Australia is betting on a British program plagued by delays, underinvestment and workforce shortages – a gamble that risks leaving the country without any sovereign submarine capability.

In the first part I contrasted the political enthusiasm arising from the recent AUSMIN meetings in Washington, with the reality of output from the US shipyards.

The reality from the waterfront is that the US President of the day in 2031 will not have any surplus submarines and not be able to legally sign off on the sale of the first of 3-5 Virginia class submarines to Australia.

Despite the Defence Secretary’s announcement that the UK is ‘ All In’ with AUKUS, I think relying on Britain for salvation seems very foolhardy.

As recent statements by its Commander, the First Sea Lord, indicate, the Royal Navy is stretched thin, reflecting decades of under investment and a failure to replace its ageing ships in a timely manner.  In October he launched a 100 day blitz to try and rectify the poor availability of Royal Navy’s submarines.

The recent statement by Rear Admiral Phil Mathias, Royal Navy retired, a highly experienced, former director of nuclear policy at the UK’s Ministry of Defence, reported in the UK’s _Daily Telegraph_ newspaper, provide strong corroboration to my earlier assessment that the delivery of the British designed SSN AUUS is likely to be late, over budget and experience significant first of class issues. And that the huge size of the submarine does not meet Australia’s operational requirements and will make it too expensive to own and crew whilst meeting our aim for a 12 submarine, two-ocean based submarine capability.

Rear Admiral Mathias observed: “Dreadnought is late, Astute class submarine delivery is getting later, there is a massive backlog in Astute class maintenance and refitting which continues to get worse, and SSN-Aukus is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale.”

“Performance across all aspects of the programme continues to get worse in every dimension. This is an unprecedented situation in the nuclear submarine age. It is a catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning.”

“[Britain] is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine program.”

 The Astute program is languishing:

• Five of the seven submarines planned have been delivered, none appear to be operational.
• Several are awaiting maintenance; one has not been to sea for over three years and is said to have been stripped for spares to sustain the other submarines.
• The recent move to commission HMS AGAMEMNON, prior to its initial trim dive, the starting point for sea trials, appears to have been a PR ploy, to impress a visiting president and prime minister.
• There is likely to be another 12-18 months of trials and rectification, before she can be accepted into service.
• The final submarine, HMS ACHILLES’s, delivery has slipped from 2026 until at least 2029.

Lord Case, a former Cabinet Secretary, speaking to the Commons Defence Committee, warned that the UK’s plan, announced in the Strategic Review released in June 2025, to build a new nuclear submarine every 18 months is already falling behind due to ‘ decades of neglect’.

The efforts now underway to regenerate Barrow in Furness’s civil infrastructure; where “£200 million ($400 million) over 10 years is nowhere near enough” demonstrates the impact of decades of underinvestment in the town and the UK’s only nuclear submarine building yard.

Record breaking patrols by Britain’s ballistic missile submarines indicate the submarine arm is struggling to sustain the Continuous At Sea Deterrent, with an inadequate sustainment capability and a submarine personnel force which has fallen below critical mass.

Against this backdrop the UK needs to meet the demands of AUKUS, including deployment of an SSN to the Submarine Rotational Force in Western Australia, deliver the new Dreadnought class of ballistic missile submarines, overcome the maintenance backlog for operational submarines and regenerate its submarine arm workforce. As a recent debate in the House of Commons heard, this will not be quick or easy. The pressures on the UK’s Defence Budget and its NATO first strategy gives little room for optimism.

Recent advice that SSN AUKUS will complete the preliminary design review in September 2026 is consistent with announcements that the earlier UK construction commencement target of 2028/29 has slipped to ‘the early 2030s’.

It seems safe to conclude that the slippage in the SSN AUKUS program is inescapable, being in the queue behind the already slipping Astute and Dreadnought programmes, which makes it an increasingly improbable option as a basis for Australia’s future submarine capability.

Lacking any Virginias to fill the gap between the Collins Class and the almost certainly much delayed, over budget, oversized SSN AUKUS, will leave Australia out of pocket and without any sovereign submarine capability.

Something that is on track is Australia’s payments. Firstly, to the US, where the second tranche of $1.5 billion is about to be paid, making a total of $3 billion, to uplift the US submarine industrial base. The UK Commons Defence Select Committee session on 2 December was advised that $4.8 billion has been paid into the UK submarine industrial base.

It would appear that Australia has paid over $6 billion without requiring any deliverables and without any refund clause. All whilst cutting legitimate sustainment and equipment purchases, to fund an SSN AUKUS program that is very unlikely to deliver a sovereign, operational submarine capability any time soon – AUKUS is all in a mess, to coin a phrase.

A catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning indeed. If this comes to pass as foretold, it will not affect the current cheer squad who are ‘all in’ and refuse to confront the waterfront realities – they will have moved on by then, but it should rightly cost the Australian government of the day their jobs.