A January report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congress’s policy research division, said alternatives were not explored to the trilateral agreement between Australia, the U.S. and the U.K.
The trilateral agreement, called the AUKUS agreement, includes the future sale of Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) to Australia, and AUKUS Pillar 1 refers to delivering submarines while Pillar 2 includes sharing other technologies. In December, the Pentagon completed a review of the agreement and determined it could move “full steam ahead.”
Meanwhile, the CRS report posits there is “little indication that, prior to announcing the AUKUS Pillar 1 project in September 2021,” an analysis of alternatives was conducted to “examine whether Pillar 1 would be a more cost-effective way to spend defense resources for generating deterrence and warfighting capability.”
The report cited a statement by Richard Marles, Australia’s defense minister, where he said Australia would make “no promises” to use the SSNs to “support the United States” if the U.S. entered war with China over Taiwan. As such, CRS said to sell three to five Virginia-class SSNs to Australia “would thus convert those SSNs from boats that would be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict into boats that might not be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict.”
Instead, the report says, a U.S.-Australia “military division of labor” could be implemented wherein any SSNs the U.S. would have otherwise sold to Australia “would perform both U.S. and Australian SSN missions while Australia invested in military capabilities for performing non-SSN missions for both Australia and the United States,” similar to how the U.S. and NATO nations conduct military divisions of labor. This way, the subs are still under U.S. command but docked and sailed out of Australian bases.
Any funds Australia saves from not purchasing the subs it could use for other defense capabilities, still thereby strengthening its capabilities, CRS said.