The D Brief: SECDEF on subs; Shipyard sabotage?; US, Ukraine ‘missing consensus’; Chinese planes swarm around Taiwan; And a bit more.
SECDEF in London: U.S. is making progress on boosting submarine production. “What I’m seeing is that we’re investing in the right things, and we will be able to expand the capacity going forward and to meet our objectives,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday after meeting his UK and Australian counterparts to discuss the trilateral AUKUS defense-technology pact.
Austin was answering a question put to Australian Deputy Defense Prime Minister Richard Marles, who declined to say whether Australia was worried that U.S. shipyards—already years behind on U.S. orders—would be able to supply the three Virginia-class attack boats promised to his country under AUKUS.
The U.S. has plans to spend up to $17.5 billion over five years to boost sub construction, including up to $4 billion routed through third parties Deloitte and BlueForce Alliance. (As it happens, $17.5 billion is the current estimated price tag for the first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine; it’s also close to one estimate for the Navy’s total projected cost overrun for sub-building efforts through 2030.)
Australia will make its first payment of $3 billion next year, two-thirds of which the U.S. will put toward the 16,000 American companies that make parts for submarines, a defense official said ahead of the meeting. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports from London, here.
Shipyard sabotage? A leading U.S. shipyard found faulty welds in submarines and aircraft carriers with “early indication that some of the welding errors were intentional,” USNI News reported Thursday, citing a Tuesday memo from Navy acquisition chief Nickolas Guertin to the Navy secretary and chief of naval operations. Newport News Shipbuilding reported the welds to the Justice Department, which has declined immediate comment. Read on, here.
And: a new Chinese sub sank pierside earlier this year. That’s the word from “a senior U.S. defense official,” who told reporters that the Zhao, the first of a class of nuclear-powered attack submarines, sank alongside a pier sometime between May and June. Here’s a photo of the purported sunk sub at a shipyard near Wuhan, taken by Planet Labs and published by the Wall Street Journal, which has more, here.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1944, the U.S. Army Air Force suffered its largest loss from a single mission during WWII after a navigational error separated a bomber group from its fighter escort. In a very short period of time, Nazi pilots shot down 31 U.S. B-24 Liberator bombers and one P-51 Mustang, killing 118 Americans.
The New Zealand, Australian and Japanese navies transited the Taiwan Strait together on Wednesday and were followed by five Chinese navy vessels in a “pincer-style maneuver,” according to Taiwan’s RW News and the BBC.
Why it matters: “For decades the US Pacific fleet was the only foreign navy that regularly transited the strait,” the BBC reports. “But recently, it was joined by Canada and Australia, Britain and France. [And] Two weeks ago Germany sailed two navy ships through the strait for the first time in decades.”
Taiwan, meanwhile, has seen 84 Chinese aircraft flying around the self-governing island over the past two days. “This is a very notable increase in activity compared to the previous week,” said regional observer Ben Lewis. Sixty-six of those aircraft crossed over the median line, entering Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern, and eastern ADIZ.
Update: The Navy’s USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier visited Guam recently, as the crew’s staff noted in a timelapse video on social media Friday. The Roosevelt, based out of San Diego, had been in the Middle East in support of and in defense of commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea between June and August.
ATACMS? U.S. intelligence officials think the risks aren’t worth the rewards when it comes to authorizing Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons to hit military targets inside Russia, the New York Times reported Thursday.
Despite the nearly $8 billion in U.S. support for Ukraine announced Thursday, the two countries are still missing “consensus on a strategy to end this war on terms favorable to Ukraine,” said John Hardie of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington. “The disagreement over missile strikes in Russia is a symptom of this disconnect,” he added.
To that end, Ukraine’s president says he “shared the details of the Victory Plan with Vice President Kamala Harris” Thursday at the White House, seeming to confirm what Ukrainian officials teased late last week as Zelenskyy was traveling to the U.S. “It is very important for us to be fully understandable and work in full coordination with the United States,” he wrote on social media.
By the way: The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Zelenskyy’s so-called victory plan did not impress White House officials who saw it as “little more than a repackaged request for more weapons and the lifting of restrictions on long-range missiles.”
New: Zelenskyy met with Donald Trump in New York City, following days of rumors the meeting might or might not happen. The former U.S. president told reporters afterward he had a “very good relationship” with the Ukrainian leader. He noted quickly afterward, “I also have a very good relationship with President Putin.” According to the Guardian, “Zelenskyy immediately responded to Trump’s comments about his positive relationship with Putin, and said that he hopes that he and Trump have a better relationship than the one between Putin and Trump.”
Rewind: Trump was impeached in 2020 for withholding aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extort political dirt from Zelenskyy. He was impeached again in 2021 for his role in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. On Thursday, Trump lied about that latter episode on social media, claiming he’d dispatched National Guard troops to respond to the insurrection; he did not in fact dispatch the Guard, according to congressional investigators.
This afternoon in Washington: Top Army acquisition official Doug Bush joins Gen. James Rainey of Army Futures Command to discuss the evolving nature of drones in service. That conversation will be moderated by Cynthia Cook of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. You can stream that online at 3 p.m. ET. Details, here.
And lastly this week: Recall a naval era long past with this almost-anachronistic video of the recent Thames River transit of Spanish galleon Andalucía beneath London’s Tower Bridge on Monday. “The ship is a replica of the famous 15th century ship that was part of the galleons used by the Spanish to explore America and parts of Asia up until the 18th century,” wrote south London’s Sutton & Croydon Guardian local newspaper.
“The ship will be docked at St Katharine Docks from September 24 to October 6, with visitors able to go aboard the ship,” the paper reports. “Tickets are priced at £12 for adults, £6 for children and £30 for a family of 5.” You can read more from the company responsible for building the vessel, which has been used in several films and commercials.
Thanks for reading, and you can catch us again on Monday.
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