Marcus Hellyer and Andrew Nicholls for the ASPI Strategist have written an excellent June 22, 2022, article "Can Australia get nuclear-powered submarines this decade?". It concurs with point 2. of my June 9, 2022 article "SSNs: Can the UK or US Really Help Australia" about the non-availability of US Virginia SSNs, for Australia, for a very long time.
Hellyer and Nicholls make a wide range of additional points, including:
"That’s before we get to the second challenge: the rapid ramp-up of the enabling systems. As we and others have written, there are many other elements to an SSN capability than the boats. Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, the head of the nuclear submarine task force, has emphasised that Australia will need to demonstrate that it can exercise ‘responsible stewardship’ of the nuclear technologies. This will require a larger uniformed workforce, which will require substantially different qualifications. A Collins-class submarine has one engineer-qualified officer; all 15 officers on a Virginia are nuclear-qualified. It will also require the maintenance infrastructure as well as the safety and regulatory ecosystems. That takes time.
Does that mean we have no hope of accelerating an SSN capability? We’ll look at what can be done in the next post."
So stay tuned to the ASPIStrategist on SSN matters.