The Russian threat in our waters is growing. Over the past year, the Royal Navy was called out 116 times to shadow Russian warships and merchant vessels in the waters around the United Kingdom, tracking 61 warships in all.
That presence is not idle. Beneath the North Atlantic lie 60 fibre-optic cables carrying an estimated 99 per cent of Britain’s internet traffic, along with pipelines and power interconnectors that bring much of our energy ashore. Russia has taken a close and deliberate interest in them.
Earlier this year, the Royal Navy, working with Norway and other allies, spent close to a month tracking a Russian submarine and two specialist vessels as they operated near these cables. Nothing was damaged, but the intent was unmistakable: to show that this hidden infrastructure can be found, mapped and – should it come to it – attacked.
Russia operates one of the world’s largest and most modern submarine fleets, featuring more than two dozen nuclear-powered attack boats, which has grown steadily more active in the seas around us. Its newest class, the Yasen-M, is one of the quietest ever built, and carries Kalibr land-attack cruise missiles – the same weapon Russia has fired into Ukraine since 2022 – able to strike targets far inland from well out at sea. This fleet is not in decline: Moscow laid down its ninth boat of the class only in June. Countering that threat, and guarding the North Atlantic, are among the central tasks facing the Royal Navy.
This is the work that Aukus – the partnership between the UK, Australia and the United States to build a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarine – was created for five years ago, and its value is not confined to peacetime deterrence. Were conflict to reach Nato’s eastern flank, the defence of Europe would depend on keeping the sea lanes of the North Atlantic open for allied reinforcements, and on hunting Russian submarines that could launch missiles at Britain or its allies.
Formidable as those boats are, they can be met. Britain’s Astute-class submarines, built in my constituency of Barrow and Furness, also rank among the quietest in the world, and larger SSN-Aukus boats to follow will be better still: quieter, longer-ranged and more heavily armed, able to find Russia’s most capable submarines, shadow them unseen and take them out before they can strike.
Royal Navy submarine HMS Anson, an Astute-class submarine, as it makes it way to Australia for maintenance with Aukus partners (Photo: LAC Thomas Clarke-Kelly/PA)Alongside tracking and, if needed, destroying other submarines, they are designed to protect our nuclear deterrent and our carrier groups, and will be able to strike targets far inland. Few capabilities do more to keep the country safe.
The Defence Investment Plan published this summer shows that as one of only a handful of nations able to design and build nuclear-powered submarines, we are building for allies as well as for ourselves.
The plan confirms that Rolls-Royce in Derby will manufacture complete nuclear propulsion units for Britain’s and Australia’s submarines, supported by a major expansion of its site. Being one of the few countries that can build and fuel a nuclear submarine sustains an industrial base found almost nowhere else – and, as the waters around us grow more contested, a strategic asset in its own right. The first of these submarines will enter the Royal Navy service in the late 2030s, and if today’s trajectory holds, the world they enter will be more dangerous still.
Firms in 497 constituencies across the UK now form part of the Aukus supply chain, from the South West and North West to Scotland, the Midlands and beyond. British companies are also developing the advanced undersea technology through Aukus, which all three navies will share, and with many trade barriers between the partners now lifted, our suppliers can reach a far larger international market.
More than 21,000 people are expected to be working on the SSN-Aukus programme in British shipyards and the supply chain at its peak, and the wider nuclear workforce is forecast to grow by 40,000 by the end of the decade. These are highly skilled, well-paid jobs. That growth is not a distant promise: in Barrow, the workforce building our submarines has risen from around 12,000 to 14,000 in the past two years, and at Rolls-Royce in Derby from around 4,700 to 5,600 as the company works towards doubling its capacity.
Meeting that demand means training a new generation. New Defence Technical Excellence Colleges and a Defence Universities Alliance are being established to align education with what the industry needs, while oversubscribed skills academies are already producing the engineers, welders and technicians these boats require.
Behind those jobs stands serious, sustained investment. The Defence Investment Plan commits £47bn to submarines within a ring-fenced nuclear budget of £63.6bn over four years, giving industry the certainty it needs to build for the long term. That is already visible in contracts flowing to British firms, from the “Unity” agreement with Rolls-Royce for the submarines’ reactors to specialist steel work at Sheffield Forgemasters, and, in Barrow, a major regeneration of the town through the Team Barrow partnership: new homes, a regenerated town centre and better local schools, healthcare and transport. The same is happening at Devonport in Plymouth, where billions will be invested in the facilities that keep the fleet at sea.
Much of the opportunity ahead lies in drawing smaller, innovative British companies into the programme, turning agile technology firms into industrial heavyweights and carrying skilled work into places not traditionally associated with defence.
This is exactly the kind of renewal the Government’s push to reindustrialise Britain is reaching for, with defence as one of its most powerful engines. It is national spending that stays in national hands, sustaining well-paid work in the communities that need it for decades to come. And it buys something beyond prosperity: the sovereign capacity to build submarines that will keep us safe. That capacity has rarely mattered more. Russia now spends around $190bn (£141bn) a year on its military, more than three times the global average as a share of its economy, and China some $336bn (£250bn). They are testing our defences and building up their industrial arming at a pace we cannot afford to ignore.
There is a strategic gain as well. A country able to build the most sensitive military technology for its allies becomes a genuinely valued partner. In choosing British reactors and a British design, Australia has placed trust in our industry for the half-century ahead, the kind of trust that binds allies together and gives Britain a standing in the world well beyond the value of the contracts. Sustaining that rare industrial capability here in Britain is, in itself, a form of national power.
Beyond Aukus, Britain is building a combined 13-strong fleet of submarine-hunting frigates with Norway, and developing the next generation of combat aircraft alongside Italy and Japan through the Global Combat Air Programme, a project drawing interest from other nations. Across the sea and in the air, Britain increasingly sits at the centre of the programmes that will defend our allies and ourselves in the years ahead.
That is a position worth valuing, and one those of us who champion this partnership in Parliament will keep working to protect. It rests on giving industry long-term certainty, and on bringing the whole country into the work, from established yards to smaller firms and the next generation entering the industry. The need is only growing. Even as it wages war in Europe and reaches openly for the language of nuclear threat, Russia is laying down new submarines, and the boats shadowing our waters today are a warning of what is coming, not a passing provocation.
Handled well, Aukus is a chance to rebuild Britain’s industrial strength and deepen the alliances our security depends on, at a moment when the seas around us are under threat. It will put Britain on the front line of that defence, and in doing so, keep our sailors and citizens safer.
Michelle Scrogham is the MP for Barrow and Furness, a member of the Defence Select Committee and chair of the AUKUS All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)
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