Aukus is effectively forcing the Australian navy to comply with a US ban on transgender people in the military with gender-diverse navy recruits prevented from starting a career in nuclear submarines because they would not be safe training on US boats.
Internal Australian defence force documents show transgender and non-binary sailors and officers are explicitly banned from Australia’s nuclear submarine training program because of US policies..
An internal defence briefing, released under freedom of information laws, said while ADF policy on equality and inclusion was unchanged, “US government policy is different”.
“ADF personnel undertaking duty in the US (including training) are required to comply with US policy,” the briefing said.
“Consequently, transgender and nonbinary ADF personnel and ADF career applicants are currently unable to commence the SSN [nuclear-powered attack submarines] training pathway.”
Australia, without a nuclear submarine fleet of its own, has hundreds of sailors and officers training on US nuclear submarines and on US bases.
At a women in defence event in October, Rear Adm Tish van Stralen was asked how the defence force was “managing the recruitment of gender-diverse and LGBTQ+ Australians into the nuclear submarine pathway” given the US directive.
Van Stralen, one of the highest-ranking women in the Australian navy, said the ADF was a diverse and equal opportunity employer.
But she said potential recruits for the nuclear submarine program were told the ADF was “subject to policies and laws in other countries, so we have to be very mindful”.
“We also have an obligation, a duty of care to our people, so we do not want to put our people into any sort of harm’s way or anything that might adversely affect them.
“I’m working very closely with navy at the moment and with the submarine agency around the training opportunities because it would be very difficult for me to put a gender-diverse person into that training at the moment.”
Van Stralen said the navy would seek alternative career paths for gender-diverse recruits prohibited from the nuclear submarine program. She said the UK, Australia’s other Aukus partner, had “more liberal policies” and that training opportunities “may arise in the UK”.
“We don’t want to disadvantage people because of it but we are subject to the laws and policies of the US when we are in their country.”
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US moves came amid Aukus deal
The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, last year issued a directive to his department “to eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion offices and initiatives”. He also has sought to ban transgender personnel from joining the US military – repeatedly using offensive slurs in public statements – and ordered that transgender personnel be purged from the services.
Donald Trump signed an executive order in January ۲۰۲۵ – the first week of his second term as president – which banned transgender service personnel and said gender-diverse people were unfit to serve.
Announcing military cuts in September amid continued attacks on diversity, Hegseth declared that the US military would accept “no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals”.
Under the Aukus deal, it is proposed that Australia will buy three Virginia-class nuclear submarines from the US, beginning in ۲۰۳۲. In the lead-up to that, Australian sailors are training onboard US Virginia-class submarines and at US bases, while US-flagged nuclear submarines are porting in Australia.
Crewing Australia’s proposed nuclear submarine fleet is likely to prove one of the Aukus agreement’s most critical, sustained challenges. Virginia-class submarines have a complement of ۱۳۵, more than double the crew for Australia’s diesel-electric Collins-class submarines.
Last week Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, said the Aukus timeline presented the country with a significant “training challenge”.
“We just need to be training more people and that’s what we’re doing,” Marles said at HMAS Stirling, the West Australian port through which US nuclear-powered submarines have been rotating.
The Australian defence department did not respond to questions from the Guardian about the impact of adhering to the US policy directive, including how many Australian service personnel have been prevented from undertaking nuclear submarine training.
The government’s nuclear-powered submarine workforce strategy urges defence to “proactively expand the talent pool through active inclusion of underrepresented groups, including women, First Nations Australians, regional communities, and individuals who may not traditionally see themselves in technical or defence-related careers”.
