Defense News, May 9, 2024, by Meghan Eckstein
Australia won't have its first nuclear-powered submarine until 2032, however, Australia and the United States are already training officers and sailors to operate the Virginia-class attack boat, as well as civilians to maintain it.
Dan Parker, director of the Australian Navy's submarine force, said: "We have eight and a half years to train an Australian commander, which normally takes 16 years".
The stakes are significant, as the United States sells nuclear-powered submarines to another country for the first time, and Australia is also the first to experiment with nuclear power. In this regard, Parker said that it is important not to rush to train and develop officers. He noted that there must be a deliberate push forward to minimize downtime between missions at sea.
Eight Australian officers have taken part in the first batch of training, which began in 2023. Three of the eight will enter an accelerated training pipeline when boarding the Virginia-class submarine USS Delaware on April 4, with one of them eventually becoming the first commander of Australia's Virginia-class submarine — though the two navies have not yet decided who will do so.
"They will complete the pipeline work this year and then head to their first submarine for a two-year cruise," he said. Next, we're going to take them back to Groton, Connecticut, back to the Department Head School, and then they're going to be back on another ship right away. Normally, people do sea/shore rotations", but shore rotations have largely been eliminated from the accelerated training pipeline.
The three officers will then undertake a two-year expedition to Australia to participate in conducting courses in Australia and the United States. Then, in 2032, one of them will become the commander of a submarine that will sail from the United States to Australia, lower the American flag, raise the Australian flag and become the lead ship of Australia's sovereign nuclear-powered fleet.
"Now the Australian submarine force is about 800 people. We're going to increase it to 3,000 people," Parker said. "We are well aware of how many people we need to admit into the U.S. training pipeline. This year, we will receive 17 officers, 37 nuclear-armed soldiers and 50 non-nuclear-armed soldiers. We will increase this number every year."
The impressive part of this training program, Parker says, isn't the number of it. Rather, these sailors and officers will be fully integrated into the U.S. attack submariner corps until Australia is able to establish its own training pipeline at home.
By a certain time, he said, there will be 440 Australians on board the U.S. Navy's 25 attack nuclear submarines, each crew consisting of two to three Australian officers, seven nuclear-powered sailors and nine non-nuclear-powered sailors.
"It's something that hasn't happened before," he said. "We are fully and 100% integrating them into our crew from a completely thorough perspective. When working on submarines, they will do everything we do".
A short-term victory in a long-term effort
Since the development of the three-phase plan for the USS Aukus in March 2023, a large number of activities have been carried out in the areas of industry, legislation and procurement, and the training of uniformed personnel is just one of them.
In a recent panel discussion, the three leaders cautioned against patience, saying that all three countries have their own legislative and budgetary processes and are working in parallel to lay the groundwork for a successful trilateral submarine alliance.
"It's easy to get bogged down by short-term goals. But these are long-term goals," said Martin Cornell, Second Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy.
He added that the upcoming AUKUS milestones cannot wait until all funding and authorization are in place before they are achieved; "We must act sensibly" and accomplish whatever we can now while other work is being done through the legislature and the budget process.
For example, in the industrial sector, "you can see the components that will be used for SSN-AUKUS at the end of the 2030s," he said, referring to attack submarines that will be built by both Great Britain and Australia.
Australia's Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy, added during the panel discussion that Australia has pledged A$4.7 billion ($3.1 billion) to reduce the backlog at the Rolls-Royce plant, which is responsible for building the nuclear power plant.
"When people get frustrated, I would say, parts are already being produced for a submarine that won't be launched until 2042. "I think the budget and the will of the governments are there, and we just need to achieve them in a steady and methodical way," he said.
Several other tasks have been completed over the past year:
In December, the United States and Australia finalized a foreign arms sale to purchase submarine training equipment, including simulators, to support the establishment of a Western Sector Submarine Rotation Unit at HMAS Stirling Base in Australia in 2027. According to a joint statement in April, the contract for the first batch of trainers was signed in April. The systems will support U.S. sailors sent to rotational units and Australian sailors learning to operate Virginia-class submarines before they are sold in 2032.
The U.S. Congress passed several important measures in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, including the AUKUS Submarine Transfer Authorization Act, which allows the sale of submarines to Australia. Australia has also taken some important legislative steps: the Australian Navy Nuclear Power Safety Act 2023 and the Australian Navy Nuclear Power Safety (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2023 were introduced to the Australian Parliament in November but have yet to be passed.
In March, the first batch of 20 Australian industrial personnel completed a three-month training internship at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Repair Facility in Hawaii.
In January, 37 Australian sailors reported on a trip to the U.S. submarine supply ship Emory S. Land in Guam in preparation for the ship's deployment to HMASS Tirling. Because, this summer, the ship, together with the joint maintenance teams of the United States and Australia, will carry out the first maintenance of American submarines.
Despite US President Joe Biden's order to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, there are still some who are skeptical of second-order effects, including the need to provide Australia with "cryptographic equipment or electronic warfare databases or targeting data or even bathymetric data," Parker said. Parker and his team have been working with other government agencies to pave the way for sharing these sensitive projects and information with Australia so they can make the most of the submarines they buy and receive over the next decade.