On March 13, local time, US President Biden, Australian Prime Minister Albanese and British Prime Minister Sunak held the "Australia-Britain-America Alliance" (AUKUS) talks at the San Diego Naval Base in the United States and issued a joint statement, announcing for the first time the relevant details of nuclear submarines that will be provided to Australia, including that the United States will begin to deliver 3 Virginia-class attack nuclear submarines to Australia in the early 30s, and 2 more orders can be followed.
The United Kingdom said that it will improve on the basis of the British Navy's Astute class nuclear submarines, launch a new nuclear submarine tentatively called the "AUKUS class", and will transfer the drawings and related construction technology of the class submarine to Australia, and build 8 new Australian nuclear submarines in Australia, but they will not be delivered until the 40s.
So compared with the "AUKUS class", which is still in the "painting pie" stage, how strong is the combat power of the Virginia-class nuclear submarine that the United States is about to provide to Australia? What problems may Australia encounter after acquiring nuclear submarines?
On the 13th local time, US President Biden, Australian Prime Minister Albanese and British Prime Minister Sunak issued a joint statement at the San Diego Naval Base in the United States, announcing the provision of nuclear submarine details to Australia. (Reuters)
The US side advertises that the Virginia class has "two advantages"
The Virginia-class is the first attack nuclear submarine developed by the United States Navy after the end of the Cold War with both "ocean-going and littoral operations", mainly to replace the aging Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine. According to the classification of nuclear submarines of the World Navy, the Virginia class belongs to the fourth generation of attack nuclear submarines, and the British Astute class also belongs to this generation.
The Virginia class was developed and built by General Electric Boats, a subsidiary of General Dynamics. The Virginia class has a total length of 115 meters, a total width of 10 meters, a full underwater displacement of 7,500 tons, and a crew of 135 people. The first boat, the Virginia, began construction in September 1999 and entered service in October 2004, nearly 20 years into service. Including the first boat, the U.S. Navy currently has 21 Virginia-class ships in service, and one more is in the sea trial stage. As of October 2021, the U.S. Navy announced plans to purchase a total of 66 nuclear submarines of this class, and before the pandemic, "general-purpose electric ships" were delivered to the U.S. Navy almost at a frequency of 2 per year.
In the United States, the construction of the Virginia-class nuclear submarine was completed at the shipyard of the "General Electric Boat" company. (General Dynamics website)
According to U.S. Navy propaganda, the Virginia class has "two major advantages." The first advantage is long underwater endurance, Virginia class equipped with an S9G type pressurized water reactor, after loading a nuclear fuel, can continue to sail for 30 to 33 years, the class of nuclear submarines underwater speed of more than 25 knots, theoretical endurance is unlimited, but limited by the crew's ability to bear and carry supplies, usually 3 months. In contrast, the active Collins-class diesel-electric submarine of the Australian Navy can only carry 58 people, has a maximum underwater speed of 20 knots, a endurance time of only 70 days, and can only sail 400 nautical miles underwater at a speed of 4 knots. In addition, the Collins class, because of its conventional power and not equipped with an "air-independent propulsion" system, theoretically needs to float every 100 hours, and each float means that the submarine will expose its position and become an enemy target, and the nuclear-powered Virginia class does not have this problem.
The second advantage of the Virginia class is its strong long-range land-based precision attack capability. The existing Virginia classes in the U.S. Navy are all "Batch IV" or older versions before it, each equipped with only 12 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Starting with the "fifth batch" version, which will be delivered to the US Navy in the mid-to-late 20s or 30s, the total length will increase to 140 meters, the underwater displacement will also increase to 10,000 tons, and the number of Tomahawk missiles will increase to 40, equivalent to the firepower of "one ship over the past three".
The US Navy's submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missile that has just been ignited. (U.S. Navy website)
However, up to now, the Virginia class has only carried out actual combat deployment and has not participated in actual combat missions, so how much of the above "two advantages" can be reflected still needs to be tested in actual combat.
Providing nuclear submarines to Australia "may be slow and troublesome"
Despite the excellent combined combat performance of the Virginia class, what Australia can actually get may not necessarily be the latest "fifth batch" version of the Virginia class. The joint statement of the three countries also stressed that the United States providing the Virginia class is a "stopgap measure", only to fill the "blank period" before the service of the AUKUS-class nuclear submarine jointly developed by the United Kingdom and Australia, which may also express the United States' unwillingness to provide the latest Virginia-class of its own navy, because its "subtext" may be that the combat performance should not exceed the AUKUS class.
Another, more realistic problem is that General Electric Boats' schedule for delivering Virginia-class to the U.S. Navy is itself tight. The New York Times reported that even under the shipyard's full operation, the Virginia-class has a production capacity of only 2 per year, and General Electric Ship expects that the shipyard's existing backlog of 17 US Navy nuclear submarine orders will be delayed until about 2032. It is clear that unless the US Navy is willing to hand over the active Virginia-class to Australia, the latter will not be able to acquire 30 or 5 nuclear submarines quickly in the early 30s. This means that the last thing Australia gets is likely to be the early batch of the "second-hand" Virginia class.
Australian Navy Collins-class diesel-electric submarine data map (Australian Navy website)
With the exception of the "second-hand" Virginia class, the other things mentioned in the statement are not necessarily good news for Australia, and especially for the Australian public. For example, starting in 2027, the US Navy and the UK Navy will send four nuclear submarines and one nuclear submarine respectively to be stationed at Perth Naval Base in western Australia on a rotational basis for Australian naval personnel to familiarize themselves with and train in how to operate nuclear submarines.
Another point is that even if the Australian Navy gets the "coveted" nuclear submarine, there is still a question of whether it can achieve "100% autonomous operation". The specifications of the nuclear submarines built by the UK for Australia are unknown, but a Virginia-class of the US Navy requires a crew of 132 and all require knowledge of the nuclear engineering industry. But the only New South Wales University in Australia that offers nuclear engineering-related majors currently has only 53 graduate students and 74 undergraduates, about two-thirds of whom will work in related majors after graduation, and even fewer of them can also train nuclear submarines. According to expert estimates, Australia will need to train 577 nuclear graduate students by 2028 to ensure that 330 mid-level mechanics with at least 10 years of relevant experience are delivered before the first submarine is delivered, and where the Australian Navy will "scrape together" the crew to operate the nuclear submarine is also a problem.
If this problem is not solved, then the next dilemma for the Australian Navy is that after the delivery of nuclear submarines, most of the crew above may have to be Americans, British or dual nationals, and the Australian Navy's nuclear submarines will be largely dependent on the US Navy, which will undoubtedly contradict Australian Prime Minister Albanese's statement of "retaining 100% sovereignty over nuclear submarines".
This means that after Australia spent a huge amount of money to build a domestic nuclear submarine, it will finally be greatly limited by the US and British navies in operation and use, depending on the faces of the navies of these two countries, whether they "lost their wife and broke the army", I am afraid that only the Australian navy itself will know at that time.
Computer rendering of an underwater launch torpedo for a Virginia-class nuclear submarine (US Navy website)
Source: Reference News Network