The US Navy's Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Mike Gilday, who is the professional head of the US Navy, was reported on September 24, 2021 as saying:
“This [Australian nuclear submarine program] is a very long-term effort that’ll be decades, I think, before a submarine goes in the water— it could be.
I don’t see this as a short-term timeline.
We have an 18-month exploratory period that’ll get after a lot of these questions and help Australia come to grips with exactly what they need to do to get in the path akin to the United States Navy,”