Gender-diverse sailors barred from US submarine training

Transgender and non-binary Australian navy sailors and officers are explicitly banned from Australia's nuclear submarine training program because of United States policies, according to The Guardian.

The information comes from an internal Australian Defence Force (ADF) briefing released under freedom of information laws, which allow members of the public to request government records. The briefing states that the ADF's equality and inclusion policy is unchanged, but that US government policy is different. It also states that ADF personnel undertaking duty in the US, including training, must comply with US policy.

According to the briefing, transgender and non-binary ADF personnel and career applicants are currently unable to start the SSN pathway, the training route for nuclear-powered attack submarines.

Australia has hundreds of sailors and officers training on US nuclear submarines and at US bases, although it does not have a nuclear submarine fleet of its own. The submarine program is linked to AUKUS, the defence partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Rear Admiral Tish van Stralen said at an October women in defence event that it would be very difficult to put a gender-diverse person into US submarine training at the moment. She said the UK, Australia's other AUKUS partner, had more liberal policies, and that training opportunities for gender-diverse recruits may arise in the UK.

The US restrictions follow a January 2025 executive order signed by Donald Trump banning transgender service personnel. The order stated that gender-diverse people were unfit to serve.