US Republican Analyst: Not Enough Virginias for AUKUS

John Noonan is an American republican national security commentator and analyst. He is a former policy advisor to Republican politicians and a former USAF ICBM launch officer.

In the following excerpt from his National Review article “Biden’s Vaunted Submarine Deal Needs Meat on Its Bones” of July 19, 2023, Noonan strongly doubts the US will have enough Virginias available for Australia. Noonan also takes it as given Australia will be drawn into any war against China. 

It is also implicit from the article that the multi-billion dollars in Australian taxpayers' money that the Albanese Government is donating to the US submarine industrial base, is wasted.

The except is:

“…every silver lining has a cloud. And that is the sad state of American shipbuilding. The Navy says we need 66 attack submarines. We have 49, a number will soon drop to 46. Worse, while the Navy claims 66 total hulls is the target, reality dictates that this is a floor not a ceiling. When I worked these issues in the Senate, I always found it odd that the goal of 66 attacks subs stayed static as the number of Chinese battle-force ships rose and rose and rose. The real number is no doubt closer to 80-85 hulls with room for growth. In 1989, we had 97 boats with 19 under construction, in maintenance, or being reactivated. So we’re low. Far too low. Australia is a good ally that can act as America’s right arm in a war with Beijing. But it is a valid question if now is the time for America to be shedding even more submarine hulls.

This hard-nosed reality was made clear by Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the head Republican on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, in the WSJ: 

Nearly 40% of U.S. attack submarines cannot be deployed because of maintenance delays. For example, the USS Connecticut had an accident in the South China Sea in 2021 and likely won’t be operational until 2026.

The U.S. submarine industrial base is producing an average of 1.2 Virginia-class attack submarines a year, short of the two our Navy needs. There are many reasons for this underperformance. For years, the U.S. government purchased only one submarine annually—hardly enough to maintain a strong industrial base.

By comparison, during the 1980s we bought four times as many. The effort to ramp up production to a rate of two attack submarines a year has been plagued with workforce and supply-chain challenges.

To keep the commitment made under Aukus, and not reduce our own fleet, the U.S. would have to produce between 2.3 and 2.5 attack submarines a year.

The Navy has suggested that we could fill the long-term gap by shifting skilled workers on the Columbia submarine program to the Virginia or SSN(X) attack subs when it wraps in 2045. But that is not a solution. We will need more than twelve Columbias, those are the fat-hulled subs pregnant with nuclear ballistic missiles, as China expands its nuclear forces. You cannot grow a master shipbuilder with a one-off dump of supplemental funds into a presidential budget request, as some have suggested. Nor can you order a yard to do 30 percent more things on existing or inflation-adjusted budgets and expect new subs to pop out like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. 

The threat from China’s fleet is serious, so we want the Royal Australian Navy armed to the gills. They are so integrated with us they may as well be part of the U.S. Navy. But this is a problem too common with the Biden administration. A good idea made worse by rosy estimates and suspect planning. The next presidential budget dump in late winter [February 2024] will signal to Australia and Britain if they are serious or not. If the White House asks Congress for real money, with a real multi-year intent behind a real effort to unscrew our production and maintenance woes, they might just make their one foreign-policy victory a reality.”