A bipartisan group of senators this week went public with a request that President Joe Biden (D) compel the Navy to release a study they say is critical to oversight of a trilateral agreement to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines.
“We understand that a Submarine Industrial Base 2025 (SIB-25) study from the U.S. Navy and the Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation is complete, but that the administration does not plan to share its findings with Congress until the President’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2025 is released, sometime early next year,” reads a letter, published Tuesday, from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “However, understanding the scope of the generational investment required for the [submarine industrial base’s] viability is critical for development of AUKUS-authorizing legislation this year.”
Cosigning the letter were Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Dan Sullivan, (R-Alaska), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.).
Under AUKUS, announced in 2021, the U.S. and the United Kingdom will help Australia acquire conventionally armed, nuclear-powered attack submarines. The first ships in the planned fleet will be Virginia-class submarines provided by the U.S. Later, Australia will build its own submarines.
U.S. companies including BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., and shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries, Newport News, Va., have a lot hanging on the AUKUS agreement. BWX Technologies is the sole U.S. provider of nuclear naval reactors and its subsidiary, Nuclear Fuel Services, the sole provider of fuel for those reactors.
Huntington Ingalls Industries, the former Northrop Grumman shipbuilding, is collaborating with U.K.-based defense contractor Babcock International, including on AUKUS, the U.S. company said this summer.
