Japan may join UK/US/Australia defense-oriented AI and quantum alliance The AUKUS Alliance – a team-up between Australia, the US and the UK – has revealed it may invite Japan to join its efforts to develop artificial intelligence and quantum computing tech to be used for mutual defense. AUKUS was formed in 2021 with a centerpiece of collaboration between members to equip Australia with its first …
Surely sticking our heads in the sand would be ignoring China right up until the point when they start a war to conquer Taiwan? At which point the global chip supply chain goes into meltdown and assuming we get into either sanctions (or worse war) with China total global supply chains also break down. Leading to a decade long depression.
Xi Xinping has publicly said that he expects the Chinese military to be ready to conquer Taiwan by 2026. Which is why they're engaged in such a vast military build-up.
The way to avoid war is probably not just asking nicely.
At the time of writing, it appears that the boats will be made in the US and their reactors made in the UK
It’s all a bit different, and I suspect not totally decided. But the plan so far is that there’ll be some, to a lot, of commonality between the next generation British and US subs.
So they’ll share a common updated version of the Virginia payload module. Probably all built in the USA. That’s a cruise missile compartment with vertical launchers, as used on the current US Virginia class. The British launch cruise missiles from the torpedo tubes, because Astute is a bit more anti-submarine focused. Virginia is more designed to deal with the large Chinese surface fleet. I think it also allows special forces to do naughty diving things, whereas Astute has a diving shelter in the conning tower for that.
There may also be a common battle management system. The Aussies use US systems on their ships and subs, so either our joint AUKUS sub has to have 2 systems, or we all share one. The Aussies are currently making a mess of changing the type 26 ASW frigate design they’ve bought off Britain to also use US systems and because they’re adding extra missiles.
It's rumoured we may build the first Aussie boat here. But they’re setting up manufacturing in Australia, with staff already training in the UK, in our system. So the Aussies will expect to build and assemble their own, and have appointed BAe last week to do so. But with a common cruise missile compartment from the US and the reactor and propulsion, so the rear of the boat, made in the UK.
Sadly they couldn’t just have carried on making Astutes, because the reactor is no longer in production, and the replacement is physically larger, so needs a bigger hull. We’re already building the 4 Dreadnought class Trident boats, and there’ll be a lot of commonality, so as long as we don’t fall out over the design, we should be able to move smoothly into producing one every 2-3 years from 2030 onwards.
The Australian boats will be built in Australia, with the reactor coming from the UK, possibly as a complete reactor compartment hull section.
The US will sell or lease Australia 3 second hand Virginia class submarines which are near their end of life as interim subs while waiting for the new AUKUS subs. This will help Australia get a head start on training and getting experience so they will be ready for the AUKUS submarines when they do arrive. When the AUKUS subs arrive, the ex-Virginia's will be returned to the US and scrapped.
The AUKUS subs are just the design the UK were working on as Astute replacements, with Australia giving some input as to their requirements. The Astute replacements were going to use the Dreadnoughts as a starting point to save on engineering costs and for parts commonality.
The number one reason the Attack class subs being designed for Australia by France (Naval Group) was cancelled was because too much of the submarine was to be built in France and not enough in Australia and the Australian defence industry was turning up the heat on the government over this. The second issue was rapidly escalating as the original French design was "Australianized" at the request of Australia.
thames,
The Australian boats will be built in Australia, with the reactor coming from the UK, possibly as a complete reactor compartment hull section.
The reactor and the steam turbines are all interlinked. And the boats are currently built in blocks (rings). All the articles I've seen on this suggest those sections will be delivered to Australia - for them to possibly finish fitting out and then integrate with their boat.
I tried to find a good article covering everything, but there's been so much speculation that I can't. However I did learn that the Virginia Payload Module isn't a whole block, it's a module that will have to be integrated, so that was wrong in my above post. No whole blocks (rings) from the US.
There is more flexibility in the SSN-AUKUS program, and so there may be a way to deal with the workshare issues that keeps the Aussies happy in a way that the French couldn't. Partly because I don't think the French wanted to. But Australia have hired BAe, who already build ships for them, and BAe are doing the UK build. So one thing we could do is have Australia build blocks for the UK boats - meaning that the Aussies can have 100% workshare, even while only building 75% of their own boats (numbers from back of envelope).
The AUKUS subs are just the design the UK were working on as Astute replacements, with Australia giving some input as to their requirements
I'm not sure how true this is. I suspect we might not have gone with the vertical launch tubes in the next British design, if we hadn't been signing up with the Aussies. Also the MoD have announced that the SSN-AUKUS boat is going to have a common combat system - and the Australians want US systems as it's the US they inter-operate with and that's what they have on their current fleet. In an ideal world this would mean cooperation, from what I've read the British sonar is a bit better than the Virginia's (though it's hard to tell). So this is a severe cost fo us, if we're forced to dump some rather expensive R&D we've done over decades, in order to take US systems to keep this a single class of subs. The US having a severe case of "not-invented-here" syndrome - and often being unwilling to support allies' defence-industrial base with the odd order to counter the stuff allies order from them. Also leaving us with Astute and Dreadnought on different combat systems to SSN-AUKUS. That coudl all change, there's supposed to be a bunch of common tech development and sharing bits built into AUKUS and possibly ways to avoid ITAR - which makes defence cooperation with the US a ball-ache. But none of that has got through Congress yet.
I ain't Spartacus said: "I tried to find a good article covering everything, but there's been so much speculation that I can't."
The deal was put together in a hurry at a high level when the UK PM saw an opportunity and jumped on it. So far as I am aware, a lot of the details are simply not worked out yet. The reactors for Australia are already ordered from Rolls Royce though, so that part is nailed down.
I ain't Spartacus said: "However I did learn that the Virginia Payload Module isn't a whole block, it's a module that will have to be integrated, so that was wrong in my above post. No whole blocks (rings) from the US."
Vertical launch systems for missiles of that size are normally modular, including on surface ships. Australia would simply build the hull section with a large rectangular empty space for the launch system and then weld it in when it's shipped from the US. It would be very difficult for the US to build the hull section itself, as they wouldn't have the tooling for building it. Modern naval ships are built in sections with piping and wiring and everything else already in place, and then welded together. Everything has to line up very precisely.
I ain't Spartacus said: "There is more flexibility in the SSN-AUKUS program, and so there may be a way to deal with the workshare issues that keeps the Aussies happy in a way that the French couldn't."
With the Attack class, Australia were trying to heavily customize an existing French design. This inevitably resulted in rapidly escalating costs and receding completion dates. When the project reached the next approval gate, the Australian cabinet got cold feet and pulled the plug.
After that happened Australia started revisiting the question of nuclear versus non-nuclear from the start and this is where the UK jumped in. The UK Astute replacement was just starting to go on the drawing board and the UK were keen enough on export sales so Australian requirements could be designed in from the start rather than added on later.
I ain't Spartacus said: "Also the MoD have announced that the SSN-AUKUS boat is going to have a common combat system - and the Australians want US systems as it's the US they inter-operate with and that's what they have on their current fleet."
One of the Australian requirements for the French designed subs was for them to be fitted with an updated version of the CMS (Combat Management System) designed by Australia for the Collins class subs. This uses a lot of American hardware, but the software and integration was Australian. Originally the complete CMS for the Collins class was to be provided by an America company, but the latter botched the job so badly that they eventually had to be kicked out of the Collins project (Canada had similar problems with fitting American combat systems to the Upholder/Victoria subs it bought from the UK, although that was eventually made to work).
Australia then designed its own CMS using Australian software and integration engineering, but using a lot of American hardware. As Australia had sunk so much money into their own submarine CMS and had continued to pump money into the organization responsible for it on further development, it was a firm requirement that any new subs had to use it as well. The Australians considered this CMS to be one of their defence industry crown jewels.
It's not clear from current press reports whether the common CMS for the AUKUS subs is the Australian designed one which uses a lot of American hardware, or is in fact just the complete American system. If it's the former, then a lot of the Australian content requirements will be met by the UK using the Australian CMS in their own boats. If it's using the complete American system, then this is a huge reverse course for Australia.
However, none of the press reports that I've read seem to understand the history of the CMS issue and so don't make a clear enough description of what the intention is so that we can see what is actually going on.
The issue of nuclear propulsion always ran into the stumbling block of high costs and whether it would suck up so much of the defence budget that not enough money would be left for the rest of the Australian defence forces. The advantage of nuclear for Australia was always in terms of reduced transit time between the main naval bases and the primary patrol areas on the opposite side of the continent. Once on patrol AIP subs are quieter and so more "stealthy" and so are better in that regards. Reduced transit time though would let Australia buy fewer submarines.
I'm sure Arthur C Clarke's 1951 short story "Superiority" was intended as entertainment, not prophecy. But I think perhaps it should be required reading for those who think AI is the answer to all the problems of modern life.
A short excerpt The situation was now both serious and infuriating. With stubborn conservatism and complete lack of imagination, the enemy continued to advance with his old-fashioned and inefficient but now vastly more numerous ships. It was galling to realize that if we had only continued building, without seeking new weapons, we would have been in a far more advantageous position. There were many acrimonious conferences at which Norden defended the scientists while everyone else blamed them for all that had happened. The difficulty was that Norden had proved every one of his claims: he had a perfect excuse for all the disasters that had occurred. And we could not now turn back—the search for an irresistible weapon must go on. At first it had been a luxury that would shorten the war. Now it was a necessity if we were to end it victoriously.
That's assuming that CEOs and politicians can read of course. If not, perhaps one of their loyal minions can read it to them in the limo as they zip back and forth to ever so important meetings. It's quite short.
If you meet the enemy with roughly equal technology, mass-on-mass - then what you get is huge casualties.
Also, if your adversary is a dictatorship, then they can get away with dedicating vast amounts of their economy, and country's manpower, to having huge forces. If you're trying to defend a democracy, you can only justify that for a certain amount of time, during an emergency, until the voters choose someone else, who tells them nice comforting things about how you can cut defence with no risk.
Therefore your best option is to develop technology to cope with the dictator's advantage - that he can shoot people if they refuse to join the army, and you can't. Of course, during the Colld War that technology was tactical nuclear weapons. Which was the only way to stop the Soviet Union conquering Germany - with modern precision tech coming in the 70s and 80s which might have been able to destroy enough tanks to make the late Cold War look sligthly more like the first Iraq war - rather than a whole bunch of nuclear blasts and then global thermonuclear war.
If you're someone like Ukraine, of course, you can't even choose to have equal mass to your enemy, because they outnumber you. At which point, superior technology and tactics are your only hope.
No offense unSpartucus, but I think you've totally missed the point. Maybe you could read Clarke's story. It's only a couple of thousand words. Clarke makes the point far better than I can.
It's not that new technologies aren't needed. Indeed, it looks likely that aerial combat at least as well as ground combat and perhaps naval as well will change dramatically in the next few decades. In the aerial case, the battle space is likely to become incredibly complex with multitudes of drones and anti-drones and God knows what else flying in all directions. I doubt that one or two guys in classical fighter aircraft can possibly manage all that without flying into a mountain. I suspect that the F35,J31,SU57 may be the end of the line for conventional fighter aircraft. Not that they are totally useless. But like the 70 year old B52 the air forces and navies may still be flying them (with a few incremental improvements) a century from now
But tackling future battlespaces that with "technologies" that no one seems to understand (quantum) or that are, by their very nature, unreliable and unpredictable (AI) seems probably more than a bit ill-advised. In point of fact there is -- as far as I can tell -- not one single working quantum computer that actually solves real world problems. For all any of us knows quantum computers may remain just one or two more tweaks away from utility for decades, or centuries, or forever,
AI is even worse in a way. Unlike quantum which at least looks to have actual utility if/when a device can ever be built that reliably performs as simulations predict. Nobody knows (or can know?) exactly what an AI agent is going to do. It is not encouraging that the one AI agent that we have extensive experience with -- IBM's Watson -- seems to have failed at every application it has attempted other than a very impressive ability to play a trivia game.
My opinion for what it's worth. Quantum, AI and such are Utopian concepts. And Utopian ideas rarely (not never, but rarely) work out. Better I think to devote most effort to doing things one already knows how to do a bit better every year and to adapt them (cautiously) to new problems and situations as those develop. Best leave magic to stage magicians like Penn and Teller.
vtcodger,
The Royal Navy have already deployed a test quantum navigation system. Although that's just a better version of an existing tech, inertial navaigation, rather than a quantum computer. If those can be got to work, I suspect their use will happen more in intelligence and cryptography than front-line stuff.
Machine learning is already in use though. And has been for a while. I don't buy the AI hype, there's no AI - but the military gather ridiculous amounts of sensor data and so throwing it at machine learning is garnering results already. There are theories, that I don't personally buy, that machine learning could make the oceans "transparent". With good enough data you could find submarines by tiny traces of their wake that get to the surface, or by using machines to filter their sound out of the ocean noise.
But "find the Russiain fuel depots" using this ground-radar data for the last 100 hours is possible, and already done. How much is currently the intel teams' work, and how much the computers, I don't know.
But as we gather more data, we have to find more ways to network and use it effectively, or we're giving away a potential military advantage.
Unlike you, I don't think the F35 will be the last major Western combat aircraft. Because I think we'll need humans in the loop for a long time to come. Even if they're become much more inter-dependent with their computers. I can well imagine, for example, that a computer could be taught to fly a dogfight as well as a human. In the same way that computers can now beat the best players at chess and go. Because a dogfight is like a game, in that there are certain rules of what is physically possible and so it's possible that there are simply decisions that are always better, under a given set of circumstances. So the human may in some cases be setting priorities and overall objectives for computers and observing the results. This is how modern SAM systems work, and have for quite a while, though they're programmed by people not AIs or machine-learning derived.
But the original posrt (and quote) complained about having fewer systems in order to pursue a strategy of superior weapons. But that's a strategy forced on any democracy forced to confront an aggressive dictatorship with a large population over the long term.
I don't think the F35 will be the last combat aircraft at all. Nor do I think that humans will be out of the loop. What I think is that future conflicts in spatially constrained airspaces will likely be conducted by flying Combat Information Centers with a pilot and staff of specialists controlling various aspects of the battle. They will presumably stand well back from the action and between the opposing CICs will be shields of defensive drones and a lot of offensive drones trying to get through to attack the CICs. Given jamming and stealth and counter-stealth measures, the whole thing will probably be a chaotic shambles. Not a healthy place for pilots and expensive fighter aircraft I should think. Nor a place where human fighter pilots are likely bring anything much to the party. Individual fighters will, I should think, still be around for patrols and some other missions. I just think that F35s (or cheaper F16s) will prove to be adequate for those roles.
Detecting Submarines from wake noises. ... Maybe. I'm a bit skeptical only because many decades ago, I shared office space with some folks who were trying (unsuccessfully) to automate ship identification from sonar data -- which was done manually back then. I have no idea how it's done today with far better tools. Probably it's automated? But I do know from chatting with them that the sea is kind of a noisy place to begin with and there are real practical limits to how much you can dig into the substantial random noise to extract a signal.
PhilipN,
I'd agtee that we're already in a new Cold War. I wouldn't really say it's by choice. We weren't in a Cold War with China before they made Xi Xinping "Paramount Leader" more-or-ess for life.
For example, mentioning nuclear submarines in the context of "defence" is a dead giveaway.
Dead giveaway of what? A nuclear submarine is still a perfectly viable defensive weapon. I just searched for the length of Australia's coastline - and the internet seems to disagree. It's somewhere between 25,000km and 35,000km. Whatever, it's very long, and a diesel-electric sub just can't cover those kinds of distances very quickly. That's before you consider that blockade can be an offensive weapon, and in order to defend against a naval blockade you need to send your forces away from your coastline in order to so. Again Australia is quite big, and quite a long way away from anywhere. Hence they decided they wanted nuclear propulsion for their new submarines.
Of course a sub can also be an offensive weapon. But then that's as true of conentional subs as it is of nuclear ones.
As will the delusion that China which is moving hell-for-leather in the same fields will sit back and do nothing.
China are already doing all of that. I'd argue the delusional people are those who aregue that if we ignore what China is already doing, then everything will be fine. We're much more likely to change what they think they can get away with by preparing to meet the threat, than to ask them nicely to please not be nasty to their neighbours. Otherwise, in ten years time, China may have invaded Taiwan and maybe had another border war with Vietnam and India and a naval conflict with the Phillipines. If the Chinese coastguard ramming their merchant and naval ships doesn't already count as some sort of low-level ongoing naval war - in which case it's been happening regularly for the last decade.
> Already started. For example, mentioning nuclear submarines in the context of "defence" is a dead giveaway.
One of the most important jobs of the submarines that this article is about is to track down and kill the submarines with nuclear missiles - isn't that very much a defensive job?
Never going to happen.
Got any evidence for that? Or even an argument as to why?
I just had a quick Google, and Trump doesn't seem to have said much about his opinions on AUKUS. I found as many pieces saying he was a threat to it, as saying he would like it as a tranasctional relationship where everyone was putting stuff in. Mostly it's a win for the US, as they get to sell 3 older subs to the Aussies - subs they currently don't have the capacity to refit anyway - so those will potentially be avaible when run by an ally. Plus the Aussies and UK will buy more US systems to put on their subs, than the UK alone would have bought - and the US doesn't have to pay out anything. Other than training a bunch of Aussie techies and crew in their existing systems, for which they'll get to use them on secondment, which helps with their recruitment problems. At the end of it, there'll be 5-8 extra highly capable allied subs in the Pacific than otherwise and the US will have forward maintenance and port facilites paid for by Australia.
Plus a UK boat in the Pacific, thus pulling a European ally into the theatre the US are most worried about, and Trump has specifically complained about himself.
AUKUS is pretty much all win for the US. The potential downside is the technology-sharing, where they will probably be paying more than the UK and Australia. However none of that is formalised yet. And he can always pull out of it and keep the sub stuff going.
Politicians don’t think in decades.
And yet... One of the reasons the Australian budget is so eye-watering is that it's a whole life cost. With a budget that goes to 2050 and an industrial plan that goes to 2060. Similarly in Britain and the US the submarine defence-indsutrial planning is also built in decades, not annual budgets, and both the US and UK are still paying for the mistakes they made in the 1990s by cutting too much after the Cold War - and so being forced to produce subs at a slower rate than they want to.
So you're demonstrably and provably wrong on this, admittedly common, complaint. Not that I disagree, short-term thinking is a huge problem in politics. But in terms of defence, everyone has to think longer term, because nothing complicated happens quickly. And so even the politicians are forced to plan ahead.
Of course, the opposition might change things. That's both the advantage, and disadvantage, of democracy. However, this is the opposition's own policy, and there's already been a change of government - and the new government had a review and came to the same conclusions the old one had.
So if you've a reason to think this won't happen, then I'm interested. I'm not Australian, and know nothing of the politics. But a vague soundbite isn't an argument.
Nor the nukes bit.
Having submarines is a nice-to-have, but nuclear weapons are a prerequisite as a deterrent. Nothing else comes close.
There have been rumors swirling around that Japan has nukes in kit-form. They only need to assemble several parts and presto! they have a nuclear device. And Germany too has been quietly doing experiments to gain an understanding on how to build a nuke. If the political and military climate changes for the worse they could quickly produce a weapon.
Conventionally powered Japanese subs were one of the original leading contenders for the existing fleet's replacement, then the French subs which France offered as nuclear powered subs, but AU wanted converted to conventionally powered which was one cause of the projects delay and cost overruns, accepted then undiplomatically dropped for US/UK nuclear powered subs. Perhaps by 2080 AU might have a fleet of Iranian fusion powered subs. ;)
AUKUS might well also invite France to the party as its a Pacific and Indian Ocean power. FAUKJUS? Some permutation is probably quite crude.
With the vision from the recent earthquake in Taiwan one is reminded of the extremely difficult terrain that any invader would face. I suspect getting off the beaches of Gallipoli or Normandy would appear a dawdle by comparison.
I noticed that the PRC was somewhat displeased by a possible JP + AU/UK/US arrangement and I am guessing their real fear is a KR/JP/TW axis linked with a parallel AU/UK/US possibly plus other regional states affected by the PRC's ambit claims to the south china sea.
Sadly, all this nonsense, and the background against which its playing out, has the feel of the years leading up to the catastrophe of 1914.
Today I watched "The Great Escaper." One obvious take away from that movie is that all wars cast very long shadows.
Bebu,
I'm prepared to be corrected if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that France bid non-nuclear conversions of a nuclear sub off their own bat - becuase the initial Austalian requirement was for a large conventional sub - and the French Scorpene class were too small. So they proposed a Frankensub, because obviously they make both, and could put the power pack of one in the other. I definitely remember an upset French government spokesman complaining that they could have offered Australia nuclear, if only they'd asked.
But the problem is that the French nuclear boats are much smaller than the US/UK ones and also use low-enriched uranium, so need refuelling every 8-10 years. Which would leave Australia completely reliant on French refuelling facilities, one would be in fuelling every year.
Whereas the US/UK subs are designed not to need fuelling, although it can be done as part of a life-extension after about 20-25 years, if you want to keep the boat running longer. But it's probably cheaper to have got your replacement program already in place and just keep churning new subs out. Major refits on subs are horrifically expensive and time-consuming.
I don't know about France joining. They're not into defence-industrial cooperation with the USA - they barely manage to keep it going with Germany. Getting Japan and Korea on board is definitely an objective though - but I don't think anyone else in the world is interested in the submarine bit. It might work for Canada, they apparently asked to join the UK nuclear sub program back in the late 70s / early 80s - but the costs are huge. The cheapest Astute (no 3 from memory) cost £1.2bn, 10 years ago - but the SSN-AUKUS is going to be 50% bigger, and have even more shiny, expensive technology in it. Plus the infrastructure to build them and maintain them. Even just buying 4 UK-built ones wouldn't get you much change from £15 billion - once you've built your shore facilities. Then there's the cost of crew and maintenance. That same money could get you 8 Type 26 ASW frigates, with 16 helicopters and 4 whole squadrons of F35s and still have change. Though the operating costs of that lot would be much higher.
I ain't Spartacus said: "It might work for Canada, they apparently asked to join the UK nuclear sub program back in the late 70s / early 80s - but the costs are huge."
Canada tried to buy 10 to 12 nuclear subs from the UK in the 1980s, but the US vetoed the deal. The US had a veto because of long standing technology licensing agreements between Westinghouse in the US and the UK reactor builder (I can't recall which UK company that was at the time).
The sub deal was signed off at the highest levels by Thatcher, Mulroney, and Reagan. However it required a separate treaty between Canada and the US covering nuclear issues and this is where the US started throwing roadblocks in the way of it, hoping that Canada would get the message and give up. I suspect that the US didn't oppose the deal openly because they didn't want to offend Thatcher, as the latter was keen on the benefits to the UK of this deal.
American objections to the deal mainly revolved around territorial disputes with Canada in the Arctic. The US simply didn't want Canada to have nuclear submarines as they would allow Canada to more effectively assert its sovereignty in its territorial seas in the Arctic where the US navy wanted to be able to treat Canadian waters as if they were American waters.
Years later one of the American officials directly involved in torpedoing the deal wrote about it, and saw it as a big success for the US. Canadian PM Mulroney also gave the Canadian side of the story years after retiring from politics. He said that Canada eventually got the message that Canadian nuclear subs were very unwelcome so far as the US were concerned, so Canada gave up on it. When the project was cancelled various things such as costs were cited as being the reason as giving the real reason would provoke a diplomatic crisis within NATO.
Canada still needed replacements for its Oberons though, and needed them right away, so they bought four slightly used Upholder class subs from the UK instead.
Canada is currently in the market for up to 12 new subs to replace the Upholder/Victorias, and there's already stories in the US press about how Canada must not be allowed to have nuclear submarines and so must be kept out of AUKUS. I don't know to what degree this reflects official policy in the US though.
thames,
Thanks for that post. I only vaguely knew about the Canadian subs issue, because of AUKUS. It seems very bizarre to veto an ally getting such a useful force of submarines and increasing NATO's capabilities in an area where NATO were really over-stretched at the time. Because of the Walker Spy Ring, as well as their own improvements, Soviet subs had vastly improved in capability during the late 70s and 80s. So 12 Canadian subs would have added about 15% to NATO's nuclear submarine force. Plus if they bought British, rather than making their own, it would make UK subs cheaper - and so might even get us to buy a couple more. In a dispute over territorial waters and EEZ, that I suspect mostly relates to fishing rights, submarines aren't exactly much of an asset anyway.
Plus, for Canada, nuclear subs that can travel under the ice make them far more capable of transiting from the Atlantic to the Pacific than diesel boats - which means an ally might have subs available against either Russia or China.
The technology transfer agreement on subs covers lots of stuff. It's Rolls Royce that have always built the UK reactors, and their design is at least partially based on the US oine. The UK already had a design, but it would have taken longer to get it into operations - so I don't know how much the UK and US designs have diverged over the years - or if the Rolls Royce one is a straight knock-off. the UK also has a veto, due to the same treaty. As US subs since Seawolf use the British designed pumpjet propulsion. Again, I don't know how much the US copied and how much they just got to look at Birtish data to make their design better.
Well, there was the story just over a year ago (1st April 2023) that the French were going to join and that the program was going to be renamed FUKUS.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/04/france-joins-aukus-submarine-program/
"It is understood that Canada will not be allowed to join FUKUS for common decency reasons."
In 1941 Admiral King, Chief of Naval Operations, was also appointed Commander in Chief US Fleet. Which I believe he asked to be changed.
Because CINCUS is pronounced sink-us. So they created the new role Comminch - Commander in Chief US Fleet. I suppose CINCFLT is a tad hard to pronounce.
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