Sometime in the next few weeks, the government and Defence will announce an all-important deal for build and sustainment of nuclear submarines, even though the first Australian boats themselves are most of a decade away.
However, from 2027 up to four US submarines and one British boat will rotate through HMAS Stirling, Western Australian and these vessels will require maintenance and support.
And long before construction of a new Australian nuclear submarine begins, local companies could be supplying components for US-made submarines.
Senior representatives of Northrop Grumman – Tom Wears, Director of AUKUS Strategy for Maritime Mission Systems and James Lawless, Head of Campaigns for Maritime and Undersea Warfare - have been touring Australia talking about the challenges and opportunities.
In the last few weeks they’ve met officials from the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC), companies HII (Huntington Ingalls Industries), Babcock and others, the Australian Submarines Agency, the WA and SA governments as well as Defence SA and Defence WA.
“Industry needs to be ready to engage the way ASA and the sustainment partner needs us to engage on a timeline. So, we need advance warning of what’s coming up, transparency on what’s the ultimate objective, what’s the timeline to get there, what are some of the key milestones along the way,” Wear, a former US Navy nuclear submarines commander, told ADM.
“That helps us to prepare and do whatever we need to do to have meaningful engagements when it’s time to do sustainment discussions.”
Even though not a prime for construction of the US Navy’s Virginia-class nuclear submarines, Northrop Grumman sub-contracts to primes Electric Boat and HII, making around 10 per cent of each boat, including propulsion and electric power generation, navigation, weapons and weapons handling, sonar flank arrays and power and control systems.
“Northrop Grumman is looking to be a good AUKUS partner,” he said.
“One of the strategic objectives of AUKUS is to expand the submarine industrial base for all three countries. We are actively looking at what Northrop Grumman can do in Australia in particular to develop manufacturing supply base capability that feeds the US, Australia and potentially the UK.”
Lawless said Northrop Grumman was engaging with SMEs around Australia, with a team coming from the US to assess their abilities to go onto a certified builders’ list.
“On face value there are some that have incredible industrial machining capabilities that rival some of the work that US companies do,” he said.
“It’s a bit of a journey but that’s one of the strategic objectives of AUKUS Pillar 1. We are looking at capability areas that are the broad submarine industrial base chokepoints and focussing on those first,” Wears added.
“After we vet those there are other capabilities that need to develop.”
Wears said the US submarine industrial base supply chain was strained for many different reasons including workforce challenges, post-covid and inflation.
“All three countries have the same kind of challenges. The specifics may be different. The submarine industrial base capacity issue is what needs to be addressed and that’s a long-term journey,” he said.
Lawless said it wasn’t just the usual push for sovereign Australian industry capability.
“There are chokepoints with the existing US build that need to be addressed that don’t actually have anything to do with Australia. But if we can fit SMEs in there, there’s that long term benefit that that knowledge and skillset will transition back for our own local sustainment,” he said.
Wears said Northrop Grumman had identified eight capability areas, including production of very large forging and castings, advanced machining and assembling system wiring harnesses.