ICYMI in the Australian: AUKUS Will Help Build Up the U.S. Submarine Industrial Base & Create Hundreds of U.S. Jobs
NORWICH, CT – In case you missed it, the Australian published a story on the christening of the USS UTAH (SSN 801) – the 28th Virginia-class submarine. The christening comes on the heels of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to Washington, D.C. this past week, and the clear message from a White House meeting that the AUKUS agreement is full steam ahead.
The Australian: Donald Trump’s AUKUS Nod Echoed As New Sub Welcomed
By Joe Kelly / October 25, 2025
Australia and the US’s deeping defence ties will help the superpower build up its submarine industrial base and create hundreds of US jobs, one of Anthony Albanese’s biggest supporters in congress has said at the christening ceremony of the USS Utah.
The Utah, the 28th submarine in the Virginia-class program, was christened at 10am on Saturday local time at the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyards in Groton, Connecticut, with the company’s president, Mark Rayha, welcoming attendees to the “submarine capital of the world”.
Sketching out the complexity of the submarine building endeavour, he said it was like “bringing a grand piano into your house through an upstairs window, rigging it through the house without any apparatus that was there to begin with, bringing it down and installing it in your basement without a scratch to the piano or any walls or any floors in the house. It’s amazing.”
The Democratic congressman representing Connecticut’s 2nd district, which includes Groton, Joe Courtney, is the party’s ranking member of the house seapower subcommittee. He said the christening of the USS Utah came when the US congress’s “demand signal for new submarines is at an all-time high”.
“In addition to modernising the US submarine force, our closest allies – Australia and the United Kingdom – are locking arms with us as never before, to strengthen and expand undersea supremacy to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said.
Mr. Courtney, the co-chair of the Friends of Australia caucus, said the USS Utah would be the “28th Virginia-class submarine in the fleet, and there are now 15 more under contract or construction, as well as three Columbia ballistic subs”.
He says he is also optimistic that the US can lift its submarine production rate, with it aiming to meet the target of producing the required 2.33 Virginia-class submarines a year. This is the rate needed to replace the boats sold to Australia.
Mr. Courtney has noted that later this year, the future USS Massachusetts and USS Idaho would be commissioned into the US submarine force while, in 2026, the USS Arkansas and the USS Utah were expected to be delivered.
More than $10bn has already been directed to the US submarine industrial base since 2018, with Mr. Courtney saying the seapower subcommittee would continue to make the case for continued investment.
Former home affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo says the deployment of Virginia-class submarines in Perth is about “power projection”. Mr. Pezzullo said it’s aimed to project power over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. “You don’t often hear that from Australian officials or ministers.”
Mr. Courtney used his speech to make clear that Donald Trump’s endorsement of the AUKUS agreement in his White House meeting with Anthony Albanese last week was a key moment.
“The welcome announcement this past Monday by the Trump administration that the four-year-old AUKUS security agreement will continue ‘full steam ahead’ validates the billions congress invested to grow our submarine industrial base over the last six years, including long overdue wage improvement funding passed last December,” he said.
US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said the Virginia-class submarine was the US “undersea fleet’s multi-mission workhorse”.
“It hunts and defeats enemy submarines and surface ships, projects power ashore, conducts ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) in the world’s most contested waters, and enables long-range precision strikes,” he said.
He said submarines were critical to deterring war, upholding the rules-based order and keeping sea lanes open while making clear that boosting the submarine industrial base was a key priority of the Trump administration.
“We are asking more of the industrial base because the world is asking more of the US,” he said. “Meeting that demand is how we preserve the peace.”
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