SYDNEY — Australia’s defense minister said Thursday he was confident that the AUKUS submarine pact with the United States and Britain would proceed, and that his government would work closely with the U.S. while the Trump administration conducted a formal review.
Australia in 2023 committed to spend 368 billion Australian dollars ($239 billion) over three decades on AUKUS, the country’s biggest ever defense project with the U.S. 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, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said AUKUS was in the strategic interests of all three countries and that 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 Group of 7 meeting in Canada, where the security allies will discuss a request from Washington for Australia to increase defense spending from 2% to 3.5% of gross domestic product.
Albanese has said defense 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 defense 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 starting in 2032.
The first $500 million payment was made when Marles met with his U.S. counterpart, Pete Hegseth, in February.
The Pentagon’s top policy adviser Elbridge Colby, who has previously expressed concern that 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 defense 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 is not meeting its own production targets.
“Relatedly, the low Australian defense spending and ambiguity as to how it might contribute to a Taiwan contingency is also a factor,” Lee said.
John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior Pentagon official, told a Lowy Institute seminar in Sydney on Thursday there is a perception in Washington that “the Albanese government has been supportive of AUKUS but not really leaning in on AUKUS,” and that defense 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 starting in 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 starting in 2032 to bring its submarine force under Australian command.
Britain and Australia will jointly build a new AUKUS-class submarine that is expected to come into service starting in 2040. Following a recent defense 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 Thursday that 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.
