Australia’s AUKUS submarines could be “wildly out of date” by the time they arrive, according to David Sanger, the White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times.
He says the Pentagon is focused on transitioning the US to unmanned submarines “for either surveillance or for attack”, and that the subs Australia negotiated for may look vulnerable and old when they turn up.
It’s possible Australia is focused on the wrong problem with the submarine deal everybody seems fixated here on the question of will you get these older generation Subs.
My bigger concern is that when you look out over the pentagon’s plans for the next five or 10 years it’s about the transition to unmanned autonomous submarines the kind that you could put say sitting on the bed of the Taiwan Strait that could pop up during a confrontation for either surveillance or for attack and that by the time, should AUKUS get fully unfolded in the 2030s the equipment that you have negotiated for may look wildly vulnerable because AI is going to help track submarines and may look wildly out of date.
Republished from ABC News In-depth, August 07, 2024
David Sanger
David E. Sanger is an American journalist who is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, writing since 1982, covering foreign policy, Globalisation, Nuclear Proliferation, and the Presidency
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