John Menadue recently argued convincingly that the “AUKUS chickens were coming home to roost already”. Shortly thereafter, the Guardian helpfully reported that a “ Trump pick for the Pentagon says selling submarines to Australia would be ‘crazy’ if Taiwan tensions flare”.

Ben Doherty, drawing on written and verbal testimony, was reporting in the Guardian on the US Senate armed services committee hearings concerning the nomination of Elbridge Colby to a primary undersecretary post at the Pentagon,

Colby argued that:

“If we can produce the attack submarines in sufficient number and sufficient speed, then great. But if we can’t, [supplying Australia] becomes a very difficult problem because we don’t want our servicemen and women to be in a weaker position and more vulnerable and, God forbid, worse because they are not in the right place in the right time.”

Earlier Colby tweeted:

“Aukus, in principle, it is a great idea, but I have been very skeptical in practice. … It would be crazy to have fewer SSNs Virginia-class [attack submarines] in the right place and time.”

Doherty also notes that;

According to the Aukus agreement, signed in 2021 by the then Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, the US will sell Australia between three and five Virginia-class conventionally armed nuclear-powered attack submarines (known as SSNs), with the first to be delivered in 2032. These will replace Australia’s ageing Collins class diesel-electric submarines before Australia’s own Aukus submarines can be built.

However, the agreement also mandates that before any boat can be sold to Australia, the US commander-in-chief – the president of the day – must certify that America relinquishing a submarine will not diminish the US navy’s undersea capability.

The US’s submarine fleet numbers are currently a quarter below their target and the country is producing boats at half the rate it needs to service its own needs, US figures show. Experts have argued the chance of that condition being met is vanishingly small.

Despite the growing shroud of uncertainty surrounding delivery, Australia still paid US$500 million in February as “the first instalment in a total of $US3bn pledged in order to support America’s shipbuilding industry as part of the Aukus agreement.”

This informative story in the Guardian makes one wonder how a spirited tabloid might have headlined it - perhaps: “Slippery US submarine team, collects the loot, then delivers a ‘sorry Bruce’ message to down-under chumps”.