The Federal Government has awarded $78 million in grants to Australian companies that make parts for F-35 fighter jets used by the IDF in the Gaza genocide. Stephanie Tran investigates.
An investigation by MWM has found the federal government has awarded more than $78m in taxpayer-funded grants to Australian companies participating in the global F-35 fighter jet program, with the majority of these grants awarded during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The same parts are now likely deployed in the US and Israeli illegal bombing campaign in Iran.
Of that total, $48.5m has been awarded since October 7, 2023.
The funding forms part of a suite of industry support programs designed to help Australian companies secure work on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program, a US-led global supply chain for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jet.
The F-35 has been widely deployed by Israel in its genocide in Gaza, and assaults on Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere.
The analysis reveals that a relatively small number of firms have received a significant share of the funding, with grants targeted at expanding Australia’s role in the maintenance and sustainment of the F-35 fleet.
The largest recipient was Rosebank Engineering (formerly RUAG Australia), which received $30.2m across multiple grants. This included $16.3m awarded in April 2025 to establish an Asia-Pacific depot to repair F-35 power and thermal management systems, and a further $9.1m to develop a regional repair capability for landing gear.
Rosebank Engineering “provides over 150 components for the Landing Gear and Weapons Bay Systems” on the F-35 fighter jet.
The second-largest recipient was Northrop Grumman Australia, which received $13.4m in June 2024 to support the activation of a depot for the maintenance and overhaul of F-35 components for the Asia-Pacific region, with potential to service European assignments.
Other major recipients include Moog Australia, Quickstep Technologies and Ferra Engineering, alongside a network of specialist manufacturers.
In total, more than 75 Australian companies are now involved in the F-35 program, collectively securing contracts worth more than $5 billion.
The full list of grants can be accessed in the document below. [on original]
How the grant programs work
The grants have been delivered through three key programs administered by the Department of Defence.
To be eligible for a grant, companies must have a contract with the United States Government for “maintenance and repair activities for existing components used in the Joint Strike Fighter Program”.
Applicants are required to produce a congressional letter from the US Department of Defense confirming their F-35 part number assignment and/or repair technology group as part of their application.
Initially launched with $4m in funding in 2020, the program was expanded to $60m in 2021 and extended to 2028. To date, $49.5m in JSF Sustainment Grants have been awarded.
An earlier initiative, the New Air Combat Capability Industry Support Program, ran from 2010 to June 2021 and distributed $21.9m to help Australian firms integrate into the F-35 supply chain under Defence’s AIR6000 project.
According to the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), the project aimed to ensure Australia’s air combat capability remained “lethal, survivable, deployable and available throughout its Life of Type”.
Greens Defence and Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said the grants demonstrated misplaced government priorities.
“When you see tens of millions of dollars in Australian public grants given, not to community groups or social programs but to global weapons manufacturers like Northrop Grumman, you see the priorities of Labor and the other war parties,”
“They always have money for weapons and war.”
“The F35 fighter jet is a major weapon in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its illegal war in Iran and its illegal occupation in Southern Lebanon. It’s obscene that it’s being propped up by public gifts from the Australian government.”
Grants crucial to Australia’s F-35 program role
The ANAO has attributed the success of Australian firms in securing F-35 contracts to these government grants.
“Allocating financial resources and implementing the grant programs … enabled Australian industry to bid for and win work,” the ANAO found in its latest report on major defence projects.
“Without the establishment of an industry support program, Australian industry may not have been competitive enough to win contracts.”
According to the ANAO report, Australia has spent $12.6B on the F-35 program, with most expenditure flowing to contracts with the US government.
Australian companies have secured more than $5B in contracts linked to the F-35 program, with more than 75 firms involved in manufacturing components or providing sustainment services.
Because the F-35 program operates as a globalised supply chain, components manufactured or serviced in Australia are incorporated across the entire fleet.
This means parts produced locally are used in aircraft operated by multiple countries, including Israel.
Hiding it
In late 2023, the Department of Defence quietly removed details of Australian suppliers in the F-35 program from its website including a 2018 report published by the Department
Last year, an investigation by Declassified Australia revealed that F-35 components produced in Australia had been shipped directly to Israel on commercial passenger flights, despite repeated government assertions that Australia was not supplying weapons to Israel.
In a follow-up investigation, the outlet reported that many of the parts stored in Australia for the country’s own F-35 fleet are in fact owned and controlled by the United States, with logistics managed by the program’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin.
This arrangement means Australia does not ultimately control how those parts are allocated. The US can direct that components held in Australia be reassigned and shipped overseas, even where those parts are needed for Australia’s own defence capability.
Violation of international law
A UN report has described the F-35 program as “key” to Israel’s military operations in Gaza, with the aircraft
“heavily used in the genocidal destruction of Gaza.”
The report warned that states supplying components may be engaged in indirect transfers of weapons used in violations of international law.
Shoebridge said the grants reinforced the need for Australia to impose a total arms embargo on Israel, “Given what we know about the crimes committed by the IDF using the F-35, it’s hard to see these as anything other than genocide grants,” he said.
“This data gives fresh impetus to our calls, supported by millions of Australians, to put a total arms embargo on Israel, which includes all weapons and weapons parts.”
MWM sent questions to the Department of Defence, Richard Marles (Minister for Defence) and Pat Conroy (Minister for Defence Industry) regarding whether it was appropriate to continue the F-35 grant program in light of the genocide and the due diligence the government has taken to ensure that the program is in compliance with international law.
Stephanie is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. She has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.
Dr Andrew Klein is right. The War They Sold Us, The Price We Pay, Australia has quietly signed up to another illegal war on Iran and, with customary discretion, sent the invoice straight to its own citizens. We are already paying. At the bowser. At the checkout. At the chemist. The meter is running long before the government has bothered to explain why it switched it on. Even if it could.
This is how modern war arrives. Not with declarations, not with debate, but with a price rise and a press conference. The explosions come later. The explanation, if it comes at all, arrives last and reads like a pamphlet for a product nobody ordered.
We also pay in subtler currency. In the steady domestication of war as background noise. In the way catastrophe is repackaged as content, mined for its dopamine yield, a bridge collapsing in slow motion, an oil rig burning through the night, a grainy clip of impact replayed until it acquires the sheen of inevitability. War as spectacle. War as story. War as something other people do, until it turns up in your petrol bill.
The Australian War Memorial, now politely underwritten by arms manufacturers, completes the lesson. BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Thales. The merchants of death have not so much crashed the party as taken out a sponsorship package.
Remembrance, but make it corporate. Lest we forget, brought to you by the people who ensure there is always something to remember.
Meanwhile in Washington, Donald Trump and sneaky-Pete Hegseth compete to see who can sound most upbeat about lethality, like teenagers comparing horsepower. Bombing a country “into the Stone Ages” an unconscious but not entirely gratuitous reminder of the carpet-bombing of North VietNam is delivered as a punchline, a distraction from the latest domestic scandal, a line designed to travel. It is not strategy. It is not policy. It is performance. Yet Canberra treats it as if it were scripture.
We are told this is about deterrence. About stability. About preventing proliferation. We are always told this. Deterrence has become the diplomatic equivalent of “because I said so”. But deterrence without legal authority is simply pre-emptive war in a better suit. The United Nations Charter permits force in self-defence against an imminent threat, or with Security Council approval. Neither condition has been satisfied. To support such a war without asking that question is not prudence. It is obedience.
Yet our complicity did not begin with the first missile. It was preloaded. The decision was not just rushed; it was rehearsed, the latest turn in a relationship already militarised, already embedded, already incapable of saying no. An unlovely history hums beneath it. Our sycophancy is bipartisan. It has led us here before. It will lead us here again.
Australia’s “great and powerful friendship” now looks less like an alliance and more like a folie à deux, a shared delusion in which one partner sets the fires and the other holds the hose, congratulating itself on its sense of responsibility.
There was no pause for law. No insistence on evidence. Within hours of the first strikes, Prime Minister Albanese offered support. Foreign Minister Penny Wong declined even the courtesy of scrutiny, leaving it to the United States and Israel to explain the legal basis for their own actions. This is not diplomacy. It is ventriloquism with better tailoring.
The government that speaks endlessly of integrity treats the endorsement of war as if it were a diary entry. The legality is not tested. It is outsourced. The rules-based order is invoked like a hymn sung loudly enough to drown out the sound of the rules themselves being broken.
Complicity, But With Good Manners
If a war begins without clear legal authority and proceeds to strike civilian infrastructure, then support for that war is not neutral. It is participatory. International humanitarian law does not cease to exist because it is inconvenient to allies. Those who assist in serious violations may themselves bear responsibility. This is not radical. It is basic.
And assistance is precisely what is occurring. Intelligence sharing. Joint facilities. Interoperability so seamless it dissolves the distinction between ally and actor. When targeting data flows through shared systems, when surveillance feeds are integrated into operational decisions, Australia is not a bystander. It is part of the firing chain.
Pine Gap and the Useful Fiction of Distance
Pine Gap is often described as a listening post, which is a little like describing a power station as a light bulb. It is infrastructure. It is integration. It is the physical expression of a relationship in which distance is rhetorical and involvement is structural.
For decades, analysts from Dr Helen Caldicott to Des Ball and Richard Tanter have explained its role. Recent reporting has filled in the details. Satellite arrays. Signals intelligence. Real-time targeting capability. A system that does not observe war so much as enable it. We are helping Tomahawk missiles find their way into a children’s playground, a hospital or an ambulance depot.
Which makes Canberra’s occasional requests for “clarification” from Washington read like theatre reviews of a play in which it is already on stage. The explanation is not forthcoming because it is unnecessary. It is already baked into the system. Into the agreements. Into the quiet understanding that some questions are not asked because everyone knows the answer.
Australia keeps its eyes politely lowered, its bases open, its systems engaged, and calls this prudence. It is, in fact, participation with plausible deniability.
The Habit of Following
This is not new. It is ritual. VietNam, Iraq. Afghanistan. The same sequence, repeated with minor variations. Alignment first. Scrutiny later. Regret, if it arrives at all, delivered long after the damage is done and the architects have retired to write their memoirs.
We have perfected the art of joining wars we do not need to fight, for reasons that dissolve under inspection, in pursuit of credibility that never quite materialises. We call it loyalty. Others might call it habit.
We follow. We facilitate. We absorb the consequences. Then we explain, with great seriousness, that the decision was made elsewhere.
AUKUS and the Theology of Dependence
AUKUS is sold as strategy. It often reads as faith. A $368 billion act of belief in a future fleet of already obsolete submarines, we will struggle to crew, maintain or deploy, tied to a strategic doctrine we do not control, in conflicts we do not choose.
The Indo-Pacific framing flatters Australia with the illusion of centrality. In practice, it locks us into dependency. If the United States is stretched across multiple theatres, its commitments multiplying faster than its capacity, what exactly are we aligning ourselves with? Strength? Or strain?
A navy we cannot fully sustain, guarding sea lanes we cannot guarantee, in wars we do not declare. That is not sovereignty. It is folly, an epic and darkly comic absurdity that could be an epilogue to Waiting For Godot, 2.0.
The Bill Arrives Early
The economic consequences do not wait for the shooting to stop. Fuel reserves fall below recommended levels. Prices climb. Supply chains tighten. Farmers hesitate. Pharmacists ration. The abstractions of strategy resolve into the concrete arithmetic of shortage.
Thirty-nine days of petrol. Then what.
The government responds with monitoring, reviews, taskforces. The familiar liturgy of control. But the decisions that matter have already been taken elsewhere, in rooms to which Australia is invited only after the fact, if at all.
Meanwhile, the social cost accumulates. External conflict refracted through domestic politics. Suspicion, division, the quiet narrowing of who belongs. War does not stay offshore. It arrives in language, in policy, in the spaces where cohesion is invoked and quietly undermined.
The Question We Avoid
Was it worth it? The question is asked as if the answer might still be in doubt. The more difficult question is why it was done at all. Why a government would endorse a war without clear legal foundation, led by an administration defined by volatility, run by grifters and billionaire bros with consequences already measurable at home?
Why it was done without consent? Why the lessons of previous wars remain politely unlearned? Why the reflex to align survives every failure that should have extinguished it?
The “grifters and billionaire bros” are the Pozzos of the world – men who own the rope, drive the slave, and check their watch every five minutes to see if they are still important. They don’t do it for a “clear legal foundation”; they do it because the exercise of power is the only thing that convinces them they exist.
As Lucky might conclude, it was done for the sake of the “quaquaquaqua” – the noise we make to drown out the fact that the road is empty and Godot is never coming.
If those questions cannot be answered, then the answer is already in front of us. Alliance over autonomy. Secrecy over scrutiny. Habit over judgement. Inertia rules, OK?
We have chosen the alliance. We have accepted the war. We will inherit the consequences. The bill is already in the mail – our boots are well and truly on, and under, the ground.
Footnote: North Vietnam was subjected to some of the heaviest bombing in military history, with over 1 million tons of bombs and missiles dropped by the U.S. during campaigns like Operation Rolling Thunder. From 1965 to 1968, roughly 32 tons of bombs fell every hour, significantly exceeding the total ordnance used in the Pacific theatre of WWII
You probably charge your phone daily, while your car needs gas or a battery top-up every few days. But you don’t have to take the device or vehicle apart when you connect it to power or fill up the tank. Refueling a nuclear submarine, on the other hand, is a complicated process that takes years, just like refueling a nuclear aircraft carrier………………………
The ERO process is slow because it’s designed that way for safety reasons. The nuclear submarine has to be brought into a facility that’s capable of handling nuclear material throughout the replacement process, to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the repairs and the sailors who will crew the ship once the refueling process is done. The nuclear core remains radioactive during refueling, so radiation must be contained and the nuclear waste must be stored securely.
The submarine is brought to a dry dock for the ERO process, where engineers go through a rigorous procedure to defuel the ship and refuel it. The reactors are shut down and cooled before removing the old reactor core and installing its replacement. The actual removal of the spent core involves cutting through the submarine’s hull with hand tools, as the reactors aren’t easily accessible. These operations are performed under strict ventilation and filtration protocols to prevent radiation contamination. The old core is transported off-site for secure storage, as the nuclear material remains active. The new core is installed, and then the reactor is reassembled and the submarine is resealed. These procedures require precision and numerous inspections, as there’s no room for error. The structural integrity of the hull is key for allowing the submarine to operate at depth.
……………………………………… How much does refueling a submarine cost?
Like nuclear aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered surface ships undergo extensive RCOH processes — and they’re not cheap or quick. For example, it cost $2.8 billion to refuel and retrofit the USS George Washington aircraft carrier, and the process took even longer than anticipated. In May 2023, the U.S. Navy announced that the George Washington completed its RCOH process after 69 months
UniSuper members have started a mass divestment campaign against the fund, citing investments in weapons companies and organisations complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide and occupation. Stephanie Tran reports.
UniSuper, which manages approximately $166B on behalf of more than 680,000 members, is the industry superfund for employees in Australia’s higher education and research sector. The ‘Divest from Death‘ campaign is run by a group campaigning against UniSuper’s unwillingness to divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies involved in genocide, war crimes, occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
As of June 2025, the fund holds over $771m worth of investments in companies named in databases compiled by the UN Human Rights Office and the American Friends Service Committee, which track businesses complicit in the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and the genocide in Gaza.
Analysis of portfolio data shows that UniSuper has significantly expanded these investments in recent years. Its shareholding in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, has more than tripled over the past two years, based on the number of shares held.
The fund also has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in companies involved in weapons production, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and maintains smaller holdings in Israeli financial institutions linked to settlement activity.
A report by the Australia Institute previously identified UniSuper as one of only four major superannuation funds not to exclude controversial weapons, including nuclear weapons, from its investment screens.
Palestine Land Day
March 30th has been marked Palestine Land Day since the 1976 killing of six Palestinian citizens by Israeli police during protests against the expropriation of thousands of dunams of land in the Galilee.
Alison Gibberd, an organiser of the campaign, said members had raised concerns with the fund over several years, including through petitions, direct correspondence and questions at annual meetings.
“UniSuper has increased its investments in weapons and companies involved in the occupation of the West Bank in the past two years.”
“A large number of members are not happy with these investments – many hundreds of members have petitioned them and written to them in the past few years, and the union has passed pro-BDS motions, driven by members, nationally as well as locally,” Gibberd said.
“Despite this, there does not appear to have been a change in UniSuper’s policy and they state that they are not an ‘activist’ fund. This refusal to act is why members have left in the past for more ethical funds and why a group will leave on 30 March.”
Tamara Kayali Browne, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University and Palestinian activist, said the divestment action had been “driven by university staff who will not tolerate their money being invested in genocide”.
“Many of us refuse to have our money invested in companies that are fuelling, or complicit in, the Gaza genocide,” she said. “Since UniSuper has refused to divest from these companies, we are left with little choice but to leave and put our money in more ethical superannuation funds.”
She said the campaign was intended to send a broader message to the superannuation sector.
“A retirement built on blood money cannot possibly be enjoyed,” Browne said. “Even if those who work at UniSuper are not bothered by the fact that they are investing in a genocide, many people are and are happy to put their money elsewhere.”
UniSuper response
In response to questions posed at its annual members’ meeting last year, UniSuper said it held “small investment holdings” in companies identified in the UN database of companies involved in illegal settlements, including Elbit Systems and “a small number of Israeli banks”. The fund said it had no holdings in Israeli government bonds.
“UniSuper is satisfied that our investment holdings are in accordance with law and with the investment strategies and objectives of our investment options,” the fund stated.
“If their investments are indeed small, then it should not be much trouble to divest from them. And it is not as though a little bit of genocide is okay,” Browne said.
UniSuper was contacted for comment. A spokesperson for UniSuper provided the following response:
“Our role as a superfund is to manage the life savings of our members and to act in their best financial interests. We take a risk-based approach to identify and integrate material ESG factors into our investment decisions across our portfolios.
“As at 31 December 2025, UniSuper had small investment holdings relative to the size of our Fund in companies domiciled in Israel (according to our third-party data provider). We offer a wide range of investment options, giving members the flexibility to select options that align with their personal circumstances and preferences including options that don’t hold these investments.
“Members write to us about a number of investment-related issues. We aim to provide timely information to allow our members to make an informed investment choice. Members can access our holdings on our website as well as our How we invest your money document for information about what our options invest in.”
USS Charlotte was at periscope depth, but the periscope was down, reducing the chance of it, or the wake it creates, being seen by the enemy. It was a tense moment.
“Safe/Fire key to Fire”, ordered the captain.
The officer manning the fire control console repeated the order, “Safe/Fire key to Fire” and then advised the captain, “Safe/Fire key is to Fire”.
“Fire 4 tube at Target 1”, the captain stated in a raised and clear voice.
The officer repeated the order and hit the ‘Fire’ button. A low-level thud was both felt and heard throughout the submarine as the pressurise discharge system pushed the Mk 48 Torpedo from the tube. “Weapon running” the officer called.
As the weapon ran towards the Iranian frigate the submarine carried out a further visual set-up through the periscope to update the weapon. The updated targeting solution was transmitted down the very long and thin guidance wire connecting the torpedo to the submarine.
The update was also loaded into the second torpedo’s guidance system. “Fire 1 tube at Target 1”.
The first torpedo did not do its job. The second exploded directly under the target, lifting the hull out of the water and sending a violent shock wave through it. The structural damage was completed as the hull dropped back into the water.
The first the Iranian captain of the frigate would have known about the US submarine would have been when he felt the explosion underfoot.
Queuing
USS Charlote did not just stumble across the INS Dena. Rather, days before, it had been queued to the target by folks back in the US tracking where every surface ship in the world is located.
The submarine travelled at high speed, around 30 knots (55 km/h), for days getting from its routine Indian Ocean patrol area to the waters south of Sri Lanka. That’s one of the key advantages of a nuclear-powered submarine. They can travel long distances fast.
As it arrived in the area the submarine’s crew would have detected (found it) and tracked the contact (worked out its range, course and speed), and then classified (identified) it using a combination of acoustic and electronic emissions, and finally confirmed it was the INS Dena visually through the periscope.
“Then ‘bang’.”
AUKUS implications
The Iran War has shown that submarines are 21st century war fighting assets with ever relevant capabilities; they can collect intelligence, conduct reconnaissance, launch land attack missiles, covertly land special forces, covertly lay mines, and sink submarines and surface ships.
But the events from 28 February onwards have shown us other things.
AUKUS has been described by many as a program that facilitates close alliance and force integration with the United States.
As Donald Trump broke its written Free Trade Agreement commitments to Australia on ‘Liberation Day”, those in the Canberra bubble were blind to that breach’s relevance to the ANZUS treaty and AUKUS agreement. Surely the US’s defence treaty with Australia would be treated differently.
As the US initiated an AUKUS review, that was to see AUKUS sceptic Elbridge Colby recommend stopping the program until Trump realised the financial benefit in continuing with it and overrode Colby, those in the Canberra bubble breathed a collective sigh of relief and chose not to think it too much.
Ruptured
As Trump, to use the words of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, ‘ruptured’ the international rules-based order – carrying out a military operation in Venezuela, threatening Panama, bringing NATO to the brink by threatening to invade Greenland, attacking Iran and now threatening Cuba – those in the Canberra bubble didn’t seem to recognise the US Administration’s departure from Australian values; or perhaps likely they did but decided not to respond to it.
Only over the past month Prime Minister Albanese has responded properly to the ‘rupture’, not blindly committing Australian forces to follow the US into war, as has so often been the case (as a downpayment for US support for Australia if it needed it).
Albanese has despatched a RAAF early warning aircraft to support the air defence of the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, but we haven’t joined a US-led effort as has been the case in the past.
Sovereign thought
Albanese has it right. The US did not seek to build international support, and/or UN approval, for a strike on Iran. Instead it chose to plan in secret in cahoots with Israel and then launch a surprise attack to kill Iran’s leadership while negotiations with Iran were supposed to be ongoing.
Only when the going got tough did Washington call on allies for assistance, and under the circumstances where they rightly refused.
“Trump’s Iran War has caused harm to Australia.”
The impact of Trump’s war is causing economic harm right across the globe.
The war has also brought home Australia’s vulnerabilities. For decades distance has kept us relatively isolated from conflict, but this conflict directly affected us as world fuel supplies are disrupted and prices have sky rocketed. And the full extent of this new energy shock still lies ahead.
“Perhaps it’s the shock that we needed to have”
a chance to reflect on our need to take a more independent pathway in a world in which many past assumptions are being overturned.
US submarine shortages
Australia has long relied on the naval might of what Prime Minister Robert Menzies liked to call our “great and powerful friends” – first the British Empire and the Royal Navy; then Pax Americana upheld by the United States Navy. Now times are changing,
“and they are changing rapidly.”
The US Navy has gone from a Cold War era 1000-ship navy to a 600-ship navy during the Reagan era, to a current fleet of just 300 ships. China now has the world’s largest navy, 350 to 370 vessels, and Chinese shipyards are turning out warships much more rapidly than their counterparts in the US.
The US Navy still has a qualitative edge, but the US Navy is not what it was, and its well understood that quantity has a quality all of its own.
The US has been aiming to increase its number to 381 combat ships. 66 is the desired number for nuclear attack submarines – they have only 49 at the present moment.
Since 2011 the USN has purchased 2 submarines a year (this last year it was only one – because deliveries are so far behind).
The actual Virginia-class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built.
They can’t build enough boats to meet their own needs,
“let alone ours.”
A school of thought in the US had been that submarines transferred to the Royal Australian Navy would be available for US in time of conflict, but the Iran War has speared that assumption.
And Trump noticed this week, first expressing disappointment at the UK’s refusal to become directly involved in the Iran War and then turning his thoughts to Australia, saying “Australia too, Australia was not great. I was a little surprised by Australia”.
Trump is well known to hold a grudge. The one thing that will keep him supportive of AUKUS will be the money flowing from the Australian taxpayers to US shipyards, with no contract in place for delivery and no claw back option for the Australian contribution is the US does not deliver. That’s the sort of deal that Trump likes.
UK submarine shortages
And the United Kingdom are in a worse position than the US. The Royal Navy has one nuclear attack submarine available for operations – a fact made obvious to Australians when that sole submarine cut short a visit to Western Australia to head towards the Iran conflict zone.
Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, in an event at the Canberra Press Club, organised by Malcolm Turnbull, said it all, warning the UK had “dropped below the minimal sustainable force” for submarines and the country would be late in delivering its first SSN-AUKUS boat, a design which Australia is also hoping to start building in Adelaide in the 2030s.
“It is queued up behind the final two (Astute-class boats) and four critically important ballistic missile submarines, the Dreadnoughts, that are being built in the shipyard.”
“You cannot get the first SSN-AUKUS out until the fourth ballistic missile submarine is clear of the yard. That is the UK’s national priority.”
Defence incompetence
Listen to this story
12 min
The US war on Iran has exposed Australia’s incompetent defence and procurement. Rex Patrick reports implications for AUKUS submarine program.
A tense moment
USS Charlotte was at periscope depth, but the periscope was down, reducing the chance of it, or the wake it creates, being seen by the enemy. It was a tense moment.
“Safe/Fire key to Fire”, ordered the captain.
The officer manning the fire control console repeated the order, “Safe/Fire key to Fire” and then advised the captain, “Safe/Fire key is to Fire”.
“Fire 4 tube at Target 1”, the captain stated in a raised and clear voice.
The officer repeated the order and hit the ‘Fire’ button. A low-level thud was both felt and heard throughout the submarine as the pressurise discharge system pushed the Mk 48 Torpedo from the tube. “Weapon running” the officer called.
As the weapon ran towards the Iranian frigate the submarine carried out a further visual set-up through the periscope to update the weapon. The updated targeting solution was transmitted down the very long and thin guidance wire connecting the torpedo to the submarine.
The update was also loaded into the second torpedo’s guidance system. “Fire 1 tube at Target 1”.
The first torpedo did not do its job. The second exploded directly under the target, lifting the hull out of the water and sending a violent shock wave through it. The structural damage was completed as the hull dropped back into the water.
The first the Iranian captain of the frigate would have known about the US submarine would have been when he felt the explosion underfoot.
Sinking of INS Dena (Source: US Department of War)
Queuing
USS Charlote did not just stumble across the INS Dena. Rather, days before, it had been queued to the target by folks back in the US tracking where every surface ship in the world is located.
The submarine travelled at high speed, around 30 knots (55 km/h), for days getting from its routine Indian Ocean patrol area to the waters south of Sri Lanka. That’s one of the key advantages of a nuclear-powered submarine. They can travel long distances fast.
As it arrived in the area the submarine’s crew would have detected (found it) and tracked the contact (worked out its range, course and speed), and then classified (identified) it using a combination of acoustic and electronic emissions, and finally confirmed it was the INS Dena visually through the periscope.
Then ‘bang’.
AUKUS implications
The Iran War has shown that submarines are 21st century war fighting assets with ever relevant capabilities; they can collect intelligence, conduct reconnaissance, launch land attack missiles, covertly land special forces, covertly lay mines, and sink submarines and surface ships.
But the events from 28 February onwards have shown us other things.
AUKUS has been described by many as a program that facilitates close alliance and force integration with the United States.
As Donald Trump broke its written Free Trade Agreement commitments to Australia on ‘Liberation Day”, those in the Canberra bubble were blind to that breach’s relevance to the ANZUS treaty and AUKUS agreement. Surely the US’s defence treaty with Australia would be treated differently.
As the US initiated an AUKUS review, that was to see AUKUS sceptic Elbridge Colby recommend stopping the program until Trump realised the financial benefit in continuing with it and overrode Colby, those in the Canberra bubble breathed a collective sigh of relief and chose not to think it too much.
Ruptured
As Trump, to use the words of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, ‘ruptured’ the international rules-based order – carrying out a military operation in Venezuela, threatening Panama, bringing NATO to the brink by threatening to invade Greenland, attacking Iran and now threatening Cuba – those in the Canberra bubble didn’t seem to recognise the US Administration’s departure from Australian values; or perhaps likely they did but decided not to respond to it.
Only over the past month Prime Minister Albanese has responded properly to the ‘rupture’, not blindly committing Australian forces to follow the US into war, as has so often been the case (as a downpayment for US support for Australia if it needed it).
Albanese has despatched a RAAF early warning aircraft to support the air defence of the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, but we haven’t joined a US-led effort as has been the case in the past.
Sovereign thought
Albanese has it right. The US did not seek to build international support, and/or UN approval, for a strike on Iran. Instead it chose to plan in secret in cahoots with Israel and then launch a surprise attack to kill Iran’s leadership while negotiations with Iran were supposed to be ongoing.
Only when the going got tough did Washington call on allies for assistance, and under the circumstances where they rightly refused.
Trump’s Iran War has caused harm to Australia.
The impact of Trump’s war is causing economic harm right across the globe.
The war has also brought home Australia’s vulnerabilities. For decades distance has kept us relatively isolated from conflict, but this conflict directly affected us as world fuel supplies are disrupted and prices have sky rocketed. And the full extent of this new energy shock still lies ahead.
Perhaps it’s the shock that we needed to have ;
a chance to reflect on our need to take a more independent pathway in a world in which many past assumptions are being overturned.
Australia has long relied on the naval might of what Prime Minister Robert Menzies liked to call our “great and powerful friends” – first the British Empire and the Royal Navy; then Pax Americana upheld by the United States Navy. Now times are changing,
and they are changing rapidly.
The US Navy has gone from a Cold War era 1000-ship navy to a 600-ship navy during the Reagan era, to a current fleet of just 300 ships. China now has the world’s largest navy, 350 to 370 vessels, and Chinese shipyards are turning out warships much more rapidly than their counterparts in the US.
The US Navy still has a qualitative edge, but the US Navy is not what it was, and its well understood that quantity has a quality all of its own.
The US has been aiming to increase its number to 381 combat ships. 66 is the desired number for nuclear attack submarines – they have only 49 at the present moment.
Since 2011 the USN has purchased 2 submarines a year (this last year it was only one – because deliveries are so far behind).
The actual Virginia-class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built.
US Naval Shipbuilding Plan (Source: Congressional Budget Office).
They can’t build enough boats to meet their own needs,
let alone ours.
A school of thought in the US had been that submarines transferred to the Royal Australian Navy would be available for US in time of conflict, but the Iran War has speared that assumption.
And Trump noticed this week, first expressing disappointment at the UK’s refusal to become directly involved in the Iran War and then turning his thoughts to Australia, saying “Australia too, Australia was not great. I was a little surprised by Australia”.
Trump is well known to hold a grudge. The one thing that will keep him supportive of AUKUS will be the money flowing from the Australian taxpayers to US shipyards, with no contract in place for delivery and no claw back option for the Australian contribution is the US does not deliver. That’s the sort of deal that Trump likes.
And the United Kingdom are in a worse position than the US. The Royal Navy has one nuclear attack submarine available for operations – a fact made obvious to Australians when that sole submarine cut short a visit to Western Australia to head towards the Iran conflict zone.
Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, in an event at the Canberra Press Club, organised by Malcolm Turnbull, said it all, warning the UK had “dropped below the minimal sustainable force” for submarines and the country would be late in delivering its first SSN-AUKUS boat, a design which Australia is also hoping to start building in Adelaide in the 2030s.
“It is queued up behind the final two (Astute-class boats) and four critically important ballistic missile submarines, the Dreadnoughts, that are being built in the shipyard.”
“You cannot get the first SSN-AUKUS out until the fourth ballistic missile submarine is clear of the yard. That is the UK’s national priority.”
Defence incompetence
At the same conference, our Defence Department’s incompetence was on full display.
A Defence representative laid it out., After decades of submarine procurement failures (including the spending of $4B on French submarines we never got), it’s still “full speed ahead” in the best spirit of Captain Smith on the bridge of the Titanic.
In response to a question from Turnbull as to “what’s the plan B if we end up with no new subs” from the United States, Deputy secretary for strategy and policy, Hugh Jeffrey, answered, “You know, it’s not my job as a public servant, to talk about Plan Bs that’s the prerogative of government”.
He went on to lecture AUKUS sceptics,” If you really want to be in a position where we have no submarines then ‘turn back’. I do think, speaking as an apolitical public servant, we need to get out of this relentless politicisation of defence capabilities.”
AUKUS end
He surely did not realise what he said. He warns we’ll “be left with no submarines if the project is dumped”. The problem is that we’ll also be left with no submarines if AUKUS isn’t dumped. And we will have paid a lot for those no submarines.
After a failure on fuel security, with a failure on procuring submarines, and with the rules-based order ruptured by the very country we’re relying in respect of the program, maybe Albanese will finally cut this foolish program and move towards a more realistic, self-reliant and sustainable strategic policy.
If we don’t, we may well find our sovereignty to be hollow and that others will decide our nation’s future.
The dreams of the U.S. President, that it would all be over in days – that the Iranian people would rise against their tyrannical regime – is now a nightmare that Trump has visited upon the world.
The global economy is on the brink of disaster as oil dries up. America and Israel have further isolated themselves from world public opinion and, apart from an ever- shrinking clique of semi-vassal states like Australia, Trump appears to be alone and increasingly dangerous.
The war offers a great many lessons, but while life and history can be great teachers, there seem to be precious few pupils ready to learn those lessons. This applies equally to apologists for U.S. power, to governments of all stripes and to many of those who inhabit the Left and lay claim to Marxist credentials.
The war was never about “liberating” the Iranian people from the right-wing theocracy. It was about securing a compliant regime that would ensure the flow of oil and to make sure that the USA, as a fading imperial power, maintained global hegemony — both politically and economically.
The slogan that accompanied the wars of aggression against Iraq, that tore Libya apart and which laid waste to so much of the Middle East was simply, No Blood for Oil! The years have slipped by, and yet the same foul motivation for despoiling the globe and destroying a people remains.
Our mainstream media know this to be true, even as the “story” turns its focus to the retaliation by Iran and to the oil pressure that the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz entails. The same media focuses on potential oil shortages, and rightly so, but seems less keen to link that invasion to the fact that people are paying stupid prices for petrol and diesel.
Fewer voices can be heard that would remind the people of how the war started and who is responsible. That has become largely the responsibility of the Left — the Marxists, the campaigners against war and imperialism.
This is as it should be, but something is very wrong. Marxism is quite clear that economics is the defining factor and that politics works with and responds to economic demands. The war, then, can only be understood from an economic perspective. But is it being understood in this way? Sadly, no.
Some see it as a political gamble by a beleaguered and dangerously unhinged U.S. President. Some portray it as a means, by Israel, of destroying any potential risk to its domination of the region. Some come a step closer by recognising the strategic desire to weaken China, as it is a principal customer for Iranian oil.
Any and all of these considerations are enough to allow blame to be sheeted home to the USA and Israel, but there is a deeper, more worrying aspect to this. The United States has been and remains the single biggest military force and greatest economic power that the world has seen. It is, as the Marxist Left will say, an imperialist power. It is also a declining power.
For decades, its main preoccupation has been how to hold back the rising tide of its one great rival. China’s rise, accompanied by a global capitalist economy that has run out of ideas and resilience, ensures that wars are either finishing, beginning, or in the planning stage. A failing economic structure is driving the world to the point of no return. The war against Iran is one battle in this endless spiral into decay. The USA, as the central power in the capitalist global economy, is more than willing to destroy entire nations in its quest to keep the sinking ship afloat.
No crime is too much. The U.S. bombing the girls’ school in Iran, the Israeli destruction of oil facilities on the edge of Tehran that have led to acid rain and an unimaginable civilian health disaster, sicken all reasonable people. But those who plan such actions are not among the reasonable.
These acts need to be condemned. Governments need to show at least a modicum of decency. Our Prime Minister needs to stop slinking in the shadows and act. He needs to denounce such actions. He needs to find the courage to say “No!” and to work to secure the natural resources needed to keep Australia functioning. This is unlikely. Our political structures are such that we remain totally subservient to the demands and interests of the USA..
Those whose anger compels them to take to the streets deserve better than the Babel that has become the protest movement. The most recent action in Melbourne, which was dominated by ever more shrill denunciations of Israel, while mention of the USA and its causal responsibility for the war was at best an afterthought. Protest has merit, it is necessary and has purpose. It also needs focus, if it is to have either merit or purpose.
Protest is also about winning the hearts and minds of people. Sound and fury might be a therapy for some, but numbers count and numbers must grow, people must be educated, encouraged to talk to others, to build a movement that can go beyond noise.
Part of that building process must include the raising of collective consciousness. It must be able to show and convince people that this or that crime of the USA, of Israel, of imperialism, is not isolated, or in any way an aberrant thing, but is a symptom of a deeper, structural crisis. It is not enough for the ideologues to make demands that cannot be achieved. The protest movement, the anti-war movement, should aim at providing a vehicle, a voice for those who want something better than news screens full of war stories and a Federal Government pathetically marching to the fifes and drums of a fading U.S. empire.
European Union leaders have been prepared to stand back a little; to say that the war is not their war. It is hard to imagine an Australian government being daring enough to question anything that comes from Washington. As the sun sinks on U.S. hegemony, Australia seems ready to go down with the American ship.
After all, this is a man with the capacity to blunder into World War 3 without having any idea what he’s doing.
The complete absence of any plan or exit strategy in the escalating conflict with Iran demonstrates that even the most apocalyptic of unforeseen consequences cannot be ruled out
Trump’s Iran war raises fears of global conflict — while allies stay silent and diplomacy collapses, writes Mark Beeson.
U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is the most dangerous man in the world. Why are we supporting him?
Many people were concerned about what a second Trump presidency might look like, but it’s uncontroversial to claim that it’s much worse than even the gloomiest pessimists feared.
It has been plain for a long time that Trump has little regard for the truth and is determined to silence independent media. But the one thing his supporters and the world in general might have hoped for was that he wouldn’t have gone back on his promise to not start unnecessary, ill-conceived wars, especially in the Middle East.
And yet, not only has Trump launched an illegal war with Iran, which has already resulted in the deaths of thousands, including innocent schoolgirls, but he is also displaying a psychopathic delight in using America’s overwhelming military might ‘just for fun’.
Given that the assault on Iran is being conducted with – or even on behalf of – Israel there is a breathtaking irony in the fact that Trump is displaying the same sort of indifference to human suffering that allowed individual Nazis to take part in the ‘final solution’ and the murder of six million Jews.
It is, of course, entirely possible that Trump doesn’t really know what’s going on given his increasingly obvious cognitive decline, but he has never exhibited much human empathy and is a compulsive liar and confabulator. These qualities arguably made him unfit to be a property developer, much less the most powerful man on Earth.
Given his famously child-like need for attention and adulation, which his courtiers and cronies are only too willing to provide, there is absolutely no chance of him changing. On the contrary, his belief that God is proud of him ought to alarm ought to alarm friend and foe alike.
After all, this is a man with the capacity to blunder into World War 3 without having any idea what he’s doing. The complete absence of any plan or exit strategy in the escalating conflict with Iran demonstrates that even the most apocalyptic of unforeseen consequences cannot be ruled out.
While an international economic crisis may not be the worst thing that could happen, for those of us fortunate enough to live in peaceful Australia it really ought to demonstrate that Trump is a threat to supposed friends and allies, as well as the innocent Iranians he promised to help.
If nothing else, Trump’s behaviour should make the danger and folly of relying on someone quite so delusional and self-obsessed clear to even our most unthinking policymakers. Trump will be satisfied with nothing less than the complete support and cooperation of allies, no matter how misguided or inhuman his policies may be.
Given the decades of uncritical fealty Australia’s leaders have displayed to the United States, it is no surprise that there has generally been an uncomfortable silence about ‘our’ response to the latest American-led fiasco.
‘We (sic) support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.’
It’s worth remembering that Iran was attacked while trying to negotiate a new agreement to replace the one Trump tore up, a tactic that may have allowed the U.S. to decapitate Iran’s leadership but won’t making resolving the conflict any easier. Truth, diplomacy and trustworthiness are clearly for losers. Might clearly does make right in Trump-world. This reality may help to explain why the Albanese government is keeping its collective head down.
Other leaders have not been quite so supine and gutless, however. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after fruitless attempts at ingratiating himself with Trump, unambiguously stated that the “government will not participate in this war”. Moreover, Merz pointed out that Trump’s war had nothing to do with NATO, which was a defensive alliance, not one designed for wars of aggression.
Trump responded in his usual fashion with threats and bluster, suggesting a failure to support his ill-conceived war would be ‘very bad’ for NATO. Although we have learned not expect truth or consistency when dealing with Trump, suggesting that the foundation of the Western alliance may be in jeopardy is hardly a minor threat. Trump’s great friend Vladimir Putin must be delighted.
If our leaders are too unimaginative and cowardly to speak up in defence of international law, or to criticise unilateralism and the intensification of great power politics, civil society must do what it can. The absence of the sort of activism and protests that characterised opposition to the equally ill-conceived and pointless Vietnam War is disappointing and revealing, however. Perhaps it takes 500 actual combat deaths and the prospect of being called-up to bring home the reality of war to Australians.
Or perhaps rising interest rates, the cost of filling up a monstrous SUV, or re-routing your European holiday might do the trick. Either way, it’s reassuring to know that President Trump thinks the war with Iran is going so well that he gives if 15 out of 10. Nothing for our leaders to worry about after all.
It seems incongruous that with a fleet of nine nuclear powered submarines the United Kingdom has only one operational vessel from the fleet which has been sent to Garden Island in Western Australia instead of using it for protective deployment around the British Isles
That submarine being HMS Anson still requires some minor maintenance work for its continued operations which is being undertaken at Garden Island
It appears that the real reason for Anson being sent to Australia is for the United Kingdom to demonstrate some capacity in being able to be an active participant in the AUKUS agreement but this may be a rather hopeless exercise in view of the strained relationship with the United States over the Iran war
The lack of naval capacity of the United Kingdom is best demonstrated by the fact that the destroyer HMS Dragon proposed to be send to Cyprus for protection of its naval 1 of 2 base on the island cannot be put to sea due to the incapacity of undertaking the necessary dockyard work for it seagoing status
All of this should be borne in mind when planning for the future development of the AUKUS proposals
It is therefore beyond the wildest dreams to contemplate
the design and subsequent construction of the SSN- AUKUS submarine
How will the Australian government react to this situation when AUKUS is a major part of its defence strategy?
The US and Israeli strikes on Iran on the weekend present Australia with a difficult but necessary question: what does it mean to defend an “international rules-based order” if that defence is applied selectively?
Moments like this test whether our commitment to international law is principled or contingent.
Australia’s Foreign Minister moved swiftly to express support for the strikes. Yet their illegality was immediately apparent to leading legal experts worldwide, including clarion calls from Australia’s own Professor Ben Sauland Donald Rothwell. The unanimous verdict of the legal community is that the strikes were again, as was the case in June 2025, manifestly illegal under the UN Charter.
The prohibition on the use of force is a cornerstone of international law. Kick at it repeatedly, dislodge it enough, and the foundations begin to give way. Don’t for a moment let the flurry of legal opinions suggest that this is a rhetorical disagreement; it is a serious legal dispute about the limits of military power.
When powerful states stretch those limits, the consequences ripple outward. International law depends not only on formal enforcement, but on perception, consistency and restraint. If some states vest in themselves the authority to determine when force is justified, others will inevitably take note.
For a middle power like Australia, which relies on stable legal frameworks rather than strategic dominance, that erosion carries real cost. If Australia is serious about international law, it must apply the rules consistently to everyone, everywhere, at all times, including to its closest partners.
Then there is the deeper nuclear dimension.
Both the United States and Israel are nuclear-armed states. When nuclear-armed governments conduct strikes framed as counter-proliferation measures, it reinforces perceptions of hierarchy and hypocrisy in the global non-proliferation regime, centred on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The NPT rests on a two-part bargain dating back to 1968: non-nuclear-weapon states agreed to forgo nuclear weapons while the five permanent members of the Security Council, who are nuclear-armed, promised that they would pursue disarmament “in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race…and a treaty on general and complete disarmament“. Progress by the nuclear-armed states on that second pillar stalled, while reliance on nuclear deterrence has become more deeply embedded in strategic doctrine, and four additional states have developed their own nuclear weapons.
This credibility gap is precisely why the citizen-led coalition, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), created in Melbourne in 2007, worked with humanitarians worldwide, in particular the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, to develop a treaty that makes nuclear weapons illegal and sets the stage for their elimination.
This treaty-led approach to banning inhumane weapons has already been achieved for all other weapons of mass destruction. ICAN is now led from Geneva by former ALP Federal Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke, and has over 700 partner organisations who continue to advocate for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the only legally binding global instrument that comprehensively prohibits nuclear weapons and establishes a pathway toward their elimination. Ninety-nine countries have joined this treaty.
Australia is not one of them.
Given our historical good standing on arms control, I’m often asked why this is, including by state and federal parliamentarians. The straight answer is that our government is fearful to confront our powerful ally, even on this topic on which the safety of life on earth rests, in fact, particularly on this topic.
Australia occupies an unusual position in the nuclear debate. We are not a nuclear-armed state. We do not host our own nuclear weapons. Yet we are deepening defence integration with nuclear-armed AUKUS allies, expanding force posture initiatives, hosting joint facilities, and embedding ourselves more tightly within extended deterrence arrangements. Alliance cooperation, we are told, brings clear benefits. It also brings exposure.
Retaliatory strikes on US facilities across the Gulf illustrate a basic reality: infrastructure associated with military operations become targets. As Australia expands access and interoperability, it is prudent, not disloyal, to assess how that affects our own vulnerability in a crisis. This is not an argument for abandoning alliances. It is an argument for clarity about trade-offs.
If Australia is prepared to criticise breaches of international law by adversaries, it must also be prepared to express principled concern when allies test those same rules. Selective application weakens the normative architecture we claim to uphold.
Military strikes can delay technical capabilities, but they don’t resolve the political drivers of proliferation. Durable non-proliferation outcomes have historically depended on negotiated constraints, verification and reciprocal commitments, not cycles of force and retaliation.
Security built on nuclear brinkmanship is brittle security.
The Australian government is not living up to the image of our nation as a principled, multilateral middle power that Prime Minister Albanese painted at the UN General Assembly last year when he said:
“If we give people reason to doubt the value of co-operation, then the risk of conflict becoming the default option grows. If we allow any nation to imagine itself outside the rules, or above them, then the sovereignty of every nation is eroded.”
Australia should walk the talk and swiftly reposition itself to buttress confidence in international law. The government should begin by publicly and repeatedly reaffirming that international law consistently, to allies and adversaries alike.
Next, it has a responsibility to clarify for itself and inform the public whether any joint facilities based in Australia played a role in supporting the strikes and take measures to ensure that Australian territory is not used to facilitate unlawful military action. Not to satisfy a journalist’s curiosity, but because it’s an obligation under international law.
Lastly, the government should demonstrate its commitment to diplomacy and, without further delay, join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as part of a credible strategy to reduce nuclear risk. Numerous cities, councils and state and territory parliamentarians have signed a pledge in support of taking this action. So have a majority of federal Parliamentarians.
Australians want a world in which law constrains power. Our government must be prepared to defend that principle confidently and consistently, even and especially among allies.
At present, Australia risks being too quick to support force, and too slow to grow peace.
About the author
Tara Gutman is a lawyer and strategist specialised in international law at Lexbridge Lawyers. Tara is also Co-Chair of ICAN Australia.
Under secretly-concluded arrangements with our allies, Australia is now on track to have US nuclear weapons on Australian soil for lengthy periods, starting very soon.
A new report released today details this dangerous development and exposes how the Australian community is being kept in the dark about it.
The report by civil society group Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR) examines efforts by the Albanese government to facilitate the increasing presence of nuclear weapons capable aircraft and submarines.
“Many Australians are completely unaware that under current agreements with the US Australian airfields and port facilities will be hosting US aircraft and subs that could be carrying nuclear weapons. And those visits will increase dramatically, possibly in breach of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty,” said AWPR spokesperson Peter Murphy.
“A massive 1.6 billion dollars is currently being spent to upgrade the Tindal RAAF base in the Northern Territory and media reports describe six B-52, long-range, nuclear-capable bombers being “housed” there. But so far there’s been no proper public debate about Australia’s increasing involvement in the US nuclear weapons system.”
The Albanese government currently has a “we don’t ask” policy when it comes to whether US aircraft and ships are carrying nuclear weapons while in Australia. At the same time the US has a “neither confirm nor deny” policy on nuclear weapons. These policies are unwarranted and unacceptable.
“It’s time to end the secrecy on nuclear weapons and let the public have an informed debate. Do we really want these weapons of mass destruction in Australia? Shouldn’t the parliament discuss and vote on these matters?”
Australians have consistently rejected any role for nuclear weapons in our defence policies. A national poll last year revealed that two-thirds of Australians want the government to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
“In this new report we are also urging the government to initiate a full independent inquiry into the AUKUS pact, as repeatedly called for by civil society and former prime ministers and foreign ministers. It should include a comprehensive review of Australia’s policies on nuclear weapons,” Peter Murphy said.
The full report “Australia and US Nuclear Weapons: Time to End the Secrecy” is available here
Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines is not in fact the most important part of the AUKUS deal – they are a distraction … AUKUS’s main game is the base that Australia intends to give to the US at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia
It is tempting to label the AUKUS project an exercise in self-delusion and self-denial. The number of commentators who believe the project’s core promise will actually be honoured – the transfer of Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the United States to Australia – is astonishingly small and mainly limited to politicians and their hangers-on.
Even in the US, the likelihood of the transfer taking place is openly discounted, including by the chief of naval operations, Admiral Daryl Caudle. As if preparing for a let-down, a new report from the Congressional Research Service advances alternatives to the transfer of the promised submarines that will still allow the US to meet its strategic priorities.
In addition, it is hard to square the submarine promise with the reality that is Washington these days. US President Donald Trump’s willingness to pressure America’s allies and turn the US into a rogue superpower is well documented – just ask the Canadians and Danes. We have witnessed in real time his destruction of the global rules-based order as the US withdraws from dozens of international organisations and agreements.
That the US warship-building industry is in poor shape is also no secret. The odds of the nation being able to increase its submarine build rate to the required level for the transfer to go ahead without a loss of US operational capability is virtually nil, according to a December 2025 report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
One must accept that Australia’s politicians are reasonably intelligent, yet with the myriad well-known problems facing the nuclear-powered submarine transfer it is hard to understand how they can still insist that the project is “full steam ahead”. Nor is this insistence without cost to the taxpayer, as evidenced in the recent promise to spend $30 billion on South Australia’s Osborne shipyard to make it AUKUS ready. How can our politicians sustain their faith in AUKUS and not be rightly labelled as delusional?
The answer to this contradiction lies in recognising what AUKUS is really about – what the parties actually expect to gain from the agreement. Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines is not in fact the most important part of the AUKUS deal – they are a distraction. There are too many challenges to Australia’s acquisition, operation and maintenance of these boats for any rational person to believe they will arrive as promised. Hence AUKUS’s main game is the base that Australia intends to give to the US at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia.
This base may be on Australian soil but its primary beneficiary will be the US, just as it is the US that disproportionately gains from the seemingly “joint” military facilities at Pine Gap and North West Cape.
The forthcoming nuclear submarine base is part of a wider American preparation for a possible war between the US and China. From the base, American submarines will be able to operate against China’s southern flank and sever its lines of communication across the Indian Ocean. In addition, the base allows the US to complicate China’s security arrangements by allowing American forces to operate on multiple lines of attack – westwards across the Pacific Ocean and northwards from Australia.
For the US, the defence of Australia is a distant secondary goal for this base. Our politicians are not therefore being delusional; they are being actively deceptive to their voters, since they must know what it is that the US really wants.
Australia is making enormous improvements to Fleet Base West (Stirling). The base is being upgraded so it can sustain and maintain a fleet of foreign nuclear-powered submarines, principally the US Navy’s Virginia-class attack boats, Ohio-class nuclear-armed missile submarines and the occasional British submarine.
The Stirling upgrade is similar in intent to what is happening at RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory, which is being improved to accept US heavy bombers, presumably including nuclear-armed ones.
As a second order effect, the US presence at Stirling will see a significant influx of American sailors, maintenance personnel and administrative staff to the area. So determined is our government to meet its AUKUS responsibilities and make the US submarine base a reality that it plans to build new homes for the 1200 mainly American military personnel and their families who will be calling Australia home.
In the midst of a national housing crisis, and in a region where home prices increased by 15 per cent in a single year, a similar urgent housing build for Australian citizens is apparently not on the cards.
If one examines AUKUS from the perspective of Australia’s longstanding security practice, what appears to be merely senseless starts to reveal a disturbing logic.
Since the end of World War II, Australian governments have gone to great lengths and expense to keep the US interested in our part of the world. Australia needs to get US attention because the south-west Pacific has never been – and still isn’t – an important part of the world in the eyes of our great power leader.
In order to keep our protector onside and interested in our fate, Australia has had to demonstrate repeated and enthusiastic support for American policy. The need to maintain relevance explains why Robert Menzies encouraged the US to fight in Vietnam, why Australia then invited itself to the war, and why this country went to such great lengths to be included in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as other military missions. Of course, getting into such conflicts was easy. Getting out again can be a lot harder. Any early withdrawal risks offending the US, so Australians have fought to the end.
Generating relevance also explains the readiness with which successive governments have accepted the establishment of US military bases on Australian soil. The most important of these are the spy and signals establishment at Pine Gap and the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt.
Just how vital these facilities are to America should not be minimised – they are critical for the conduct of US military and CIA operations, as well as the interception of communications by individuals ranging from actual terrorists to ordinary people, including Australians. The submarine base at Stirling will join Pine Gap and Naval Station Holt as a third facility of great operational importance.
AUKUS has a grim rationale when it is seen as the latest initiative in Australia’s longstanding tradition of seeking American attention. What is different in this case is that Australia’s leaders have increased the nation’s exposure to risk in any future war to a potentially existential level.
In the past, our participation in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan did not create any threat to Australia itself. Only those who served were placed in harm’s way. That is no longer the case.
China is a great power and, unlike Vietnam 60 years ago, has power projection capabilities that can hold Australian territory and population centres at real risk. The Australian government has placed a bullseye on Australia’s back and it isn’t clear if our leaders understand this.
Since the US bases are of great military importance, China would likely seek to destroy them in order to protect its own interests. Worse, China could safely employ nuclear weapons against Australia because the US would be unlikely to retaliate against such distant damage and risk the incineration of one of its own cities.
Without any commensurate benefit, the Australian government has embraced AUKUS and accepted the tremendous costs and risks it entails. It has done so with an appalling lack of honesty towards the Australian public, using the submarine promise like a set of shiny keys in front of a baby.
Our leaders must know that the US will not have submarines to spare when the time comes for the transfer. Instead, they employ deception to distract from the real game – a US submarine base and the unstated commitment of Australia to the American side in a war between great powers.
Of course, this need not be the outcome. Despite tradition and reluctance by our political leaders to embrace new ideas, policy can change. An independent defence policy that puts Australian sovereignty first is within reach, and the military technologies to enact it already exist.
The impediment is the Australian government’s inability to accept the reality of the present security situation. Instead, it opts for nostalgia. Australia needs a government that is willing to embrace the necessary changes in perspective and culture that will allow it to consider other security options.
Perhaps one day our politicians can rise to conceiving and implementing a different security policy, rather than falling back on the traditional default response of jumping up and down to get the attention of Washington. One can only hope.
Today, to hold a principled anti-war stance is often derided as “un-Australian” or weaponised through accusations of anti-Semitism, all while a new cycle of state-sanctioned Islamophobia plays out under the guise of national security. We are witnessing the return of “One Nation” rhetoric: a toxic mix of division and rabid ignorance.
Australia is not a bystander. Firms like Palantir and Anduril have successfully blurred the lines between civilian and military data. In February 2026, the Labor government quietly awarded Palantir a fresh $7.6 million contract for Defence’s Cyber Warfare Division. Meanwhile, Canberra has committed $1.7 billion to Anduril’s “Ghost Shark” program—autonomous undersea vehicles designed for strike operations.
Fresh from their “snuff-movie” hit incinerating Venezuelan fishermen, Team Trump moves yet another carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf. Suddenly, our infotainment airwaves are full of experts spruiking “clean, surgical strikes,” while our media eagerly repeats the Pentagon’s propaganda. An old fat sea-cow, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and her tattooed bouncers are framed as instruments of precision and humane restraint, hovering just over the horizon of Iran’s ruggedly spectacular coast.
“Surgical strikes?” Pentagon experts now propose to kill and maim Iranians in an illegal blitzkrieg or perhaps three months of “boots on the ground” – the messages are as garbled as a Trump rally speech. But what is clearly being sold is the old lie that war is glorious, noble, and heroic. The US is supposedly ready to “send a message” without another Iraq-style quagmire because, this time, war will be data-driven, algorithmically optimised, and somehow morally minimised.
Modern warfare has never been more complex, nor more bloodthirsty. Today, to hold a principled anti-war stance is often derided as “un-Australian” or weaponised through accusations of anti-Semitism, all while a new cycle of state-sanctioned Islamophobia plays out under the guise of national security. We are witnessing the return of “One Nation” rhetoric: a toxic mix of division and rabid ignorance. From the White House, the lies arrive with such velocity that they overwhelm the public’s ability to process them. Above all, we are sold an antiseptic fantasy: that the next war will be a clean victory won by Artificial Intelligence, where autonomous drones and “algorithmic warfare” replace the messy reality of human slaughter.
We are rarely told who taught the machines to kill. And at what human cost.
The reality of 2026 is that the “intelligence” in AI remains deeply, painfully, and inexorably human. AI-enabled targeting, surveillance, and logistics systems require billions of data points to be labelled, sorted, and refined before a single model can be deployed. Every box drawn around a body in a blurry image, every classification of rubble, every tag of “weapon” versus “non-combatant” has been performed by a human being. Not by Silicon Valley engineers, but by a vast, hidden army of pieceworkers scattered across the Global South.
In refugee camps in East Africa, in cramped internet cafés in South Asia, and in crowded apartments in Latin America, workers are paid the equivalent of a few dollars an hour to sit at flickering screens and trace rectangles around human silhouettes. Behold the invisible pedagogues of the war machine, providing the labelled examples that allow military AI to distinguish “target” from “background,” “combatant” from “crowd.”
The irony is dark and palpable. Many of these workers live in regions already wrecked by Western interventions. Some fled earlier conflicts in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan; others live under permanent austerity. Men and women now find themselves training systems that may one day patrol their own skies. It is a grim circularity: the global poor – the “wretched of the earth,” as Frantz Fanon termed them – are pressed into teaching the next generation of weapons how to see.
This is the new “Digital Taylorism.” Just as 20th-century manufacturers broke down manual labour into minute, repetitive tasks, 21st-century AI firms have fragmented intellectual labour into atomised micro-gestures. For those training military models, the work is often traumatic. Investigations into data-labelling hubs in Kenya, India, and Colombia document the harm: workers are forced to view thousands of hours of violent, graphic content—war footage, torture, and the aftermath of bombings—to “fine-tune” the algorithm’s recognition.
Unlike the soldiers who will eventually operate these systems, these digital labourers have no veteran status, no medals, and no guaranteed access to mental health care. When their performance drops due to the trauma, the solution is simple: deactivate their account and hire another worker from the endless queue.
Australia is not a bystander. Firms like Palantir and Anduril have successfully blurred the lines between civilian and military data. In February 2026, the Labor government quietly awarded Palantir a fresh $7.6 million contract for Defence’s Cyber Warfare Division. Meanwhile, Canberra has committed $1.7 billion to Anduril’s “Ghost Shark” program—autonomous undersea vehicles designed for strike operations.
When these systems are woven into civilian infrastructure, the war machine becomes an everyday reality. The same optimisation logic used to squeeze more deliveries out of a warehouse worker is repurposed to accelerate the “sensor-to-shooter” loop. In Australia, we saw a prototype of this in Robodebt: the weaponisation of data against the poorest, treating them as problems to be hunted by algorithms long before any human looks at the facts.
This is not a glitch. It is how capital has integrated AI into the security state. A data labeller in Nairobi might make less in a day than a single second of flight time for a carrier-based fighter jet. The system depends on the invisibility of the connection between the micro-task on a screen and the missile in the sky.
We must refuse the comforting illusion that the coming war will be “clean” because it is “smart.” If our automated future is built on a foundation of traumatised, underpaid labour, then it is not a technological triumph. It is a moral failure disguised as innovation. The cost of the next war will not only be counted in missiles fired and lives lost in Tehran or the Strait of Hormuz. It is already being paid, quietly, in the human dignity we have sacrificed to train the machines that will fight it.
Coda: The Sycophant’s Algorithm
And so, we find ourselves back in the familiar, fawning posture of the Australian security establishment – a collection of strategic wallflowers so desperate for an invitation to the dance that they have handed the keys to the kingdom to a band of Silicon Valley carpetbaggers. We are told that by tethering our national interest to the likes of Palantir and Anduril, we are buying “security.”
In reality, we are buying a front-row seat to our own irrelevance.
We have become the regional branch managers for a war machine we neither control nor understand. To watch a Labor government – the party that once spoke of “national sovereignty” – quietly outsource our military intelligence to foreign algorithms trained by the global dispossessed is more than a policy failure; it is a spiritual surrender. It is the triumph of the technocrat over the citizen, the dashboard over the diplomat. We are being marched into a conflict in the Middle East not by the force of reason, but by the relentless, unthinking click of a mouse in a Nairobi sweatshop. It is a spectacle of profound hollowness, orchestrated by people who wouldn’t know a national interest if it bit them on the leg in the middle of a Canberra cocktail party.
When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran, the immediate international reaction ranged from firm endorsement to urgent calls for restraint.
In Canberra, the response was swift and clear. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Australia’s support for the action, framing it within longstanding concerns about Iran’s regional conduct and nuclear ambitions. Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles reinforced the government’s position, while travel advisories were updated and contingency arrangements activated for Australians in the region.
Diplomatically, the decision reflects a familiar pattern. Australia has historically aligned with its principal security partner in moments of escalation. Alliance credibility, non-proliferation principles and strategic continuity remain central pillars of Canberra’s foreign policy.
The domestic response, however, is less predictable.
For many Australians – particularly those who prioritise national security and alliance stability – support for the strikes follows a straightforward logic. Iran’s nuclear program has long been a source of international tension. Its involvement in regional proxy conflicts is widely documented. From this perspective, action aimed at preventing further escalation or nuclear capability can be seen as a deterrent measure rather than a provocation.
There is also the matter of alliance expectations. Australia’s security architecture is deeply interwoven with that of the United States. Moments of crisis test not only military capability but diplomatic reliability. Governments in Canberra, of both major parties, have historically erred on the side of solidarity.
At the same time, military action in the Middle East carries a long and complicated legacy. Public memory of Iraq and Afghanistan informs contemporary debate. For some Australians, the threshold for supporting overseas strikes is higher than it once was.
That caution has precedent. In the years following the 2003 Iraq invasion, polling consistently showed a majority of Australians believed Australia should not have participated – a reminder that public sentiment can shift sharply once the long-term consequences of intervention become clear.
Concerns now being raised focus less on defending Iran’s government and more on the risks inherent in escalation: retaliation across the region, disruption to global energy markets, and the possibility of a broader conflict drawing in additional powers.
Within parts of Labor’s traditional base – already engaged in debates over AUKUS and Australia’s expanding strategic footprint – questions about proportionality and long-term consequences have already surfaced. Peace organisations and some crossbench figures have signalled the need for restraint and renewed diplomatic channels.
Reasonable observers can hold two positions simultaneously: that Iran’s regime presents genuine strategic challenges, and that military escalation carries unpredictable consequences.
The Political Test Ahead
At this early stage, comprehensive polling on the current strikes is limited. Historically, Australian public opinion on international conflicts has tended toward caution. Support for allies often coexists with reluctance for deeper involvement.
What may ultimately shape domestic opinion is not the initial decision, but what follows. If the strikes remain contained and diplomatic efforts regain momentum, public reaction may remain measured. If escalation broadens – affecting global markets, regional stability, or Australian nationals abroad – scrutiny of Canberra’s stance will intensify.
For the Albanese government, the immediate decision aligns with longstanding strategic settings. The longer-term test will be flexibility: whether Australia can both maintain alliance solidarity and adapt its position as events evolve.
Foreign policy decisions made in the opening hours of a crisis often appear decisive. Their durability depends on what unfolds next.
In moments like this, governments act quickly. Public opinion tends to move more gradually – but it is rarely indifferent to outcomes.
Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy has announced an increased investment into the AUKUS program to bolster the nation’s military capabilities during talks in London
Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy has announced an increased investment of $310m into the AUKUS program to bolster the nation’s military capabilities during a meeting with British counterparts.
Minister Conroy met with the UK’s Defence Minister Luke Pollard in London this week — the first meeting for the Australia-United Kingdom Defence Industry Dialogue (AUKDID) since 2018 — and he said there will be further investment in the AUKUS program’s Pillar One including the construction of the very first parts to go into the nuclear reactors.
“I’m announcing that we have invested $310m in long-lead items for the reactors for the first two SSN-AUKUS boats,” Minister Conroy said.
“We just spent $310m acquiring the very first parts that will go into the reactors for the first two submarines that we will construct in Adelaide beginning later this decade.
“This project will create 20,000 high-skilled secure jobs making the most advanced submarines in the world, equipping the Royal Australian Navy with the capabilities it needs to deter conflict in our region”.
Mr Conroy will this week visit Rolls Royce Derby, northwest of London, to inspect reactors and also visit BAE Systems at Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria to discuss the progress of the SSN-AUKUS program.
“The defence relationship between Australia and the United Kingdom is going from strength to strength,” he said.
“Today’s announcements demonstrate further integration … to grow our industrial bases to give our respected forces the equipment they need to make both our countries safer in an increasingly uncertain world”.
Minister Conroy said the AUKUS timeline remains “on track” and the government was “hitting all major milestones” including the arrival of HMAS Anson.
It arrived at WA’s HMAS Stirling on Sunday to undergo its first maintenance of a UK nuclear-powered submarine in Australia.
Minister Conroy said the latest meetings between the two governments was a sign “relationship is the strongest that it’s been for a long, long time, we are the best of friends”.
He said the discussions also included: “Deepening co-operation on advanced radar technology including exploring the use of Australian radar technologies on UK projects”.
“We also flagged greater work on resilience supply chains and critical minerals and we’ve also flagged an increase on a number of Australian embeds at the BA submarine construction yard at Barrow,” he said.
“We are also supporting UK weapons testing of systems destined for Ukraine”.
Retired rear admiral Philip Mathias, a former director of nuclear policy with the UK Ministry of Defence, told this masthead last month he feared Australians were not adequately informed about how the troubles plaguing the British navy could scuttle the SSN-AUKUS plan.
“ there is a high probability that the UK element of AUKUS will fail,”
“Australia has shown a great deal of naivety and did not conduct sufficient due diligence on the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine program before signing up to AUKUS – and parting with billions of dollars,”
A British nuclear-powered submarine has arrived in Australia for an unprecedented month-long visit despite the well-chronicled problems plaguing the British navy’s ability to send its vessels to sea.
The British and Australian governments are holding up the visit as a sign of the countries’ commitment to the AUKUS pact, even as the United Kingdom views Russia as its most pressing security threat.
HMS Anson, an Astute-class nuclear-powered submarine, arrived on Sunday at the HMAS Stirling naval base in Perth for a month-long maintenance visit.
described the first such visit by a UK nuclear‑powered submarine in Australia as a “historic step in our nation’s readiness to operate and maintain conventionally armed, nuclear‑powered submarines”.
HMS Anson, which was commissioned in 2022, is reportedly the only available submarine in the British navy’s fleet of five Astute-class boats, highlighting the significance of the extended deployment to Australia.
British defence publication Navy Lookout has written that the “timing of the deployment seems extraordinary” as the British navy does not have any other Astute-class submarines available.
“The UK must continue to play its part in AUKUS, but in the short term, perhaps more local concerns should be the priority,” the publication argued this month.
“Placing the sole attack submarine on the other side of the globe appears to be at odds with vigorous official warnings to Russia that ‘any threat will be met with strength and resolve’.”
Navy Lookout said the British navy’s other four Astute-class submarines were “all at low or very low readiness”…………………………………………………………………………………
The plan involves the US selling Australia at least three Virginia-class submarines while the UK and Australia partner on the development of a new class of submarine known as the SSN-AUKUS………….
Retired rear admiral Philip Mathias, a former director of nuclear policy with the UK Ministry of Defence, told this masthead last month he feared Australians were not adequately informed about how the troubles plaguing the British navy could scuttle the SSN-AUKUS plan.
“Whilst the United States may sell some [nuclear-powered submarines] to Australia, there is a high probability that the UK element of AUKUS will fail,” he said
Mathias, who led a 2010 review of the UK Trident nuclear-weapons system, said: “It is clear that Australia has shown a great deal of naivety and did not conduct sufficient due diligence on the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine program before signing up to AUKUS – and parting with billions of dollars, which it has already started to do.”
The head of the British navy, First Sea Lord Gwyn Jenkins, ordered an urgent 100-day drive to tackle systemic delays in the UK submarine program in October.
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
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