Australia says the plan to deliver nuclear submarines remains unchanged, despite opposition to the pact from a top Trump official.
Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles said he is “very confident” that the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom will continue to move forward despite news that the Pentagon is reviewing the 2021 deal between the three nations.
News of the review was first reported on Thursday as US defence officials said re-assessing the pact was necessary to ensure that the military deal, agreed to with much fanfare under former US President Joe Biden, was in line with US President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.
The pact includes a deal worth hundreds of billions of dollars to provide Australia with closely-guarded nuclear propulsion technology. Only five other countries besides the US can build nuclear submarines: the UK, China, Russia, France and India.
“The meetings that we’ve had with the United States have been very positive in respect of AUKUS,” Defence Minister Marles told the ABC network.
A review of the deal is “something that it’s perfectly natural for an incoming administration to do … It’s exactly what we did”, Marles said.
“There is a plan here. We are sticking to it, and we’re going to deliver it,” he said.
Under the terms of the AUKUS deal, Australia and the UK will work with the US to design nuclear-class submarines ready for delivery to Australia in the 2040s, according to the US Naval Institute.
The three countries are already close military allies and share intelligence, but AUKUS focuses on key strategic areas, such as countering the rise of China and its expansion into the Pacific.
Due to the long lead time in building the submarines under the AUKUS deal, Australia also agreed to buy up to three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines during the 2030s. The US and UK also plan to start the rotational deployment of their submarines out of Australia in 2027.
But some Trump administration officials, such as Pentagon policy adviser Elbridge Colby, say the submarine deal puts foreign governments ahead of US national security.
“My concern is why are we giving away this crown jewel asset when we most need it?” Colby said last year.
Other officials, including US Representative Joe Courtney from Connecticut – a US state which has an industry focused on building submarines for the US Navy – say the deal is in the “best interest of all three AUKUS nations, as well as the Indo-Pacific region as a whole”.
“To abandon AUKUS – which is already well under way – would cause lasting harm to our nation’s standing with close allies and certainly be met with great rejoicing in Beijing,” Courtney said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to discuss the deal when he meets Trump next week during a meeting of the G7 leaders in Canada.
Earlier this year, Australia made a $500m payment towards AUKUS and plans to spend $2bn this year to speed up the production process in the US of the Virginia-class submarines.
The UK, like Australia, has downplayed concerns that the Trump administration could renege on the pact.
A UK official told the Reuters news agency that the deal is “one of the most strategically important partnerships in decades” that will also produce “jobs and economic growth in communities across all three nations”.
“It is understandable that a new administration would want to review its approach to such a major partnership, just as the UK did last year,” the official said.