The House Foreign Affairs Committee this week advanced three bills authorizing the Biden administration to sell two Virginia-class attack submarines (SSNs) to Australia and exempt AUKUS partners Australia and the UK from export control rules.
On July 26 the committee unanimously marked up and passed H.R. 4619, the
AUKUS Submarine Transfer Authorization Act, which goals to authorize the sale of the 2 submarines to Australia as a part of the AUKUS pact. The bill was introduced by Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) and co-sponsored by committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
Nonetheless, the 2 bills approving export control exemptions from the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, for the U.K. and Australia were passed on a celebration line vote. These regulations are referred to in statute as International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
The Bilateral Resilience in Industry Trade Security (BRITS) Act seeks to create a licensing and approval exemption for the U.K. focused on AUKUS initiatives while the Keeping Our Allies Leading in Advancement (KOALA) Act does similar things for Australia.
In the course of the markup of those bills, Committee rating member Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) argued he supports sharing advanced defense technologies with AUKUS partners, “provided we pursue it with the suitable and vital protections.”
The 2 measures remove the compatibility standard from the U.K. and Australia, an arms trade bill provision that requires any country in search of to receive exemptions from licensing to show it has comparable defense trade controls to our own in place.
“That’s, the very controls that keep such defense technology advances and innovations protected,” Meeks said. “This standard is a component of existing statutory requirements and prematurely lifting them risks compromising our national security by allowing unfettered transfers of our most sensitive defense technology, including to non-public sector foreign firms which risk exposure to or theft by our most capable adversaries, especially China.”
Meeks said he and other Democrats on the committee don’t doubt Australian and U.K. commitment to AUKUS or bettering defense technology protections, “slightly it’s due to our close relationship and wanting to make sure the success of this agreement and the promise it holds, that we must make sure the high standards and protections of our sensitive defense technology.”
Meeks also noted in April, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins sent a letter to Australian and U.K. officials emphasized the necessity to handle specific defense regulatory and export control issues before implementing broad licensing exemptions.
“This work remains to be underway as we speak. Whether it is undermined by mandating premature exemptions, we risk making the very advances and innovations so vital to competition with our adversaries, vulnerable to be stolen, transferred or otherwise uncontrolled.”
Committee Chairman McCaul said that without these bills, “State [Department] won’t issue the exemption, that’s the issue. State has shown that it would never certify Australia or the U.K. for an exemption since it doesn’t want to provide up its bureaucratic power over licensing. Within the 50 years, just one country’s been granted an exemption by State and that’s Canada.”
He added that as Five Eyes intelligence partners, the U.S. and Australia have “already shared much of every country’s most sensitive intelligence.”
McCaul said the ITAR licensing regime is “outdated and overburdensome and that’s why we’re doing this laws.”
Meeks responded that intelligence sharing and sensitive defense technologies are “two various things.”
Nonetheless, on the opposite side of Capitol Hill, Senate Armed Services Committee rating member Sen, Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) is obstructing the Senate version of the primary provision allowing the federal government to sell Australia three Virginia-class submarines, seeking to boost defense spending past the debt limit deal.
On Thursday, Wicker and Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) sent a letter to President Biden calling for supplemental appropriations with a multi-year plan to extend submarine production to raised support increasing submarine production for each the U.S. Navy and Australian purchases.
“We urge you to send Congress immediately an AUKUS-specific request for appropriations and authorities alongside a multi-year plan to extend U.S. submarine production to a minimum of two.5 -class attack submarines per yr. It’s time to make generational investments in U.S. submarine production capability, including supplier and workforce development initiatives,” the senators said.
The letter argued the U.S. industrial base has to supply 2.3 to 2.5 submarines annually to avoid the Navy’s fleet lowering any further below the requirement of 66 submarines while currently having 49 and likewise planning to sell no less than three SSNs to Australia.
The letter can be signed by 20 more Republican senators and three Republican House members.
The Navy currently has a goal of constructing two Virginia-class and one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines per yr, but industry remains to be well under that number.
In January, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said industry was only delivering SSNs at a rate of 1.2 boats per yr and that industry needed to prove it could improve those numbers, which are actually cited by Wicker in his argument. (Defense Each day, Jan. 11).
Nonetheless, in March Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told the House Appropriations Committee that production rates were improving in order that they were already as much as 1.4 SSNs per yr (Defense Each day, March 30).