Australia to make significant cost savings by buying a third secondhand American nuclear submarine for the Aukus program, instead of at least one brand new model.
According to The Guardian, the defence minister, Richard Marles, on Sunday, May 31, described the decision not to buy any new Virginia-class boats as placing “a premium on simplicity.”
But Marles conceded there would be no “fundamental” shift in the cost of the multi-decade deal, estimated to be worth at least $370bn.
The government had expected to buy one new and two secondhand Virginia-class submarines.
But Marles said the decision to go with three “in-service” submarines would make training and operations easier and cheaper for Australian crews onboard from the early 2030s.
Marles said, “We are trying to find every cost-effective option as we walk down this path. This is a very useful financial contribution to the cost of the overall program, but actually at the heart of this is chasing simplicity.”
“I cannot overstate the significance of that, both in terms of the submariners who are operating them, but also the people who are working on them to sustain those submarines. It is definitely cost-effective. And to be clear, this is a very expensive programme... and so we are trying to find every cost-effective option as we walk down this path," he added.
Marles played down the cost of Aukus as 0.15% of GDP over the lifetime of the deal.
In a joint statement on Saturday, Marles, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the UK Secretary for Defence John Healey confirmed the tweak to the submarine agreement.
