In a recent article published in The Australian, Alex Walsh, ASC CEO, shares insight into how AUKUS is redefining Australian industrial capability:

AUKUS is a nation-building endeavour, delivering a legacy beyond submarines.

With AUKUS, Australia stands on the threshold of a transformational national undertaking – one that will reshape our industrial base, strengthen our security and shape our role in the Indo-Pacific for generations.

Through AUKUS, Australia will acquire conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines – the most complex machines built anywhere in the world. It represents the biggest leap in Australia’s military capability in more than a century and the greatest industrial endeavour in our history.

But AUKUS is not just about acquiring submarines. It is about deterrence – about making Australia safer, supporting the Pacific and giving potential adversaries pause. Submarines are the defining capability for power projection. They allow Australia to hold threats further from our shores, and to do so as a sovereign nation. This is a multi-decade undertaking. The first Australian-flagged Virginia-class submarine is planned for the early 2030s. Construction of Australia’s own SSN-AUKUS submarines is planned to begin by the end of this decade.

Australian-built boats are to be constructed at Osborne in South Australia, which will become one of the most advanced submarine production lines in the world.

South Australia will be central to submarine construction.

Western Australia will be central to ongoing sustainment, including the Submarine Rotational Force-West from 2027, a critical stepping stone in which US and British submarine visits will help build Australian workforce and sustainment capability well before our own submarines enter service.

AUKUS represents a significant opportunity to reindustrialise Australia. It supports a future made in Australia – strengthening advanced manufacturing opening international supply chain opportunities for Australian suppliers, and creating 20,000 direct high-skilled, well-paid, secure jobs over the coming decades.

At ASC, we understand both the opportunity and the challenge. After more than 40 years, through the build and sustainment of the Collins-class submarines, we have deep experience in what is required to develop and sustain capability.

That experience matters. And we are Australian-owned, Australian-operated, delivering benefits now and into the future to our communities.

We’ve understood from the outset that workforce is critical for the delivery of each AUKUS pillar. Together with state and commonwealth governments, we’ve begun investing in those skills right now, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – both to ensure the workforces we need today are available, but also to develop the pipelines that will deliver skilled and capable workforces for many, many decades to come.

AUKUS is a huge opportunity for the young people today who want to be part of a workforce of the future, and it will still be creating those opportunities when your grandchildren have grandchildren.

AUKUS is building real depth into our multilayered relationships with the US and Britian; never more so than in our supply chain, where clear opportunities are emerging for Australian suppliers to deliver resilience into our trilateral partners’ supply chain. As we build and sustain the Australian SSN-AUKUS platform, many qualified manufacturers and vendors, including those who have supported our Collins-class boats for decades, will see their businesses expand to meet this new level of demand.

It may not yet be very visible, but over the past two years, ASC has been busy laying the critical groundwork that will underpin AUKUS success in the critical arenas of workforce and supply chain.

We have over 230 employees embedded with the US Navy at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard; we’re hiring hundreds of apprentices and graduates each year, investing in STEM program, and developing a capability pool.

In supply chain, we are partnering with Electric Boat and HII to qualify suppliers for support to the Virginia-class platform, and with BAE Systems we have recently opened a program for Australian suppliers to the UK boats.

AUKUS is complex, ambitious and unprecedented.

As Australia’s sovereign submarine builder and sustainer, ASC is determined that we will drive the very best outcomes for our nation – building and making available not just world-class defence platforms, but also uplifting our national industrial and manufacturing base while creating secure jobs for many generations.

AUKUS will leave a legacy far greater than submarines. It will make Australia safer and reassert our sovereign capacity to build and sustain what matters most.