OPINION | Australia and the US should build a joint submarine facility

The Joint Defence Facility Henderson would be a maintenance, not building, yard for the US Navy. It would perform much deeper work than the support that HMAS Stirling will provide for SRF-W deployments.

It would become the US Navy’s fifth naval shipyard, adding to those in Maine, Virginia, Washington State and Hawaii. From Australia’s perspective, we have to build the shipyard at Henderson for our own purposes, anyway.

Offering to operate it as a joint facility would ensure continuous workflow (as the facility would be the site for eventually maintaining 12 or more Australian and US submarines). This would assist in the recruitment and retention of what will need to be a long-term skilled workforce.