Hello Lethe, over from the Ask Anything Thread! I am also a white Australian so I'm not sure about that part of the post, but in terms of the "Big Questions" you raised, I really really hope AUKUS gets cancelled & I think there's at least a moderate possibility of that happening.
I strongly doubt AUKUS included any ROK like language around US military command of submarines in the event of war, although I think both sides who made the deal de facto expected something like that. If such language were revealed, it would make AUKUS insanely unpopular in Australia. One possible read of Albo's current plan is that he might be trying to get the US to cancel/non-perform AUKUS. If he asserts Australian sovereignty over the Australian military (…assuming the American officers who recently joined our military don't make that an issue) & says "No, those submarines won't be used in a war over Taiwan, they'll only be used to protect the Australian national interest, which does not include either Taiwan or a US-China war", to me it's absolutely unthinkable that the US would ever actually give us the Virginia subs. Think about it, if there's any chance that those subs won't be available to the US in the important war, then giving those subs to Australia is effectively sinking them straight after they're made, from the US perspective. Given the US's issues with shipbuilding & meeting their own requirements, the AUKUS deal only makes sense for the US if the US can guarantee that it can use those subs regardless of their nominal ownership. If Albo credibly threatens that, the US would have to cancel the deal with no subs delivered and Australia only having paid $500Mn to $3Bn (if it gets cancelled soon). Albo's jabs at Trump & friendliness with China could be deliberately trying to push Trump to make the cancellation out of anger, while the assertion of sovereignty & national interest gives Colby cold feet - who would be left to advocate for AUKUS, something Biden very publicly claimed credit for?
Now that said, there's a giant hole in this theory, which is: where on Earth would we get our replacements for the nearly-expired Collins-class submarines? I personally think this isn't that big of an issue with this theory because non-performance of AUKUS by the US was always more likely than not. However, there is still a military (and domestic political) problem with not having subs. Japan? Go begging back to the French? Some sort of CANZUK decades long abomination? I don't know. I personally think "Nothing, no subs" is better than spending $350Bn on subs that won't get delivered to us & come with a commitment to being on the losing side of the largest conflict since WW2, but I understand that's not a great position electorally.
I agree that it makes little sense for Washington to approve the transfer of scarce
Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s unless they are very, very confident that, in the event of conflict with China, those submarines would be used to support US wartime objectives, no less than if they were part of the US Navy.
I suspect that Washington has historically been reassured on this point by our enthusiastic cooperation to date both in relation to the American project to contain China and previously in military (mis)adventures of all kinds. Additional breathing space was created by the as-yet unrealised prospect of increasing nuclear submarine production to levels sufficient to service both US Navy and Australian requirements. Yet even if the United States is able to increase
Virginia-class production to 2.33 units per year as envisaged, it's not clear why, from Washington's perspective, those additional submarines would not be better off as US Navy assets.
With Elbridge Colby apparently having put the question of Australia's participation in a hypothetical conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan firmly on the table, and querying the "command structure" of the submarines in those circumstances, it appears that the vague rhetoric and elisions of the past may no longer be adequate. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
that an Australian government cannot possibly give assurances in that regard, and that any assurances given would, in any case, be meaningless, and that he has had conversations with Elbridge Colby to that effect. Prime Minister Albanese has likewise declined to offer a public commitment that Australia would follow the United States into a war with China.
I think we can go one step further: at this point, if AUKUS proceeds without significant modification, it is because Washington has been satisfied that Australia's SSNs will
de facto be America's SSNs. Most likely, that would be because the Albanese government
has made private assurances to Washington despite not being willing to do so publicly. Alternatively, it may be because Washington believes that, if necessary, it can bypass Australia's civilian government. Both of those prospects should, of course, be deeply alarming.
Returning to Malcolm Turnbull: he has long argued that AUKUS is the road to Australia having no submarine capability, because it is destined to collapse and leave a void that we will be unable to fill. In the short-term, the plan is to put the
Collins-class submarines through a rolling two-year life-extension program commencing next year. This program has been
as being a high risk endeavour. Even as a mere layperson, having witnessed Washington's stumbling attempts to extend the life of its
Ticonderoga-class cruisers, or London's stumbling attempts to extend the life of its Type 23 frigates, the challenges appear daunting. It seems vanishingly unlikely that the
Collins LOTE program will adhere to the defined schedule or budget,
or that it will deliver on capability and service life objectives. The possibility that Washington may pull back on the
Virginia transfer, coupled with the probability that the
Collins LOTE will be less than entirely successful, combine to make Turnbull's fear of Australia ending up with
no effective submarine capability an entirely thinkable prospect. Of course, things can always get worse: consider a hypothetical mid-2030s hull loss of a rickety HMAS
Collins with all hands aboard as Indonesia experienced with KRI
Nanggala a few years back.
The actual answer to the hypothetical collapse of AUKUS and/or the
Collins LOTE is refreshingly straightforward: Japan. Though how rapidly Tokyo would be able to rescue us from our follies remains unclear.
