An old Irish joke has a traveller in the north-west asking for directions to Dublin. "Well," comes the reply, "If I were going to Dublin, I would not start from here."

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Much the same thing could be said about the program to replace the six Collins-class submarines with nuclear-propelled ones. And, indeed, the same thing could be said about Australia's defence posture generally.

We got a bit of an insight into how the submarine quest is going with the publication last week of a report by the Congressional Research Service into the nuclear propelled Virginia-class submarine program and the AUKUS submarine project under which Australia will get three to five Virginia-class submarines.

It is not reassuring reading.

The Congressional Research Service, like Australia's Parliamentary Library, provides research in response to requests from members of Congress and of its own volition. It has a staff of 600 and a budget of nearly $A200 million.

The Virginia project began in 1998 with a target of two boats a year, but since 2022 that has fallen to just 1.1 boats a year. It needs to get to 2.33 if Australia is to get its submarines under the AUKUS agreement.

In June last year the US Department of Defense ordered a review of AUKUS after widespread concern that the US should not be selling boats when it could not meet its own needs.

Then, inexplicably, President Donald Trump made enthusiastic noises about AUKUS. In December, the review announced support for AUKUS with no other details.

The research paper said, "A December 5, 2025, press report stated: 'The Pentagon's initial review of the AUKUS pact had to be rewritten to conform with US President Donald Trump's enthusiasm for the agreement'."

It shows that the program is at the mercy of US presidential whim.

The report also exposes some flaws in the US shipbuilding effort. The Virginias are made at two commercial shipyards, in Connecticut (General Dynamics, GD/EB) and Virginia (HII/NNS).

"The submarine construction industrial base includes about 16,000 suppliers in all 50 states, as well as laboratories and research facilities in numerous states," the report states. A lot of these suppliers rely on expensive commercial........

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