Australia खरीद सकता है पुराने US Los Angeles Class Submarine

The recently signed Australia–United Kingdom–United States defense agreement, or AUKUS, calls for the United States and Britain to share nuclear-submarine technology with Australia. Although the agreement was light on details of what, when, and how, plans apparently are for Australia to eventually build at least eight nuclear-powered attack submarines. In the interim, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is now advocating for Australia to obtain used nuclear submarines to get the sharing started so as to spin up the Royal Australian Navy’s submarine capabilities and nuclear know-how. Australia has never had a nuclear power plant of any kind.

Speaking last Friday at a Wilson Center event in Washington, D.C., Abbott suggested that, in the short term, Australia should consider leasing or purchasing one or more existing U.S. submarines to develop Australia’s capability to operate nuclear-powered submarines.

Abbott has posed the question, “Might it be possible for Australia to acquire a retiring [Los Angeles] class boat or two and to put it under an Australian flag and to run it, if you like, as an operational training boat?” Abbott added that he’d make a similar proposal for British nuclear-powered submarines “were I in London.”

“It would, in that capacity, be — if you like — an addition to the order of battle in the western Pacific, should that be necessary,” he added.

The U.S. Navy has experience turning Los Angeles-class submarines into floating schoolhouses. This past summer, the ex-USS San Francisco completed its conversion from a nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) to a moored training ship, MTS-711, now operating in Charleston, South Carolina. There it joined the converted former USS La Jolla, which began its new life in this training role last year. And while Abbott clearly is calling for a deployable vessel, not an MTS, if two subs were obtained, a moored training ship might be a valuable teaching tool to add.

Potential candidates for such a lease might include: the USS Providence (SSN-719), scheduled to be decommissioned this coming December; and the Oklahoma City (SSN-723), scheduled to decommission in June 2022. Two additional submarines — the ex-Pittsburgh (SSN-720) and the former Louisville (SSN-724) — were decommissioned in April 2020 and March 2021, respectively, but both might be too far along in the disposal process to be diverted and restored. All four submarines are equipped with vertical-launch systems (VLS) for Tomahawk cruise missiles. Pittsburgh and Providence were both commissioned in 1985. Louisville was commissioned in 1986, and Oklahoma City was commissioned in 1988. Two Flight I boats, which lack the VLS and other improvements, also retired in 2021: the Bremerton (SSN-698) and Olympia (SSN-717).

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