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SALT LAKE CITY — The United States Navy is currently below its target for nuclear attack submarines on hand, and a recent three-nation partnership to provide submarines to Australia would further weaken the nation's military readiness, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney argues.
Romney, along with 24 Republican colleagues in the House and Senate, penned a letter to President Joe Biden asking the president to request more appropriations to replace the three submarines the U.S. is providing through the Australia-United Kingdom-United States partnership, also known as AUKUS.
The submarines will be given to Australia and are a key provision in the agreement, which comes in response to China's growing military strength.
"We support the vision of the (AUKUS) partnership and its potential to change the strategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific," the letter reads. "The AUKUS agreement is vitally important, but we must simultaneously protect U.S. national security."
Even without the agreement, the Navy is well below its requirement of having 66 nuclear attack submarines, with only 49 currently in the fleet.
"The administration's current plan requires the transfer of three U.S. Virginia-class attack submarines to Australia from the existing U.S. submarine fleet without a clear plan for replacing these submarines," the letter says. "This plan, if implemented without change, would unacceptably weaken the U.S. fleet even as China seeks to expand its military power and influence."
"This is a risk we should not take," the letter continues.
The U.S. is currently producing an average of 1.2 Virginia-class submarines per year, according to lawmakers. At that rate — not including the submarines the fleet will lose as part of AUKUS — the Navy projects it will be down to 46 submarines by 2030, because older vessels are being retired faster than new ones are being built to replace them.
Legislators said the U.S. needs to produce at least 2.5 submarines per year in order to prevent further weakening of the fleet.
Virginia-class submarines are the latest generation of attack submarines and have been in commission since 2004, according to the Navy. The keel was laid for a submarine to be named after Utah in 2021.
The letter was led by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, the vice chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
