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In the pitch-black confines of Virginia-class submarine ballast tanks at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Royal Australian Navy divers have completed an intensive rotation to learn how to sustain some of the world’s most advanced undersea platforms—an early operational milestone for the AUKUS partnership.
Eight Australian divers spent five months embedded with teams at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PHNSY & IMF), becoming the first from Australia trained to maintain U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines at the same level as American Sailors and shipyard personnel. Their mission focused on building the skills and qualifications needed to execute diver operations on Virginia-class submarines in Australia.
“It’s really exciting to be part of the first group of divers to receive this training in the U.S. for a new capability back in Australia,” said Royal Australian Navy Lieutenant Cantona*. “Usually in the military you’ve got your [standard operating procedures] and structures, but here we’re essentially creating something brand new, which is very unique and rare.”
“It’s a privilege to be here,” said Cantona during his training in Hawaii. “We’re laying the groundwork for a future force—one that can keep submarines ready, at sea and on mission from the Indian Ocean.”
The training combined exacting technical instruction with arduous underwater work. The Australians were fully integrated into U.S. Navy dive teams, taking on component swaps inside ballast tanks, torpedo tube inspections, fly-by-wire system checks and rigging operations. They also completed radiological diver certification and shipyard safety qualifications.
“We treated them like one of our own,” said Chief Warrant Officer Michael Tuft, command diving officer at PHNSY & IMF. “No special treatment. They’re on our teams, doing the same dives, attending the same briefs, the same post-job cleanup. And they crushed it.”
Tuft said the divers were paired in two-person teams and assigned directly to U.S. dive lockers to mirror the cadence of daily maintenance operations and expose them to the unique demands of sustaining nuclear-powered submarines in the water.
“You can’t just drydock a sub every time something breaks,” said Tuft. “A lot of the work—especially inside the ballast tanks—has to happen in the water. And not just anyone can do that. You need divers trained to this level of precision, with this level of trust.”
That trust was quickly forged on the pier and below the surface. “The person beside you is your backup. You’ve got to know they’ll be there if something goes wrong,” said Royal Australian Navy Able Seaman Finn. “What’s amazing is that the U.S. teams gave us that trust from the start—and we’ve earned it.”
The divers have already applied their skills during two AUKUS-related maintenance periods at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia: the U.S. Navy’s work on USS Vermont (SSN 792) in November 2025 and the U.K. Royal Navy’s maintenance on HMS Anson (S123) in February 2026. Those efforts support Australia’s long-term goal to develop a sovereign sustainment capability for nuclear-powered submarines. The Australians are slated to participate in the U.S. Navy’s next planned maintenance period before year’s end.
At the AUKUS Defense Ministers’ Meeting in May 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles, and the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Defence John Healey confirmed that AUKUS Pillar I remained on track and announced that key milestones were being met to establish Submarine Rotational Forces-West (SRF-West) as early as 2027. Under SRF-West, U.S. and U.K. nuclear-powered attack submarines will conduct rotational deployments from HMAS Stirling, with Australian maintenance workers—including the newly trained divers—playing an expanding role as expertise grows.
“This is one of the most important building blocks of SRF-West,” said Elizabeth Tolin, deputy division head for SRF-West at the AUKUS Integration & Acquisition program office. “Ultimately, most of the sustainment work will be done by Australians. We’re training them to our standards now, so we can operate together with confidence anywhere in the world.”
Tolin said the training pipeline required transforming PHNSY & IMF into an international training venue, a first for naval shipyards, and noted that the shipyard—previously named the lead maintenance activity for SRF-West—will establish a maintenance detachment in Western Australia to continue working alongside Australian counterparts. “We had to build the machinery—curriculum, systems, policy—before we could even put students in the water,” Tolin said. “What you’re seeing now is a partner stepping up with speed and precision.”
The operational payoff is intended to be immediate. “Well, if submarines break, they can’t always come back to Hawaii,” Tuft said. “If they’re near Australia, they can pull in there, and we know that we’ve trained the Australians to the same U.S. standards. They can fix that submarine and get it back on the front lines.”
“SRF-West is the cornerstone for AUKUS Pillar I,” said Rear Adm. Doug Adams, director, AUKUS, International and Systems. “For the U.S. Navy, conducting rotational deployments out of HMAS Stirling reduces transit times, increases attack-submarine presence and delivers peace through strength in the Indo-Pacific region. Building the maintenance capability in Australia will keep our submarines fit to fight and prepares the Royal Australian Navy and its sustainment partners to work on their own future fleet of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines.”
Tuft added that the program is building a region-wide bench of talent. “If we’re overwhelmed, we can call [the Australians] and say, ‘Hey, can you send me six people?’ They can do the same with us. That’s the kind of partnership we’re building. We can support each other with everything.”
For the Australian divers, the work is as personal as it is strategic. “Diving inside a submarine’s ballast tanks, shoulder to the wall, with no visibility—it gets the heart rate going,” said Finn. “But it’s a massive privilege to gain these skills and help stand up something this important from day one.”
“This is one of the first times we’ve ever trained foreign partners to maintain our submarines,” he said. “It says everything about the strength of our alliance and how much we trust Australians to help carry it forward.”
As the divers return to Australia to support future maintenance periods and help scale the capability, Cantona said the focus now shifts to homegrown sustainment. “We’ll need to rewrite some policies, update training manuals, and build the infrastructure to scale what we’ve learned here,” he said. “But we’re ready for that. We’ve got the backing. We’ve got the knowledge. Now we’re going to make it ours.”
