AUKUS at Scale: An Independent Ledger of Australia's Largest Defence Commitment

AUKUS will outlast every government that announces a phase of it. The public deserves a non-partisan, durable record of what has been committed and what remains unknown — not a press cycle of disconnected announcements. SOCii publishes this ledger so that the program can be followed across decades, not news weeks.

Headline cost envelopes and broad pillar definitions; the optimal-pathway joint statement; phased Virginia-class transfer assumptions; the SSN-AUKUS construction line in Adelaide; AUKUS Pillar II technology categories; force-posture initiatives related to US and UK rotations.

Each of these is well-documented in official statements. They are reproduced in the ledger with citations so that no single reader has to assemble them from scratch.

Detailed sustainment cost curves; sovereign workforce build-up assumptions and risks; nuclear regulatory architecture and timelines; disposal and decommissioning provisions; force-posture cost-share and basing arrangements beyond the published initiatives; contingency planning if US or UK industrial-base milestones slip.

These are where the public-interest scrutiny needs to be sustained. The ledger flags them as open questions and updates as new material is published.

This ledger is structured as a standing, source-cited reference rather than commentary. Journalists, researchers and parliamentary staff are encouraged to use it as a baseline; corrections and additions are welcomed through the public contact channel.