After confirming that the Australian Ministry of Defense will invest in the acquisition of nuclear-powered attack submarines as part of the AUKUS strategic partnership in September 2021 with the support of the United States and the United Kingdom, it has been revealed that the Royal Australian Navy will receive three Virginia-class attack submarines from the United States. Two of them will be offered second-hand by the US Navy. Lieutenant General Jonathan Meade, head of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine task force, briefed the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Legislation Committee panel on the plans: “Two Virginias will be transferred to us (the Australian Navy) and we will buy them off the production line. The exact allocation of one … submarine that will be transferred to Australia is still to be determined by Australia and the United States, but we are considering those that have a service life of more than 20 years.” A third Virginia-class battleship will “roll off the line.” According to reports, US shipyards will build 66 Virginia-class submarines, although only 22 have been completed since construction began in 2000, and six more are currently under construction. That raises questions about how the sale of its two older Virginia-class ships will affect the combat potential of the U.S. Navy itself until they are replaced. Development of the class began in the late Cold War to close the performance gap with the new generation of Soviet submarines.
Supplying Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines, and also considering the purchase of the US’s B-21 Raider strategic bomber, has been widely seen as a measure to bolster the country’s ability to contribute to Western bloc military efforts to deter China and North Korea. The ships will have significantly higher endurance than Australia’s native Collins-class diesel-electric ships, enabling them to operate for significant periods of time in the South China Sea or Northeast Asia at a time. They are estimated to keep the Royal Australian Navy in Southeast Asia for 77 days at a time, compared with 11 days for diesel-electric submarines.The partnership has drawn widespread attention from Beijing and Pyongyang, as well as much of Southeast Asia, amid widespread speculation that Australia may eventually enter core sharing agreement Provides submarines with an offensive nuclear strike capability. Submarines are seen as a valuable asymmetric asset against larger and more advanced surface navies and are therefore considered the best asset for Australia and the United States, both of which face the threat of insufficient firepower in a potential conflict in East Asia serious risk.