It’s a long way from San Diego to Barrow-in-Furness, but an announcement today in the Californian city’s naval base should prompt a party in the Cumbrian coastal town about 5,000 miles away because it brings with it the near-certainty of decades of work for its main employer and 10,500 employees.
Rishi Sunak will be in California to meet President Biden and Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, to unveil an ambitious tri-nation plan to build submarines. The scheme, part of the broader “Aukus” military alliance, will equip Australia’s navy with nuclear-powered submarines, making it only the seventh country in the world to possess the capability. The three nations want to confront growing Chinese military power in the Pacific.
While details of the deal will be set out today, an outline has emerged already. In the first phase, the US will base some of its own Virginia-class attack submarines in Australia, which also will buy up to five of the American submarines to arrive some time in the next decade. The final, largest phase will comprise a multi-year Anglo-Australian deal to build a new fleet to a British design, although the first vessels are unlikely to be ready before the middle of the 2040s. The likely cost has been estimated at close to £100 billion. The contract will include not only submarines for Australia but also a new set for the Royal Navy, with some defence sources saying that in total up to 20 could be ordered.
Barrow is home to Britain’s sole submarine construction facility, the descendant of a vast Victorian shipyard built as an offshoot of what was then the world’s largest steel plant. Most of the country’s nuclear submarines — the first was HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1960 — have been built here.
Today the yard is the busiest it has been for decades, with three Royal Navy submarines under construction — the final two Astute-class attack boats, HMS Agamemnon and HMS Agincourt, and the first of a new Dreadnought class. These larger vessels will carry Britain’s nuclear deterrent, replacing ageing Vanguard craft.
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Barrow has added about 2,000 workers in recent years to cope with the extra work and in January Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said he expected the headcount eventually to grow to 17,000.
The yard has not always had it so good. Two decades ago it was in crisis when work on the first Astute submarine ran late and above budget. The facility had not built a submarine for 20 years and many skilled staff and managers had left or retired. BAE Systems, which bought the site from GEC Marconi in 1999, eventually had to take a £1 billion hit on Astute and another problematic contract, for Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft, in 2003.
Other British companies with a big exposure to the submarine programmes include Rolls-Royce, the aircraft engine maker, which builds the nuclear power plants. Ultra Electronics is a specialist in sonar, communications and other sensitive technologies; it was bought last year by Cobham, a British defence contractor owned by a group of investors led by Advent International, the American private equity firm. Components for the reactors are made by Sheffield Forgemasters, the steel company nationalised by the Ministry of Defence two years ago.
The new Anglo-Australian submarines will be based on a design being developed by BAE Systems and the Ministry of Defence as an eventual replacement for the Astute class. Dubbed SSN(R), the submarines are expected to be larger than Astute and will carry additional weapons for attacks on land targets. Albanese has said the Australian submarines are likely to be assembled in Adelaide. Some systems, in particular the nuclear power plants, are likely to be made in Britain and shipped south.
Some defence experts think the glut of work could bring problems on both sides of the Atlantic. “The two US submarine yards are already full, as is the one in the UK,” Andrew Dorman, editor of the Chatham House International Affairs Journal, said. “You can’t suddenly turn round and build a nuclear submarine, it takes a decade of planning. There is the potential for this Australian programme to cause disruption to the existing UK and US programmes.”
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Similarly, Tim Ripley, a defence analyst and editor of the Royal Navy Yearbook, said: “You are reliant on a small number of specialist workers in these programmes. If you are a welder in Barrow and you get offered big money to head off to Australia, you might well be tempted to go.”
Sunak is expected also to announce additional funding for Dreadnought, by far the biggest British military programme. The four craft were forecast to cost £31 billion to build, but the National Audit Office has warned that more money may be needed.
