Navy chief dismisses US nuclear sub warning
Australia’s new navy chief has swatted away a warning from a senior United States Navy officer that Australia has little chance of securing nuclear submarines off American production lines, dismissing the highly publicised remarks as mere ‘‘noise’’.
Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, who took over as Chief of Navy in July, also spoke bluntly about China’s highly unusual behaviour of shadowing Australian naval vessels as they pass through the South China Sea.
Rear Admiral Scott Pappano, the senior officer in charge of the US Navy’s nuclear submarine programme, recently said helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines directly from the US under the Aukus agreement would probably be too much to ask of America’s overburdened shipyards.
‘‘If we were going to add additional submarine construction to our industrial base, that would be detrimental to us right now, without significant investment to provide additional capacity, capability,’’ Pappano told the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
His comments were widely interpreted as meaning that Australia would have to assemble all the nuclear submarines in Adelaide, with the delivery of the first boat not expected until the 2040s.
Asked about Pappano’s comments, Hammond told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age: ‘‘There’s been a lot of commentary ever since the [Aukus] announcement about a year ago. I would listen to whatever the president of the United States and [his] authorised spokespeople say on this, because I think there’s going to be lots of different opinions.’’
Hammond, who spent much of his navy career as a submariner, added: ‘‘I always try to wait for the senior leadership to actually put a position forward. For me, it’s a bit in the noise.’’
Following the Coalition’s election defeat, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he had been working on a plan as defence minister to purchase two Virginiaclass submarines directly from the American production line to accelerate the arrival of nuclear-powered vessels to Australia by a decade. Defence Minister Richard Marles has said he will announce by March the model of nuclear submarine Australia will acquire under the Aukus pact. Asked about whether Australian naval vessels had encountered any difficulties in the increasingly contested South China Sea, Hammond said Australian ships had been transiting through the region for over a century. ‘‘What has changed over the past few years is the behaviour of the Chinese forces in that region. ‘‘It’s a departure from what we would call normal maritime behaviour, but it hasn’t stopped us from conducting our operations.’’
Hammond said he was concerned about the possibility of a miscalculation between Australian and Chinese vessels at sea, but he was comforted by the fact that China’s behaviour had not escalated to a ‘‘reckless’’ level.
Hammondwas speaking ahead of a major multinational navy training exercise later this month off Darwin, Exercise Kakadu. Some 3000 personnel from 22 nations – including Germany, India, Japan and Britain – will participate.
Hammond said it was a decision for the government whether Chinese vessels participated in the exercises again, as they last did in 2018.
‘‘I think there’s probably some distance to go before we’re in that space.’’ – Nine