Australian AUKUS Sub Decision Coming March 2023

By David Dunlop, 13 February 2023

It appears that Australia's AUKUS submarine decision will be coming in March 2023 and it may not be anything that most expect. It was anticipated that either the Virginia-class or Astute-class SSNs would be selected. It appears however that neither one of these boats may be finally selected, but a future replacement of the UK Astute-class called the SSN (R). There are several scenarios that may occur ranging from leasing Astute-class SSNs by Australia or possibly refurbished Los Angeles-class SSNs to provide an Australian SSN attack capability sooner before the SSN (R) program comes on stream. Here are some Breaking Defence articles by Colin Clark and Tim Martin on 10 February 2023. There's another interesting article by Nick Childs (Senior Fellow for Naval Forces and Maritime Security), 23 January 2023 called "AUKUS and the Nuclear Reaction to this." See the following.

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/02/growing-signs-australias-new-nuclear-sub-will-be-british-design/

https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military-balance/2023/01/aukus-and-the-nuclear-reaction

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