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If Trump abandons the AUKUS deal, Australia gets a great chance to navigate a vastly better future [1]
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Date: 2025-06-23
The USA looks like abandoning the controversial AUKUS contract signed by the miserably inept right wing Morrison Government in its dying days in 2021.
The corrupt and incompetent President Donald Trump wants out. He has proven to the world that the only projects he strongly supports are those which enrich himself and his companies directly. Australia, with other Westminster nations, refuses to pay direct bribes to individual national leaders. As it should.
Now showing advanced cognitive decline and a failing grip on reality, Trump has effectively signalled the contract’s demise by calling for a formal review by Defence Under Secretary Elbridge Colby. Colby has long been a vocal AUKUS critic and will probably recommend cancellation.
Sound reasons to abandon AUKUS
The first pillar of the deal between Australia, the UK and the USA is for the Americans to supply Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines for its defence, starting with three Virginia class submarines in the early 2030s.
Colby’s argument against the AUKUS deal is simply that the USA doesn’t have enough submarines for their own needs and can’t build them fast enough to have any to spare in the foreseeable future. That is true. The current US administration is the least competent in its history.
Other AUKUS critics have more compelling reasons for its abandonment. The most cogent of these, articulated by former prime ministers Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull and others, is that nuclear subs supplied by the USA will necessarily be operated by American personnel and automatically commandeered by the US military in the event of hostilities between the USA and China – over Taiwan or any other conflict.
It would be disastrous for Australia’s relationship with China and other nations, Keating argues, to be dragged into such a war.
Resources lost forever
If AUKUS collapses, Australia has little chance of getting back the billions already invested.
Among the countless failures of the monumentally inept Morrison Coalition Government was leaving out of the contract any penalties for defaults.
Cartoon from 2022 depicting leaders of Australia’s right wing Opposition parties who were thrown out of office in May 2022. Credit: Mark David, courtesy Independent Australia.
In any event, the lifelong criminal grifter currently running the White House has never felt obliged to fulfill contracts, however legally or morally binding.
The losses to Australia as a result of the incompetence of the Coalition from 2014 to 2022 now amount to hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars, including the billions paid out for AUKUS so far.
These simply have to be accepted as penalties citizens must bear for their abject stupidity in electing such a hopeless rabble to try to run the country.
Visionary naval future
If AUKUS fails, and Australians write off the losses, they can then grasp this as an opportunity to pursue advantageous alternatives.
The future of underwater naval warfare increasingly appears to be in unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs). Australia is well-placed to build these for its own purposes and then sell them to regional neighbours and beyond.
This may seem a quantum leap for shipbuilding in Australia, but it can be accomplished.
Labor governments proved to the world they could build the Collins class submarines during the Hawke/Keating period, and have successfully procured other military ordinance since then.
In its first term, the Albanese Labor Government began its investment in small UUVs. Australian marine vessel manufacturer Anduril Australia, a subsidiary of the American Anduril Industries, is already building a modest UUV which it calls Ghost Shark.
Although information is restricted, military monitor The War Zone has revealed some details of the partnership involving Anduril, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the Defense Science and Technology Group.
Australia’s Ghost Shark, a high performance unmanned underwater vessel with capability for autonomous operations. Photo credit: The War Zone.
A Ghost Shark prototype, according to The War Zone, has a 3D-printed exterior, weighs 2.8 tons, is 5.6 meters long and can operate at a depth of 6,000 meters for ten days. Advanced AI technology enables autonomous operations.
The RAN hopes to get three Ghost Sharks between 2025 and 2028.
Potential partnerships
Australia does not have the resources to build UUVs alone. Just as the Collins class submarines were built collaboratively with Sweden’s Kockums, new ventures will require partners.
Possibilities, besides American firms like Anduril, include the builders of Germany’s Greyshark, France’s XLUUV and vessels from Japan and South Korea.
Albanese’s talks with his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney at last week’s G7 meeting included Canada joining AUKUS. That’s another possible partner.
Grounds for optimism
Australia has shipyards in South Australia and the solid experience of designing, building and maintaining the Collins class submarines from the 1980s to the present.
Australia enjoys the good will of all neighbouring nations, has no current engagement in any conflict and sees no threats on the horizon.
Australians banished the destructive Coalition parties from any chance of forming government for the foreseeable future when it won its record majority in last month’s federal election.
So, to borrow a line from Michael J Fox in The American President, let’s take this 94-seat majority out for a spin and see what it can do.
*
This is an edited version of an article published today in Independent Australia. The original article is available here in full for free:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/aukus-collapse-offers-australia-the-chance-to-navigate-an-innovative-future,19859
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