No US SSNs for Australia Policy: Valid? Invalid?

Navy Virginia-Class Submarine Program and AUKUS Submarine (Pillar 1) Project: Background and Issues for Congress, February 11, 2025, Congressional Research Service, https://crsreports.congress.gov RL32418, at https://sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/RL32418.pdf on page 85 reports:

["On July 1, 2024 in an article by James Curran, “Morrison’s ‘Longest Night’: Inside the Making of AUKUS,” in the Australian Financial Review, on the AUKUS Pillar 1 project, Curran stated]:

"Previous Australian attempts to acquire nuclear-powered submarines with US technology were rejected by Washington….Since [2000] Australian officials have on at least two occasions - it may well be more - sought access from Washington to the technology for nuclear-powered submarines.

It appears that towards the end of the [Australian Prime Minister John Howard era 1996-2007], senior [Australian] defence officials made one such approach to the US but were rebuffed.

Some defence analysts were privately claiming around 2011-12 that the US would in time provide the technology to Australia, a claim which, once heard by American ears, elicited the same response: “No.”

As one [Australian] defence insider who observed these events at close quarters says, “The Americans would first make the obvious point that if Australia wanted nuclear submarines, [Australia] would need to double its defence budget.” Then came the medicine. Washington would not hand over the technology, the Australians were told, because “you are friends, not family".

Pete Comment

This "no US SSNs will be delivered to Australia" policy may still hold. Australia is receiving increasingly vague signals of "Virginias may be delivered to Australia during the 2030s" from a Trump-Hegseth regime distracted by continuous Middle Eastern wars. This is rather than the US earmarking two actual "Block IV Virginias" for delivery to Australia in 2032 and 2035 the years promised under the President Biden Administration.

It should also be noted that throughout the UK's all Astute-class submarines are unavailable crises the US hasn't rectified the long term failure of the Astutes by exporting Virginia SSNs to the UK Royal Navy. The US, after all, has long considered itself a closer ally to the UK (Trident II sharing and all) than the US is to Australia.