in the Federal Court. The Department of Industry, Science and Resources is challenging a ruling that would grant access, and has sought an order requiring the applicant to pay the Commonwealth's legal costs if he is unsuccessful.

The applicant's description of what he is asking for is worth recording, because it disposes of the security argument. He is not seeking the speed of a submarine, its armament or its launch codes. He is asking where the waste will go.

The programme requires a site, a design and a price. The register can establish that Australia has committed to hold the material, as recorded at A-14. It cannot establish where, or for how much, because the documents that would answer both are being litigated.

Read more: category OReferences[228] Rex Patrick warns AUKUS is too costly, too risky and too secretive The Point, 17 July 2026, reporting evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Adelaide hearing[229] Former senator on the government's refusal to release nuclear waste storage information Reporting a submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry↑ Back to the boat

The regulator published its own conclusions on the Stirling waste facility. It did not publish the application, or the 165 responses to it.

Recorded in full at P-5: the regulator published its conclusions on the Stirling waste facility but not the licence application or the 165 submissions about it.

Read more: category PReferences[146] ARPANSA responses to public comments on the ASA licence application Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, July 2024[147] HMAS Stirling nuclear waste management facility approval has Rockingham residents worried ABC News, July 2024[148] Submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, SRF-West Priority Works Parliament of Australia↑ Back to the boat

Asked whether the programme would come in on time and on budget, a former Defence Minister said no, and gave the reason he could say it.

Giving evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry in July 2026, a former Minister for Defence was asked whether the programme would be delivered on time and on budget. His answer was that he did not think it would be, and that he could say so because he was not in government.

The second half of that sentence is the entry. It is a statement, by a person who held the portfolio, that the holder of the portfolio cannot say what he believes about the delivery of the largest procurement in Australian history.

Ministers in office have consistently said the programme is on track. The register records no reason to doubt their sincerity. It records that a predecessor has described the position of an office-holder as one in which that assessment could not be given, and that nothing in the public record allows a reader to distinguish the two cases.

Read more: category RReferences[232] Adelaide hearings reveal key AUKUS insights Mirage News, 18 July 2026, reporting the AUKUS Public Inquiry[231] Christopher Pyne declares AUKUS unstoppable, and says Parliament shouldn't vote on it The Point, 17 July 2026, reporting evidence to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Adelaide hearing. Cited as a former Minister for Defence who supports the programme; now chairman of the consulting firm Pyne and Partners and a non-executive director of the defence manufacturer Highcom↑ Back to the boat

There is no central record of what has been spent. Academics assembled one from public documents and reported that it hardly qualifies as a ledger.

The programme is the largest capital commitment in Australian history. No single published document records what has been spent on it.

In September 2026 researchers set out to construct one, working through public announcements, portfolio budget statements, annual reports and strategy documents to trace everything spent, announced, promised or projected. Their own assessment of the result is that it hardly qualifies as a ledger.

What they could establish is that the bulk of announced Australian funding has gone to infrastructure at three sites: $12 billion at Henderson, $8 billion at Stirling and $8.5 billion at Osborne.

The register records at R-1 that three different headline figures circulate on three different bases. This entry records the consequence: the reconciliation cannot be performed from outside, because the material required to perform it has not been published.

Read more: category RReferences[260] Five years into AUKUS, what do we have to show for it? We’ve measured progress on three key metrics The Conversation, 15 September 2026[158] Explainer: AUKUS' economics, the price of a megaproject United States Studies Centre[159] The Debate Papers: Does AUKUS Pillar I provide capability bang for buck? United States Studies Centre, August 2024↑ Back to the boat

Stirling is 2,400 nautical miles from the South China Sea through a strait that can be closed. Around the continent is about 5,600. An eastern base was announced in 2022 and has not been sited.

The submarines are to be based at HMAS Stirling, on the Indian Ocean, and the contingency they are described as answering is in the Pacific.

The distances follow from the map, and the register states them as its own arithmetic rather than as a published figure. From Stirling to the South China Sea by way of the Lombok Strait is roughly 2,400 nautical miles. Around the continent, west to Cape Leeuwin, across the Bight, south of Tasmania and north up the east coast, is roughly 5,600. At a sustained twenty knots submerged that is about five days against about twelve, so a round trip taken the long way costs something near a fortnight before any time on station.

The short route runs through the two Indonesian passages recorded at G-1, which G-3 records the plan as assuming will stay open.

An east coast base would not depend on either. It was announced in March 2022, the shortlist of three was abandoned in 2023, and the decision has since moved to the mid-2030s, with no capability specified and no cost published, as recorded at P-12 and P-14.

The register draws no conclusion about where a base should be. It records that the plan places its fleet behind a closable strait, announced a base on the other coast four years ago, has not sited it, and has published nothing that reconciles the three.

Read more: category PReferences[288] Lombok Strait: the deep-water back door to the Pacific GEOPOL, May 2026[249] Air Power Precinct strengthens Fortress Newcastle as possible east coast submarine base Defence Connect, July 2026[247] AUKUS: Australian city of Newcastle favoured for future nuclear-powered submarine base The Nightly, June 2026, citing government briefing papers of 2022-2023↑ Back to the boat

Sea denial is achieved by placing persistent effects in a defined area. The plan's central acquisition is optimised for long-range passage and endurance at distance.

The National Defence Strategy names deterrence by denial as the cornerstone of Australian defence policy. Sea denial, in doctrinal terms, is making a defined body of water too costly for an adversary to use. It does not require control of that water, and it is achieved by emplacing persistent effects in it: mines, fixed and mobile sensors, land-based anti-ship missiles within range of the area, uncrewed vehicles, and submarines held on station.

The areas that matter for Australia's approaches are identifiable and small. Submerged passage between the Indian and Pacific Oceans is possible at two points, recorded at G-1: Lombok, about twenty kilometres wide at its narrowest, and Ombai-Wetar. A denial posture directed at Australia's approaches would be built around holding those two areas and the sea-air gap behind them.

The central acquisition is optimised for something else. A nuclear-powered attack submarine is bought for transit speed over long distances, endurance without surfacing, and persistence far from base. Those attributes matter for operating at range from Australia. They are not the attributes that determine whether a chokepoint can be held, which are the number of effects that can be sustained in the area and the cost of replacing them.

Two boats on station, recorded at A-12, is the number the fleet produces. The register records at A-6 that mines, uncrewed systems and land-based anti-ship missiles are funded and arriving, and that no published analysis compares them with the submarines.

What is absent is any published document that sets out the force structure required to hold Lombok and Ombai-Wetar, compares it with the force structure being bought, or explains why denial at those two points was not the application chosen.

Read more: category GReferences[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[286] AUKUS at the watershed Marc Ablong, former Deputy Secretary, Australian Department of Defence, June 2026. Cited as a supporter of the programme distinguishing the claims made for it[288] Lombok Strait: the deep-water back door to the Pacific GEOPOL, May 2026[287] What exactly is Australia's strategy of denial meant to do? ASPI The Strategist. Cited as an institute that supports the programme conceding the point↑ Back to the boat

The Review named 2023 to 2025 as requiring urgent attention. The first submarine is due in 2032 and the fleet in the 2050s.

The Defence Strategic Review divided its work into three periods and named the first, 2023 to 2025, as the one requiring urgent attention. It described the strategic circumstances as the most dangerous since the Second World War.

The submarines deliver nothing in that period, or in the second. The first transferred boat is due in 2032, the first Australian-built boat in the early 2040s, and the fleet of eight in the 2050s.

Three decades separate the declaration of urgency from the capability it produced. The register records the individual facts at A-13, Q-1 and K-8. The contradiction is between them: a document that says the danger is now, and a programme whose answer arrives across the following thirty years, with no published statement of what covers the interval beyond an extension of the existing boats and the rotation of foreign ones.

Read more: category QReferences[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[122] AUKUS revised timeline comparison United States Studies Centre, June 2026[175] AUKUS security partnership House of Lords Library↑ Back to the boat

Maritime programmes hold 41 per cent of future investment on locked budgets. Ninety-six cents in the dollar of the announced uplift is not appropriated.

The plan describes an integrated force. Its funding is not integrated.

Maritime programmes take 41 per cent of the total future investment funding, a larger share than Army, Air Force, space and cyber combined, and those budgets are locked decades into the future. The institute that supports the programme states that Pillar 1 has become its own funding centre of gravity and risks crowding out the connective capabilities needed to deliver an integrated force.

At the same time, of the $53 billion additional decade investment announced, about four cents in the dollar is appropriated. The rest sits in forward estimates, out-year profiles, contingency reserve and unspecified financing.

The two facts sit badly together. One part of the plan is committed and protected for decades; the remainder depends on money that has been announced rather than appropriated, and the last plan of that shape lost roughly $48 billion without a decision being announced.

The register records the figures at I-1 and I-2. The contradiction is that a force described as integrated is being funded as one programme and a set of intentions.

Read more: category RReferences[279] Australian defence business outlook 2026: growing budgets, harder markets Strategic Analysis Australia, September 2026[280] The cost of Defence: ASPI Defence budget brief 2026-2027 Australian Strategic Policy Institute, August 2026. Cited as an institute that supports the programme making the criticism[281] 2026 cost of Defence: the budget is a promise to the future paid for by the present ASPI The Strategist, May 2026↑ Back to the boat

A white paper, a competitive evaluation, a two-pass Cabinet process and a business case. Each has a precedent in Australian practice. None was used here.

Australia has an established method for decisions of this kind, and it is not disputed. It has four parts, and each was applied to the programme this one replaced.

A Defence White Paper sets the strategic assessment and the force structure that follows from it, published and open to submissions. Seven were produced between 1976 and 2016, as recorded at B-2. None has been produced since, and none preceded this decision.

A competitive evaluation process tests the options. One was run for the French submarine acquisition and audited by the Auditor-General in 2016-17. None was run here, as recorded at B-5.

A two-pass Cabinet process considers the decision twice, on professional advice from Defence. It was the stated process for the previous submarine choice. It was not used, as recorded at B-1, where the decision went to a National Security Committee convened the day before the announcement.

A business case establishes value for money and a whole-of-life cost, both mandatory under the Commonwealth Procurement Rules. Neither has been released, as recorded at B-6, for a programme costed at $268 to $368 billion. The Auditor-General found the same two documents missing on the $45 billion frigate programme, and a parliamentary committee opened an inquiry within a day.

The register draws no conclusion about what should follow. It records that the four procedures exist, that all four have precedents in Australian practice, that each was used for smaller decisions, and that no published document explains why none was used for the largest.

Read more: category BReferences[2] Release of the Defence Strategic Review Minister for Defence, 24 April 2023[329] Nuclear submarine race spreads beyond nuclear powers as Australia, Brazil and South Korea pursue nuclear-powered submarines Eurasian Times, September 2026, reporting the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors[330] Naval nuclear propulsion: a two-track solution for IAEA safeguards integrity IDN-InDepthNews, Vienna, November 2025[331] Gatekeeping nuclear-powered submarines: what will the precedent be? Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation↑ Back to the boat