AUKUS only works if Britain’s submarine town does

BARROW-IN-FURNESS, England — Submarines appear before the town does. They can be seen from the road next to the factory, where the BAE Systems yard dominates the landscape and workers in high-visibility jackets are a constant presence. Police keep watch for anyone who might threaten Britain’s national security. AUKUS — a security partnership announced in 2021 linking the U.S., U.K. and Australia seen by many as in a long-term effort to protect democracies against Chinese aggression in the Pacific — is a clear part of the town’s history, and its future. A local memorial recalls the crews lost or captured sailing the first two submarines built in Barrow for the Royal Australian Navy during World War I, and over the next 15 years AUKUS depends on Barrow’s shipyards building the next generation of nuclear-powered submarines. But observers, from the British parliament to former cabinet secretaries and prime ministers, say delays in Barrow are not only possible, but likely. The SSN-AUKUS fleet will be based on a British design, incorporating technology from all three countries. The first examples will be built at BAE Systems’ Barrow yard, then later at Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, Australia, with Rolls-Royce supplying the nuclear propulsion plants. And while Britain insists the first SSN-AUKUS class submarine will cut steel in 2027, delays would strain Britain’s national security and test the central promise of AUKUS. A one-town dependency Simon Case, the former U.K. Cabinet Secretary charged with regenerating the town, told POLITICO that AUKUS has become a live conversation in Barrow: “Barrow’s fortune has become synonymous with AUKUS.” A House of Commons committee examining AUKUS went further, calling Barrow’s regeneration “too big to fail.” That’s because Barrow must support Britain’s Dreadnought nuclear deterrent program and Astute fleet while also increasing output from one submarine a decade to one SSN-AUKUS every 18 months. Achieving that leap in pace is more than a workforce challenge. It will take thousands of new houses, new higher education institutions, and an urban transformation. The local college that feeds the shipyard apprentice pipeline was failed by Britain’s education standards body Ofsted in 2024. If those facts are not daunting enough, Barrow’s regeneration challenge has a wider meaning: Get it right and this small town of 67,000 can claim to be at the center of a British power revival, in its post-Empire, post-EU era. Get it wrong, and the central promise of AUKUS will go unmet. The challenges will be constant over the next 15 years. About 13,500 people work for BAE at the shipyard, roughly one-third of Barrow’s working-age population. While that’s a massive expansion from a workforce of 2,900 in 2003, the company still needs to reach 16,500 workers by the end of 2027. Adding 3,000 jobs in a small town in 18 months is no easy feat. Adding them to achieve what Australia’s Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy told POLITICO is “the most technically advanced thing in the world,” is even harder. Conroy has visited Barrow twice and remains optimistic. Trevor Taylor, director of the Defence, Industries & Society Programme at the RUSI defense think tank, also described the United Kingdom as the least risky part of the AUKUS bargain. Dreadnought and Astute class submarines appear to be emerging without drastic delays, he said. The unresolved question is experience. “They’ve certainly got the workforce, and I think the infrastructure,” Taylor told POLITICO. “Whether they’ve got the workforce experience is another matter.” That distinction matters in a nuclear program. Barrow can train welders and other tradespeople. The design engineers, nuclear physicists and systems architects required for SSN-AUKUS will mostly have to be brought in. And Barrow will be competing against shortages faced in other parts of Britain’s nuclear workforce, from highly qualified specialists to vocational workers. The town the workfo