The Wrong Defence Plan
The twenty biggest holes in AUKUS, drawn from a register of 175 sourced entries. Australia needs a defence review before it goes any further.
Five years after AUKUS was announced, not one submarine has arrived and none will before 2032. A register of 184 documented holes in the plan now sits on this site, every entry sourced. This summary takes the twenty largest and sets them out in plain terms. They fall into four groups: the plan answers the wrong question, it cannot be delivered, its consequences cannot be undone, and none of the checks Australia normally applies to a decision of this size was ever applied to this one. The conclusion is not that the submarines are late. It is that the defence plan is wrong, and that it has never been tested.
Each numbered item below is an entry in The Holes in AUKUS and the Australian Defence Plan, a living register of 184 documented holes across twenty categories with 368 sources. Every entry there states its finding, concedes the strongest argument against it first, and cites its evidence. Anything that could not be sourced was removed, including six claims of the register’s own that failed verification.
The plan answers the wrong question
1. The 2023 review built a force for one kind of war and did not check the other
The Defence Strategic Review chose what it called a focused force: one built against a single military threat rather than balanced across several. That is a legitimate choice, and the register records it as one. What it did not do was test the other kind of pressure on Australia, which is interdiction of what arrives by sea. The Review named six priorities and every one of them answers a shooting war.
Register entry A-4.
2. Submarines do not keep fuel arriving, and Australia holds twenty-two days of it
Australia holds reserves reported at about twenty-two days of diesel, imports around ninety per cent of its transport fuel, and retains two refineries from eight in 2005. It is the fifth-largest importer of refined petroleum product in the world. Eight submarines change none of that. The kinetic question was costed to $368 billion. The logistical question has not been costed at all.
Register entry A-24.
3. America's own study of the Pacific war found the blockade beat Japan, not the battles
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey is the official post-war assessment, and its finding is unambiguous: by August 1945 Japanese war production would have fallen 40 to 50 per cent below its peak through interdiction of shipping alone, without any direct attack on cities or industry. The logistical question has decided a Pacific war before.
Register entry A-8.
4. Three sea lanes have closed since 2022, and no navy has reopened one
Hormuz, the Red Sea and the Black Sea have each closed to normal traffic. None was reopened by force. The mechanism is cheap: shore-launched missiles, one-way drones and mines cost a fraction of the ship they stop, and a fraction of the interceptor fired at them. A coalition with carriers could not reopen the Red Sea. Traffic went round the Cape instead.
Register entry A-2.
5. Eight submarines means two at sea at any one time
Eight hulls are counted in public as eight. On the maintenance and training cycle Australia actually runs, the number available for operations at any moment is two, or at best three. A former Foreign Minister, a former commander of the submarine force and a former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet each arrive at that figure independently.
Register entry A-12.
And it cannot be delivered
6. America is short of submarines for itself and falling further behind
Two yards build American submarines, and the ballistic missile boats come first. Attack submarine production runs at about 1.2 a year against the 2.33 the Navy states it needs. Three carriers are late, a new battleship class has been added, and the maintenance backlog has cost the fleet the equivalent of years of availability. The transfer to Australia is conditional on not degrading United States undersea capability.
Register entry F-16.
7. The US Navy needs sixty-six submarines, has forty-nine, and builds about one a year
The stated requirement is 66 attack submarines. The fleet is 49 and projected to fall further before it recovers. Australia's three boats come out of that number. A former Deputy Prime Minister and Ambassador to Washington, who supports the programme, put it plainly: it will be a political decision whether or not they turn up.
Register entry F-2.
8. American law says no boat leaves unless Australia proves it can run and repair it
The transfer is authorised by an Act of the United States Congress, not by the partnership. The certification requires that Australia has demonstrated the domestic capacity to fully perform every activity necessary to safely host and operate nuclear-powered submarines. A second provision forbids any transfer that would degrade American undersea readiness. Under United States law the boats do not come unless Australia can prove it can operate and maintain them. It cannot yet.
Register entry C-4.
9. The paperwork is on schedule. The boats, the shipyards and the workers are not
What is on schedule is real: the pathway agreed within eighteen months, the treaties signed, and training running. What is not: Britain will not decide how many boats it is buying until 2028, the Collins machinery replacement was cancelled in May 2026 after the engines had been bought, American production runs at half the required rate, Osborne needs more than fifty structures and has funding for one area, and the training academy opens in 2028 for a trade that takes ten years to qualify.
Register entry Q-9.
10. The first boat arrives before Australia has anywhere to lift it out of the water
A submarine of this class needs a major overhaul every eight to ten years, which means cutting the pressure hull open. Ship lifts cannot be used for that work and floating docks are rejected by regulators for it, which leaves a permanent graving dock. The one proposed for Henderson has no contracts and no site works, and is seven to ten years from operating. The first boat is due in 2032.
Register entry P-13.
11. Britain tested every previous submarine reactor on land first. Not this one
Every earlier British naval reactor was proved at a land-based prototype before it went to sea. For this design that step was not taken. The first time the reactor runs in its final form, it runs in a submarine.
Register entry N-1.
12. Defence named the Collins engines as the main risk, then cancelled replacing them
The Collins boats must bridge the gap until the new submarines arrive. Defence assessed the motors, engines and generators as the medium-to-high risk to the boats reaching their extended withdrawal dates. In May 2026 the replacement was cancelled, after the engines had already been bought.
Register entry Q-8.
And the consequences last forever
13. Three tonnes of bomb-grade uranium, buried in Australia, with nowhere chosen
Each reactor holds between 200 and 500 kilograms of uranium enriched to about 93 per cent, which is weapons-grade. Australia must permanently dispose of all of it domestically, and there is no provision to send any of it back. Across eight boats that is more than three tonnes of weapons-usable material requiring isolation for millennia. No site has been named, no facility exists, and no cost has been published.
Register entry O-2.
14. Britain has been retiring nuclear submarines for forty-three years and finished none
Twenty-three British nuclear submarines sit in storage, twelve of them still fuelled, the oldest laid up since 1980. Not one has been completely dismantled. That is the partner whose experience Australia is relying on.
Register entry O-1.
15. Australia is bound for fifty years. Either supplier can leave with one year's notice
The naval nuclear propulsion agreement runs to 31 December 2075. Any party may terminate it on one year's notice. Australia may not enrich, produce or reprocess its own fuel, may not buy it from anyone else, indemnifies both suppliers, and carries all the waste. A second fifty-year treaty with Britain was signed in July 2025, while the United States was formally reviewing whether to continue.
Register entry C-3.
16. The treaty cannot test whether uranium is really for submarines
The Non-Proliferation Treaty allows nuclear material to be withdrawn from routine inspection for naval use. Enriching uranium is the hardest step in building a weapon, and nothing in the system can establish that enrichment is solely for propulsion. The man who ran Australia's own safeguards office has written that it cannot have been the intention of the Treaty's negotiators to provide a loophole of that kind.
Register entry C-5.
17. Australia will be the first country without nuclear weapons to take bomb-grade uranium out of UN inspection
The provision has existed for fifty years and no non-nuclear-weapon state has ever used it. Canada would have been first in 1987 and abandoned its submarine plan. On 7 September 2026 the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency told its Board that South Korea had formally notified its intention to begin the same consultations. Brazil is in confidential negotiations. Iran notified the Agency in 2018 and cites AUKUS publicly.
Register entry C-2.
18. America is building a nuclear missile for these submarines, and Australia has never said whether it would allow one here
Congress has funded a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile for the Virginia class, with deployment required by September 2032. Australia's own boats will be conventionally armed and the agreement forbids Australia arming them. Neither point covers the American and British submarines based at Stirling from 2027. No minister has stated whether Australia would accept, refuse, or decline to ask.
Register entry D-13.
And nobody ever checked
19. Four checks are normally done before a decision this size. None was done
A defence white paper sets out the threat, the force that answers it and the cost, and invites public submissions. Seven were produced between 1976 and 2016, and none since. A competitive evaluation process puts the options side by side; one was run for the French submarines and audited by the Auditor-General, and none was run here. A two-pass Cabinet process considers the decision twice on written advice from Defence; it was the stated method for the previous submarine choice, and instead a committee met the day before the announcement. A business case establishing value for money and whole-of-life cost is mandatory under the Commonwealth Procurement Rules; the Auditor-General found both missing on the $45 billion frigate programme and a parliamentary committee opened an inquiry within a day. Neither exists for the $368 billion submarines.
Register entry T-5.
20. Parliament has examined the safety rules. It has never examined the decision
A Senate committee inquired into the bill creating the nuclear safety regulator and reported with recommendations. The treaties have been through the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, whose advice the government is not bound to follow, and all three were tabled after the decision was made. No committee of the Australian Parliament has examined the acquisition, its cost or its alternatives. The House of Commons Defence Committee has examined delivery, and reported in April 2026 that it has serious doubts AUKUS can be delivered.
Register entry B-7.
What is being asked for
Not cancellation by press release. A review, at the highest level, before another dollar is committed, conducted in public and open to submissions.
Australia has a method for this and used it seven times between 1976 and 2016. A defence white paper states the threat, sets out the force that answers it, prices that force, and invites the country to respond. What is being asked for is not a new process. It is the one that was skipped, exactly once, for the largest commitment in Australian history.
Such a review would have to cover what the 2023 Review did not. Liquid fuel, refining, shipping, power and domestic manufacture, which are the capabilities a siege attacks and none of which appears as a requirement in the current plan. The cost of sustaining a force as distinct from the cost of buying one, which is the larger half and has never been published. And whether a force built for operations at long range is the right answer to a threat that the evidence in this register describes as interdiction of supply rather than invasion.
Defence review now. Before we go any further.
Where the rest of the case is set out
The Holes in AUKUS and the Australian Defence Plan — the full register, 184 entries across twenty categories, 368 sources.
What a Nuclear Submarine Needs Ashore — every facility, maintenance tier and waste stream required, set against what Britain and America run.
The AUKUS Cost Blowout and its summary — the full accounting of what the programme costs, including the costs nobody totals.
The Island Castle — three thousand years of sieges, and what actually decides them. Section 9 sets out why a merchant ship cannot be protected.
AsiaPac Sea Lanes and the sea lanes page — what moves through the region, who depends on it, and what a blockade would do.
The Proof of the Hormuz Pudding — how a lane closes commercially before it closes militarily.
How China Held the World Up — resilience built over two decades, and what it cost to build.
The Sovereign Manufacturing Multiplier and The Energy Generator Queue — why a long forward order is the instrument that creates industry.
The AsiaPac Predicament, The AsiaPac Peace, The AsiaPac Solution and The Prize — the alternative posture, and what a united region is worth.
AUASIA — what replaces AUKUS.
What We’ve Been Signed Up To — the register of Australia’s defence agreements.