AUKUS Is Building Hulls. Is Anyone Building Resolv...

Summary

• A Pentagon review run by Elbridge Colby ended with Washington declaring it had found ways to put the deal on the “strongest possible footing.” Defence Minister Richard Marles says Australia is on track for Virginia-class boats from around 2030; the USS Colorado is due at HMAS Stirling from late 2027, and the rotational force there is meant, in time, to host four Virginia-class submarines and a British boat.
• Anthony Albanese calls the whole venture “full-steam ahead.” Both capitals are keen to stress that the boats carry no nuclear weapons, and Joe Biden put it in four words: “Nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed.” — Joe Biden, then US President, on the AUKUS submarines, 2023 Beijing isn’t buying it.
• One of its points has teeth, I think: apart from the five recognised weapons powers, no state operates nuclear-powered submarines, which would make Australia the first.

AI Generated Summary

On 16 September 2021, Australia, Britain and the United States announced AUKUS and called it an enhanced trilateral security partnership. Canberra’s prize: a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Five years later the paper has turned into steel and poured concrete, and I’ll say what the communiqués won’t. AUKUS is a promise with a long fuse. Whether it ever deters Beijing over Taiwan will turn less on hulls than on a political will that no one has yet put under real strain.

Progress, to be fair, is real. A Pentagon review run by Elbridge Colby ended with Washington declaring it had found ways to put the deal on the “strongest possible footing.” Defence Minister Richard Marles says Australia is on track for Virginia-class boats from around 2030; the USS Colorado is due at HMAS Stirling from late 2027, and the rotational force there is meant, in time, to host four Virginia-class submarines and a British boat. Anthony Albanese calls the whole venture “full-steam ahead.” Both capitals are keen to stress that the boats carry no nuclear weapons, and Joe Biden put it in four words:

“Nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed.”
— Joe Biden, then US President, on the AUKUS submarines, 2023