https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-amer ... 5myue.htmlLiverpool: Australia will buy nuclear-powered submarines from the United States as planned under the AUKUS defence pact in the wake of a Pentagon review that is backing the vast project, according to a report from Nikkei Asia.
The Pentagon study is said to have endorsed the pact and will be finalised before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flies to the US to meet US President Donald Trump on October 20.
Albanese declared in London on Friday that he was confident the AUKUS agreement would go ahead because his discussions with the Trump administration had given him this confidence.
But the Pentagon review has fuelled concerns about whether US President Donald Trump supports the key proposal to sell at least three Virginia-class submarines to Australia from the early 2030s.
Another plan under the pact is for the US to share nuclear-propulsion technology so the UK and Australia can work together on a new AUKUS-class submarine to arrive from the early 2040s.
“AUKUS is safe,” one official from a member country told Nikkei Asia.
It added that industrial delays might affect the delivery of the submarines but that no political decision had been made to alter the schedule.
This suggests the pact will proceed with the sale of three to five Virginia-class submarines to Australia from 2032. These vessels will be “secondhand” from the US Navy and will be nuclear-powered but not armed with nuclear weapons.
The defence pact, signed in 2021, commits Australia, the UK and the US to co-operating on a “pillar one” plan to build nuclear-powered submarines and a “pillar two” ambition for co-operation on defence science and technology.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer reminded Trump of the importance of AUKUS during his state visit to the UK last week, while King Charles highlighted it in his address to a royal banquet in the president’s honour.
Albanese discussed the pact with Starmer in their talks in London and expressed his confidence in the plan when speaking to reporters afterwards.
“I have always been confident about AUKUS going ahead, and every meeting I’ve had and discussions I’ve had with people in the US administration have always been positive about AUKUS and about the role that it plays,” he said.
“It is happening. It is progressing. And it is progressing because it’s a good idea, and it’s progressing because it’s in the interests of all three nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and of course, Australia.”
Albanese spoke with British Defence Secretary John Healey on the sidelines of the UK Labour Party’s annual conference on Sunday. Healey signed an AUKUS treaty with Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles during a visit to Australia in July, demonstrating the UK’s commitment to the plan.
The Pentagon review, led by US Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, was announced in June and was initially meant to take 30 days.
The Washington Post reported this month that the US administration had assured Marles that the defence pact would continue. The Nikkei report is specific about the sale of the Virginia-class submarines.
The review was sparked in part by Pentagon concerns that US industry was not building new submarines quickly enough to justify the sale of existing vessels to Australia, raising concerns about a capability gap for the US Navy.
Any delay to the Virginia-class sale, however, opens a capability gap for the Royal Australian Navy while it waits for the delivery of the later AUKUS-class vessels.
Another US concern, raised by Colby, was that Australia would not pledge to deploy the Virginia-class vessels in any future conflict with China.
Albanese and Marles have not made any public commitment about how the submarines would be deployed.
Australia has pledged to contribute $5 billion towards the development of the US shipbuilding industry, something Marles highlighted with the first payment when he met Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this year. A second payment was confirmed in July.
Australia has also promised to spend $5 billion on nuclear-propulsion systems in the UK and has made the first of these payments to Rolls-Royce, the company that builds the nuclear power systems for Royal Navy submarines.
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 9:55 am