AUKUS submarine construction yard in Adelaide to be built from 2023

The early-2040s target to complete our first locally built nuclear sub can be misleading. It suggests that not much will happen soon.

In fact, we will begin building our big South Australian submarine construction yard immediately - this year.

The yard must be ready within a few years to begin making parts for US and British submarine programs, to gain initial experience and probably to help to ease our allies' supply constraints.

Then it will shift to its main game, helping to construct Anglo-Australian SSN-AUKUS subs in what the government calls a "joint build program" with Britain.

We already have the beginnings of our submarine yard, because we began building a facility at Osborne, Adelaide, for the formerly planned diesel-electric subs of French design.

The yard is not nearly big enough for the SSN-AUKUS program, however. We must expand it to almost three times the originally intended size.

Groundwork is due to get under way this year. Spending on submarine-program infrastructure in South Australia out to 2025-26 will amount to $2 billion, part of $6 billion to be spent on preparing Australian industry and workers in the same period.

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Our money will soon be flowing into British and US facilities, too, to expand them so they can supply components for our submarines as well as their own.

Engineers at BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce in Britain have probably made a lot of progress already in designing SSN-AUKUS, since London said in 2021 that work had begun.

The aim is to begin building the first submarine of the class at BAE's yard at Barrow-in-Furness, England, late in the 2020s. If all goes well, that boat will be operational with the Royal Navy a decade later.

Since a joint-construction program is planned, it should be a partly Adelaide-built submarine.

In the early 2030s, work should begin on the second SSN-AUKUS sub, partly at Barrow, for commissioning into the Royal Australian Navy in the early 2040s. It will be the first of eight planned for us.

In a likely arrangement, which has not been confirmed, Adelaide will build certain sections for all subs, maybe the whole forward half of each hull, while Barrow builds the rest.

So Australians could be making sections that accommodate each submarine's command centre, weapons, torpedo tubes and much else. Maybe the Australian share of each sub will rise as the program progresses and our industry becomes more adept.

Barrow will no doubt build the most sensitive section, the one containing the nuclear reactor, in the middle of each boat. The British yard is also very likely to build the section behind that, in which the propulsion machinery will be housed.

That's because the British know all about the turbine engine, gearing and other parts of a nuclear power plant.

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In particular, they know how to apply intricate noise-suppressing techniques to a nuclear installation. The machinery is mounted with flexible joints on a structure called a raft, then the raft is flexibly attached to the hull. Hardly any sound gets into the water.

Rolls-Royce can be expected to build the reactors and some other propulsion components for all SSN-AUKUS boats. Some propulsion parts and other major systems will come from the US.

If production is indeed shared by sections, Adelaide and Barrow will jointly produce a complete set for one submarine every 1.5 years. Ships will carry Barrow sections to Adelaide and Adelaide sections to Barrow. Then each yard will weld sections together to deliver one submarine to its home navy every three years.

To be ready for all that, Australia knows it must get cracking.