Australia should build its own nuke school, says navy chief
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South Carolina: A nuclear power school should be built in Adelaide or Perth if the nation is serious about developing its sovereign AUKUS capability and wants to be less reliant on the United States, says the chief of the Australian Navy.
Speaking in South Carolina as the first group of Australians graduated from Nuclear Power School – putting them one step closer to being able to operate nuclear reactors onboard a future AUKUS submarine – Vice Admiral Mark Hammond also acknowledged that the trilateral military pact faced “complex” challenges, from cutting through export control laws to building up the necessary skilled workforce.
Navy chief Mark Hammond spent much of his career as a submariner.Credit: Martin Ollman
Asked if Australia could end up developing its own nuclear power school to train officers, Hammond replied: “I think if we’re serious about developing a sovereign nuclear submarine capability, then in time, definitely all parts of the ecosystem should be built and operated by Australians, in Australia. That should be the aim, but we don’t need this all at once.”
As to where a future nuclear school would be, the highly respected top brass said: “I think the sensible approach will either be Adelaide (where Australia’s home-grown subs will be built) or Perth (where HMAS Sterling is undergoing an expansion) … So I’d say either-or to start with.”
AUKUS is a trilateral agreement between Australia, the UK and the US to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and counter China’s economic and military advances in the Indo-Pacific.
But among the many concerns that have been raised is whether the submarines will be operable without the assistance of America, and the broader question of whether Canberra is now tied to the whims of Washington.
“Because they’re nuclear submarines, they cannot be fielded without the technical support of the United States,” former Labor prime minister Paul Keating said last October.
“If there’s interoperability, it means our sovereignty, our freedom and decision of movement is simply swept away.”
An important milestone took place on Friday (US time), when three Australian submariners – James Heydon, Adam Klyne and William Hall – became the first group of Royal Australian Navy personnel to graduate from one of the most rigorous and demanding academic programs in the US military.
Admiral James Caldwell jnr, director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (right); Royal Australian Navy Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead; RAN chief Mark Hammond; Erik Raven, Under-Secretary of the Navy; and Abraham Denmark, senior adviser to the Secretary of Defence for AUKUS, pose for a photo with graduate James Heydon.Credit:
The trio graduated alongside 417 US Navy officers as part of Class 2302 at the Nuclear Power School in Goose Creek, South Carolina, putting into sharp focus just how much Australia needs to “scale up” the number of people willing to learn such a unique skill set.
US Congressman Joe Courtney, who helped create the training pipeline for AUKUS and is one of its biggest backers in Washington, endorsed the idea of a home-grown nuclear power school, telling this masthead: “I think it’s very important on a lot of different levels.
“Number one is to foot stomp that these AUKUS subs – and the Virginia subs being sold to Australia – are under complete command and control,” said Courtney, who co-chairs the Congressional Friends of Australia caucus alongside Republican Mike Gallagher.
“There’s nothing wrong with cross pollinating and having ‘exchange students’ in any university or college, but the bottom line is, I think it’s important to have a base and a school training system in Australia itself.”
Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak at the AUKUS announcement in San Diego in March.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
While AUKUS has been celebrated in military circles as a vital partnership in a time of increasing competition in the Indo-Pacific, it faces a myriad of obstacles, from the $368 billion price tag to the maze of regulations that would need to be overhauled for America to share its technology secrets with Australia.
Multiple bills also need to pass to make the pact a reality, including one that would authorise the US Navy to transfer two in-service Virginia class submarines to Australia.
“If we don’t do that,” Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy warned in Washington last month, “we’ll have a capability gap of 10 years without any submarines.”
Hammond acknowledged that the project faced challenges, but added: “I think we’re on the right trajectory. Some things will take longer than others, but there’s a determination by three heads of state to get this right.”
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