It’s time to ditch Virginia subs for AUKUS and go to Plan B

US Navy Virginia-class submarine, USS North Carolina, docks at the HMAS Stirling port in Rockingham on the outskirts of Perth on August 4, 2023. A US Navy Virginia-class submarine arrived at HMAS Stirling for a scheduled port visit as part of routine patrols in the Indo-Pacific region. (Photo by TONY MCDONOUGH/AFP via Getty Images)

Earlier this month, the Australian government made its first payment of $500 million toward eventually obtaining US nuclear-powered submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement. Because the submarine deal is unlikely to overcome budgetary, organizational, and personnel hurdles, that payment should be Australia’s last.

Rather than sacrificing much of its defense program to buy nuclear submarines, Canberra should instead adopt an AUKUS Plan B that would field new defense technologies such as uncrewed systems and hypersonic weapons that would enhance Australia’s security faster, and for far less.

Most experts believe funding AUKUS’s nuclear submarine plans will be challenging. Australia’s defense budget this year is almost $35 billion USD, and is planned to rise to almost $63 billion annually by the end of this decade when Australia would begin buying US nuclear submarines. At more than $3 billion per boat, each Virginia sub will eat up five to ten percent of the Australia defense budget that year, assuming Australia can double its defense spending in five years. Already, a former top officer has warned that the submarine pact will “cannibalize” other priorities and require deferring future surface warships or eliminating some ground units.

Another potential stumbling block is what’s needed to manage a nuclear propulsion program. More than 8,000 people work for the US Naval Nuclear Propulsion program. Today only about 680 people work at the Australian Submarine Agency. If Australia wants a sovereign submarine force that isn’t dependent on Washington’s oversight, it will need thousands of additional skilled civilian workers.

Military personnel is also a challenge. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) includes about 16,000 sailors today. Each Virginia-class submarine has a crew of about 130 people, and about 400 sailors per ship to account for training, shore duty, and maintenance. With retention already difficult for the Australian Defence Force, the RAN may be hard-pressed to find and keep the thousand-plus highly-qualified personnel it needs to crew the nuclear sub fleet.

Does that mean that the AUKUS deal is dead in the water? Not at all, if leaders take a new approach.

As four years of private Nonproliferation Policy Education Center-Hudson Institute AUKUS workshops revealed, the allies can assemble a Plan B. This plan would consist of parts of the agreement’s Pillar One, which is centered on nuclear submarines, and AUKUS Pillar Two, which is focused on emerging defense technologies.

The next phase of AUKUS Pillar One would have the United States or the United Kingdom sell Australia nuclear submarines in the early 2030s to bolster Australia’s deterrence. Plan B would cancel this phase in light of Australia’s budget, organizational, and personnel shortfalls.

Instead, US and UK subs operating from Australia with RAN sailors and maintained by Australian workers would serve as a sufficient deterrent. The first element of a Plan B is already underway, with US and UK nuclear submarines regularly visiting HMAS Stirling near Perth, including conducting maintenance with a visiting US Navy tender. These visits will become near-continuous as the allies establish the Submarine Rotational Force-West and a permanent maintenance facility during the next two years.

Rather than spend more than $13 billion on US Virginia-class submarines, under Plan B, Australia would maintain its current fleet of aging Collins-class subs while investing in, and eventually fielding, other advanced defense technologies through Pillar Two.

These innovative projects, which include uncrewed systems, AI, quantum computer science, and hypersonic weapons, could deliver technologies that provide most of what the Virginia-class subs would offer for Australia. For example, Chinese fighters can barely reach Australia and Beijing’s bombers cannot risk unescorted missions. Without an air threat, Australian surface warships, uncrewed vessels, and long-endurance drones like the MQ-9 Reaper could patrol the waters around Australia for Chinese subs and ships (which operated last week off Australia’s eastern waters) at a fraction of the price of Virginia-class boats.

Autonomous undersea vehicles like the Ghost Shark or Speartooth could perform some of the offensive missions nuclear submarines would otherwise provide by deploying mines or torpedoes — or weaponizing the vehicle itself. The threat of an unwarned attack on Chinese artificial islands or naval forces in the South China Sea could deter Beijing from armed aggression, especially if China is also confronting US and Japanese forces to the north.

Investing in these projects rather than the Virginia-class nuclear submarines would also benefit US and Australian industry. Numerous startup companies in both countries have emerged to exploit the potential of new technologies. These firms could sell to each AUKUS ally as well as to Japan’s government, which plans to double its defense spending but lacks a domestic startup ecosystem. Potentially, the Pillar Two country list could expand to include South Korea, New Zealand and Canada, creating wider markets and greater demand, which in turn would drive the per unit cost down.

Of course, uncrewed systems cannot do all the missions of a crewed nuclear submarine, and in the long-term Australia might still benefit from pursuing its own nuclear sub program, SSN-AUKUS. But in the near to mid-term, Canberra should pursue a Plan B that would affordably deliver needed offensive capability, alliance interoperability, and industrial capacity to keep the AUKUS meaningful and vital.

Hopefully, this will be on the table during the next discussions between Australia’s government and the new Trump administration.

Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia, served as Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy at the Pentagon (1989-93), and is author of China, Russia and the Coming Cool War (2024).