‘Need more firepower now’: US should give Australia retired nuclear subs, says Abbott

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has been lobbying senior figures in the US to supply Australia with retiring nuclear submarines to give the nation strike power if conflict over Taiwan breaks out before its AUKUS submarines are delivered.

Speaking on this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast days after meeting with US Vice-President JD Vance, Abbott revealed his concern that US President Donald Trump’s stance toward the Russian invasion of Ukraine would encourage Chinese expansionism if it led to Vladimir Putin’s success.

Abbott said Australia should prepare itself for a conflagration in the Indo-Pacific by gearing up with the US’s retiring Los Angeles-class vessels, whose life Abbott said could be extended amid anxiety about the slow production rate of Virginia-class boats Australia hopes to receive from 2030.

“We really do need more firepower now because, as everyone says, a crisis across the Taiwan Straits could be much closer than a decade away,” Abbott said on the podcast, to be released on Monday.

“The problem with AUKUS is that we need more naval strike power now. And yes, let’s get Virginia-class subs in eight or 10 years time, and let’s get the AUKUS subs in 10 or 15 years time. But wouldn’t it be good to get a nuclear-powered submarine now?”

“Given that the Americans are retiring a couple of LA-class nuclear-powered submarines every year, my curiosity is: why couldn’t Australia take over one or two of these boats now and run them for a few years as Australian ensign-flagged boats?”

The 68-year-old, who served as prime minister between 2013 and 2015 and now sits on the Fox Corporation board, did not deny he raised the idea with JD Vance when the pair met in Washington last week, saying they “had a great talk” but he would not “go into the detail of what we discussed”.

Abbott said he had been raising the matter “on and off in the United States ever since AUKUS was announced”.

His intervention in the public debate on the landmark nuclear submarine pact puts him alongside former prime ministers including Paul Keating, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, all of whom have tried to influence debate on the nuclear alliance that has reshaped Australia’s security posture.

A Pentagon review into AUKUS was overhauled to conform with US President Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for the agreement, this masthead revealed last week. It was led by US undersecretary of defence for policy Elbridge Colby, who previously expressed concerns about the slow rate of submarine production in the US.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute military analyst Marcus Hellyer said it was “worth asking the question” about Australia acquiring Los Angeles-class submarines, but the idea carried risks.

The US was retooling some of the newer Los Angeles-class already, Hellyer noted, but even those boats were three decades old and would take several years to go through the country’s already-clogged maintenance system.

“The fundamental question we’re all aware of is where are they going to find Virginia-class submarines for us in the 2030s because they don’t exist,” he said.

“The same also applies to the LA-class: if they are good subs, why would they hand them over when they are desperately short?”

The US has agreed to sell at least three Virginia-class boats to Australia to fill a capability gap before specially designed nuclear-powered submarines are operational from the 2040s. But Turnbull and analysts have cast doubt on Washington’s willingness to hand over subs next decade if it continues to be short on Virginia-class submarines for its own use.

The AUKUS deal also involves Australia spending $3 billion to add to US shipbuilding capacity.

Asked about the first year of Trump’s presidency, Abbott – a firm supporter of Ukraine who famously said he would “shirtfront” Putin over the downing of MH17 – gave a mixed review.

“I think domestic Trump is pretty good. I think foreign Trump has done some good things and some things that I wish he hadn’t done,” Abbott said.

He praised Trump’s bold call to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in August but said America’s posture towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Trump has given weight to Russian territorial claims, could give China the impression the US was uninterested in the Indo-Pacific.

“If Putin, in the end, prevails in Ukraine because the West refused to support this country fighting heroically … there’s no doubt that China would take that as a sign of Western weakness, and in particular, of American weakness, or at least of an American pullback,” Abbott said.

“The democratic West is currently challenged by an axis of autocracy, whether it’s the militarist dictatorship in Moscow, the communist dictatorship in Beijing, the apocalyptic theocratic dictatorship in Iran and these challenger powers are working in a kind of loose concert.

“Not because they have all that much in common, except for this: their deep dissatisfaction with the Anglo-American global order which has dominated the world for much of the last two centuries.

“A Sino-centric world would change everything in a Chinese direction. And much as I love Chinese people, Chinese governance is much more, it’s much less conducive to individual freedom,” Abbott said.

Speaking during a visit from Albanese to Washington in October, Trump struck an optimistic tone about the prospect of war with China over Taiwan, saying: “China doesn’t want to do that.”

Trump declared the US was the “strongest military power in the world by far” but the New York Times this week reported a classified Pentagon report, titled “Overmatch”, had detailed how the US military would struggle to contend with China in the event of a conflict.

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