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Secret submarine pact thrashed out at summit

When Britain’s first sea lord was invited to a meeting at the Australian high commission in London in March, he had no idea of the magnitude of what was about to unfold.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin was asked by Vice-Admiral Michael Noonan, the Australian chief of navy, whether the British and Americans could help his country build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

The 12 Barracuda diesel-electric submarines that Australia had agreed to buy from France five years earlier were no longer enough to ward off the threat from China, which was building the world’s largest navy and fortifying islands outside its territorial waters. The Aussies wanted faster, stealthier craft with almost limitless endurance.

Sources said the key was ‘‘surveil- lance’’. The Australians wanted nuclear-powered submarines to ‘‘move quietly, sit outside a port, track movements, keep an eye on undersea cables and follow submarines in a move to curb Chinese reach in the region’’.

Britain and America had six decades of experience building their own sovereign capability, and were in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership – unlike France – which meant they might be persuaded to give up their nuclear technology.

‘‘That was the first contact. It was a big strategic play. [Radakin] came back and handed the whole thing over to [Sir Stephen] Lovegrove,’’ a source said, referring to the former Ministry of Defence permanent secretary who is now the national security adviser. The insider compared it to a scene from a John le Carre novel.

So began Operation Hookless, as it was code-named at No 10 Downing St – the most closely guarded secret inside the United Kingdom’s government in years. Only about 10 people were privy to the details, including the prime minister, the foreign secretary and the defence secretary.

After the initial meeting in March, the proposal was put to the Americans. ‘‘It took quite a long time to go through the American machine,’’ the source said.

The clock was ticking for the Australians, who warned the British that there was a looming deadline

where the costs for the French deal would rack up and there would be no getting out of it.

Although initial conversations had begun around the submarines, an excited Johnson was keen for something deeper. A government source said: ‘‘Boris was pushing that it had to be as ambitious as possible.’’

By the time of the G7 summit in Cornwall in June, the plans were well under way. Johnson, US President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison negotiated the details of a top-secret pact that would later be known as the AUKUS alliance.

They were braced for a backlash

from China as well as France. A source said Australia’s deal with France had made things awkward, and no-one had ‘‘any desire’’ to annoy the French.

Defence insiders have questioned whether the French – who also have nuclear-powered subs – would have shared their sovereign capabilities with the Australians. The source said it was different for the UK because Australia was in the Commonwealth.

The rise of China in the Indo-Pacific was the ‘‘first order of concern’’ for the Australians. But UK government sources said the pact went deeper than China and was more about the decades ahead.

World

en-nz

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/283055532548175

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