Australians who have been critical of AUKUS have tended to focus on Australian problems with it – it’s too dear, we have neither a nuclear industry nor a nuclear workforce, etc.

But very recent events and reported remarks by US Defence official Elbridge Colby show how much of a problem it — or at least the nuclear submarine aspect of it — is for the US.

The plan for that part of AUKUS envisages the US selling or leasing three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia in the 2030s. But

• the US has a figure for the number of Virginias its Navy should have; it is nowhere near that;
• it is also nowhere near achieving that. Its completion rate of new Virginias is somewhere over one per year; to reach its desired/mandated total would require a rate of more than two per year;
• it is mandated by law to not transfer Virginias outside its control unless the president affirms that that will not compromise the military capacity of the US. Given the declared inadequacy of its stock of these vessels it is, to say the least, hard to see how he could do that.

Looking at it in these simple terms explains clearly why Colby has been making efforts to foist on us an advance agreement to support the US in any future US war with China over Taiwan – a commitment which the US has not made itself. Naturally, we have not agreed to that.

It is clear why Colby has been making these efforts; it is not possible, short of them succeeding, for the US to meet the conditions it has set for itself for AUKUS, or at least the first, or nuclear submarine, part of it.

It really is extraordinary how three governments, which consider themselves experienced and capable, should have signed on to an agreement which is based on such an unrealistic set of assumptions. In Australia, there is a lot of concern expressed about “saving AUKUS”, for example by the prime minister the other day in China.

But it shouldn’t be a matter of “saving AUKUS”. It should rather be a matter of recognising how shaky the foundations of at least the nuclear submarine part of it are, for the US as well as ourselves, and getting out of those arrangements as quickly as we can. There are better and simpler ways of getting the warships we decide we need – after full consideration, of their purpose as well as their capacity.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.