SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Washington: The US will build a new shipyard to make components for the Virginia-class submarine – the kind Australia is due to acquire under AUKUS – in a bid to ramp up lagging production of the nuclear-powered boats.
President Donald Trump will announce $US6.6 billion ($9.5 billion) in funding – $US2.9 billion from government and $US3.7 billion from private capital – for the facility in Baltimore, which will build critical parts such as torpedo tubes and spherical air flasks.
A senior administration official said it would enable a 15 per cent increase in labour hours, and pledged it would speed up the delivery time of Virginia-class vessels already under construction.
“This brings both resilience and capacity to the submarine industrial base that should absolutely translate to improved Virginia-class construction,” they said during a briefing call on Tuesday (US time).
But senior administration officials on the call ignored a question about whether the new shipyard would help fulfil the US Navy’s obligations under the AUKUS pact.
Under the $368 billion-plus agreement, Australia is to acquire three Virginia-class submarines from the US. They will not be new builds, but the US has repeatedly said production needed to be increased from 1.1 or 1.2 boats a year to 2.3 for it to fulfil its obligations to Australia.
The US Navy currently has 26 such vessels and wants to expand its own fleet to at least 48. It is also building a new set of nuclear-powered, ballistic missile submarines, the Columbia-class, and eyeing a new class of nuclear-powered guided missile battleships, the Trump-class.
Billions of dollars in investments – including $US2 billion from Australia, with more to come – have so far failed to lift production of the Virginias, with the US lacking skilled workers in the submarine industrial base.
“Congress has already appropriated [funds] substantially, and the rate has not moved,” senior Pentagon official Austin Dahmer said in July. “Any recommendations that consist of more money without a mechanism to materially compress those timelines will not change the outlook.”
The new shipyard in Baltimore is expected to begin operations in 2030. The US Navy says it expects to lift the production rate of Virginia-class boats to two per year in 2032, the same year it is due to sell the first vessel to Australia under AUKUS.
The shipyard, called Arsenal-2, will belong to US defence contractor Anduril, which makes military software and hardware.
Anduril president and chief strategy officer Chris Brose said the Virginia-class submarine was “one of the most critical war-fighting capabilities that our nation has”.
But “it is also a program that has been challenged in terms of the ability to meet the Navy’s requirements, to include other requirements”, he said. “We are, as a nation, not necessarily where we need to be.”
Bryan Clark, director of the Centre for Defence Concepts and Technology at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, said the new shipyard could make a “small difference” to the AUKUS delivery timeframe.
The yard would initially focus on smaller parts, he said, and was chiefly intended to alleviate chokeholds in the production process and relieve pressure on the two prime defence contractors who make the submarines.
“It won’t make any difference in the near term, it will take a while for them to ramp up, obviously,” he said.
Trump was due to announce the funding at an event in Baltimore on Tuesday afternoon. Though the AUKUS agreement was struck under Joe Biden, Trump declared last year that it was “full steam ahead” under his administration.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
