Australia‘s Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Thursday he was confident the AUKUS submarine pact with the U.S. and Britain would proceed, and his government would work closely with the U.S. while the Trump administration conducted a formal review.
Australia in 2023 committed to spend A$368 billion ($239 billion) over three decades on AUKUS, the country’s biggest ever defence project with the United States and Britain, to acquire and build nuclear-powered submarines.
A Pentagon official said the administration was reviewing AUKUS to ensure it was “aligned with the President’s America First agenda”, on the eve of expected talks between President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
In an Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio interview, Marles said AUKUS was in the strategic interests of all three countries and the new review of the deal signed in 2021 when Joe Biden was the U.S. president was not a surprise.
“I am very confident this is going to happen,” he said of AUKUS, which would give Australia nuclear-powered submarines.
“This is a multi-decade plan. There will be governments that come and go and I think whenever we see a new government, a review of this kind is going to be something which will be undertaken,” Marles told the ABC.
Albanese is expected to meet Trump for the first time next week on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Canada, where the security allies will discuss a request from Washington for Australia to increase defence spending from 2% to 3.5% of gross domestic product.
Albanese has said defence spending would rise to 2.3% and has declined to commit to the U.S. target.
The opposition Liberal party on Thursday pressed Albanese to increase defence spending.
Under AUKUS, Australia was scheduled to make a $2 billion payment in 2025 to the U.S. to help boost its submarine shipyards and speed up lagging production rates of Virginia-class submarines to allow the sale of up to three U.S. submarines to Australia from 2032.
The first $500 million payment was made when Marles met with his U.S. counterpart Pete Hegseth in February.
US NOT MEETING PRODUCTION TARGETS
The Pentagon’s top policy adviser Elbridge Colby, who has previously expressed concern the U.S. would lose submarines to Australia at a critical time for military deterrence against China, will be a key figure in the review, examining the production rate of Virginia-class submarines, Marles said.
“It is important that those production and sustainment rates are improved,” he added.
AUKUS would grow the U.S. and Australian defence industries and generate thousands of manufacturing jobs, Marles said in a statement.
John Lee, an Australian Indo-Pacific expert at Washington’s conservative Hudson Institute think tank, said the Pentagon review was “primarily an audit of American capability” and whether it can afford to sell up to five nuclear powered submarines when it was not meeting its own production targets.
“Relatedly, the low Australian defence spending and ambiguity as to how it might contribute to a Taiwan contingency is also a factor,” Lee said.
John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a former senior Pentagon official, told a Lowy Institute seminar in Sydney on Thursday there is a perception in Washington “the Albanese government has been supportive of AUKUS but not really leaning in on AUKUS“, and defence spending is part of this.
Under the multi-stage pact, four U.S. commanded Virginia submarines will be hosted at a Western Australian navy base on the Indian Ocean from 2027, which a senior U.S. Navy commander told Congress in April gives the U.S. a “straight shot to the South China Sea”.
Albanese wants to buy three Virginia submarines from 2032 to bring its submarine force under Australian command.
Britain and Australia will jointly build a new AUKUS-class submarine expected to come into service from 2040. Following a recent defence review, Britain said it would boost spending on its attack submarine fleet under AUKUS.
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who struck the AUKUS deal with Biden, said on Thursday Australia should “make the case again” for the treaty.
AUKUS would build more submarines across the three partners and was “fundamentally about strengthening collective deterrence, particularly in the Indo-Pacific against potential adversaries”, he wrote on LinkedIn.
(Reuters)