![]() ![]() Keeping the AUKUS effort sailing over the coming decades will “require significant political leadership, and that unity is a big assumption” to make, said Brent Sadler, retired Navy submarine officer who is now at the Heritage Foundation think tank. ![]() While the three leaders are putting their imprint on the burgeoning deal in a conspicuously public way, the decades-long scope of the project means that the trio will be long out of office by the time the submarines are ready to begin construction. And the countries need to tackle all of this as Beijing churns out ships and submarines at rates the allies - even working together - are unable to match. None of it will be easy, however, and the sun-splashed promises of allied unity from the three leaders who are gathering Monday belie the extraordinarily complex changes needed in export control rules and growing concerns that overstretched U.S. However all of the details shake out in the end, the result will be a historic sharing of ultra-sensitive technology that could bulk up the three nations’ navies in Beijing’s backyard. Those hulls would not come into service until at least the 2040s with some being delivered well into the 2050s. Australia will also fund the construction of joint U.K.-Australia nuclear-powered submarines based on the British Astute-class boats. Then, Canberra will purchase at least three U.S.-made Virginia-class attack subs in the 2030s. Most immediately, Australia is expected to serve as a forward base for a small number of U.S. ![]()
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