Forget Trump. On AUKUS, it’s the next president we must worry about

April 22, 2026 — 1:48pm

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Anyone reading the news and trying to assess the state of the AUKUS pact would be understandably confused. Is Australia’s plan to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines progressing well, or is the enterprise headed for disaster?

On the one hand, US President Donald Trump declared last October that AUKUS is going “full steam ahead” under his administration. US senator Tim Kaine said during a recent visit to Australia that he was “100 per cent” certain the US would provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines as promised.

Yet the sceptics remain. Retired rear admiral Peter Briggs told a national security conference last month that the AUKUS plan “is not going to work – we are heading for a train smash”.

The latest troubling headline about the pact: the Pentagon’s new submarine boss saying the US Navy’s priority is its next generation of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, not the Virginia-class vessels Australia will acquire under AUKUS.

The reason informed people can make such starkly different predictions about AUKUS boils down to three small but pivotal words – “will not degrade” – and how you interpret........

© WA Today