Today the Right Honourable MP, Secretary of State for
Defence, United Kingdom hosted the Honourable Richard Marles MP,
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Australia and the
Honorable Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of Defense, United
States (U.S.) at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich,
London, the United Kingdom (UK) to review progress in and
reaffirm their commitment to the AUKUS partnership.
The AUKUS partnership reflects the continued commitment by
Australia, the United Kingdom, and United States to support a
free and open Indo-Pacific that is peaceful, secure and
stable. The discussions between the Secretaries and Deputy
Prime Minister today reaffirmed the importance of this
innovative, enduring, and trusted partnership in the face of a
rapidly evolving and increasingly unstable international security
environment. The three nations will continue to work to uphold
the global rules-based order where international law is followed,
and states can make sovereign choices free from coercion.
In this context, they reiterated their shared commitments to the
AUKUS partnership for the decades to come and welcomed the
progress made since AUKUS Defence Ministers last met in
California, the United States, in December 2023.
Pillar I – Conventionally Armed, Nuclear-Powered
Submarines (SSNs)
In March of 2023, our Heads of Government met to announce a
comprehensive plan to support Australia's acquisition of a
conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability as
quickly as possible. Since that announcement, our three
governments have worked shoulder-to-shoulder to refine the
milestones and principles that will form the building blocks for
this decades-long partnership.
The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister reiterated their shared
and enduring commitment to setting the highest nuclear
non-proliferation standard, and the importance of this work to
the success of the programme. They undertook to continue AUKUS
partners' open, and transparent engagement with the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and noted the ongoing bilateral
negotiations between the IAEA and Australia to develop a robust
safeguards and verification approach for Australia's naval
nuclear propulsion programme under Article 14 of Australia's
Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA.
Over the last year, our Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Royal Navy
(RN), and U.S. Navy personnel have worked tirelessly across
governments, defence industry, and academic institutions to
optimise the training of personnel to maintain, sustain, operate,
and crew nuclear-powered submarines. The Secretaries and
Deputy Prime Minister reiterated that the delivery of the
“Optimal Pathway” depends upon the skilled workforces of all
three countries and reaffirmed their shared commitment to develop
a robust base of skills across their military, civilian and
industrial sectors.
- More than 60 RAN personnel are currently in various stages of
the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine SSN training pipeline to equip
a cadre of Australian officers and sailors with experience aboard
the U.S. Virginia class SSNs that the RAN will own and operate
from the early 2030s. These numbers will increase further
in 2025, with more than 100 personnel commencing training. Six
officers have completed all training and have been assigned to
U.S. Virginia class submarines. RAN enlisted sailors will
join U.S. submarine crews before the end of this year.
- In the United Kingdom, three RAN officers completed the UK
Nuclear Reactor course in July 2024 and are now assigned to UK
Astute class submarines. The next group of RAN officers will
commence training in the UK in November 2024.
- The RN, with the support of the Australian Submarine Agency,
has also delivered professional and general naval nuclear
propulsion training for more than 250 Australian personnel in
Canberra.
- Australians have embedded into programme delivery teams in
the UK Ministry of Defence and with Rolls-Royce Submarines.
Australians are also currently embedded in U.S. Naval Nuclear
Propulsion Program teams.
- In July and September 2024, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard
welcomed the first 40 ASC Pty Ltd personnel into its training
pipeline with the expectation of more than 100 additional ASC Pty
Ltd employees by mid-2025.
- The Australian Government has committed to nearly AUD 250
million to start delivering the skills and workforce needed for
its SSN program, including providing 4,001 Commonwealth Supported
Places at Australian universities, in addition to 3,000
undergraduate scholarships over six years, to build the necessary
Australian Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
workforce.
- Additional programs have seen more than 70 Australians
supported to undertake postgraduate nuclear studies at
universities in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia.
- Australia has also recently announced the “Jobs for Subs”
initiative, a government-funded program to evolve ASC Pty Ltd to
recruit, train and retain approximately 200 additional graduates,
apprentices and trainees to support Submarine Rotational
Force-West (SRF-West) in Western Australia.
Recognising that our partners in defence industry are and will
remain vital to this endeavour, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime
Minister discussed opportunities to maximize our efforts to
foster collaboration and build resilience across our industrial
bases and supply chains. They welcome the collaboration between
BAE Systems (BAES) and ASC Pty Ltd to bring together their
combined decades of submarine building to deliver the SSN-AUKUS
programme.
- The U.S. Government decided to invest USD 17.5 billion into
its submarine industrial base to support initiatives related to
supplier development, shipbuilder and supplier infrastructure,
workforce development, technology advancements, and strategic
sourcing.
- Australia has also committed to invest over AUD 30 billion in
the Australian defence industrial base to develop Australia's
supply chains and facilitate industry participation in U.S. and
UK supply chains.
- His Majesty's Government announced an initial allocation of
£4 billion from the United Kingdom to continue the detailed
design work of SSN-AUKUS and order long-lead items, as well as
the United Kingdom's investment of £3 billion across its Defence
Nuclear Enterprise, including the construction of submarine
industrial infrastructure that will help to deliver the SSN-AUKUS
programme.
- The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the AUKUS
partners' commitment to accelerate opportunities for Australian
industry in the Virginia class submarine supply chain, including
through the Defence Industry Vendor Qualification Program and
other industry collaboration initiatives. They welcomed
ongoing efforts to encourage further industrial base partnerships
to build resiliency across the trilateral Submarine Industrial
Base.
- This August, as a direct result of our close collaboration
over this year, our three nations commenced the execution of the
first-ever planned maintenance activity of a U.S. SSN in
Australia. More than 30 RAN personnel worked alongside U.S.
Navy and contractor personnel and UK observers to conduct routine
maintenance and observe safety and stewardship evolutions.
This was an important step in building Australia's capacity to
support a rotational presence of UK and U.S. SSNs at SRF-West
beginning as early as 2027, as well as Australia's future
sovereign SSN capability.
The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister emphasised the
importance of ensuring that our trilateral systems have the tools
they need to transfer information and data in a timely fashion to
facilitate cooperation. They were pleased to welcome the
August 2024 signing of an enabling agreement for trilateral
cooperation related to naval nuclear propulsion. Once in force,
this historic agreement will enable AUKUS partners to go beyond
sharing naval nuclear propulsion information, allowing the United
States and the United Kingdom to transfer nuclear-propulsion
material and equipment to Australia required for the safe and
secure construction, operation, and sustainment of conventionally
armed, nuclear-powered submarines.
This agreement reaffirms, and remains consistent with, the AUKUS
partners' respective, existing international non-proliferation
obligations. As a non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on
the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Australia has
re-affirmed unequivocally that it does not have, and will not
seek to acquire, nuclear weapons.
Pillar II – Advanced Capabilities
The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister hailed progress being
made under Pillar II to deliver capability to our defence forces
while bolstering industry and innovation sector collaboration.
AUKUS nations continue to pool the talents of our defence sectors
to catalyse, at an unprecedented pace, the delivery of advanced
capabilities.
Through AUKUS Pillar II, our trilateral science and technology,
acquisition and sustainment, and operational communities are
working across the full spectrum of capability
development—generating requirements, co-developing new systems,
deepening industrial base collaboration, and bolstering our
innovation ecosystems. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime
Minister welcomed progress made in building a more capable,
combined joint force of the future because of this work.
- This year, under the Maritime Big Play initiative, we are
undertaking a series of integrated trilateral experiments and
exercises to enhance interoperability and accelerate the combined
fielding of autonomous uncrewed systems in the maritime
domain. Later this year, the three nations will bring
together approximately 30 systems across four domains for the
first large-scale AUKUS integrated demonstration. The
Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the inclusion of
technologies from companies in each of the three nations and
plans to expand to include additional industry partners in the
future.
- In 2024, AUKUS partners furthered their undersea warfare
capabilities by beginning to scale up the ability to launch and
recover uncrewed underwater systems from torpedo tubes on current
classes of British and U.S. submarines, which will increase the
range and capability of our undersea forces. AUKUS partners
are exploring opportunities to collaborate on sensors and
payloads to maximize this capability and deliver effects such as
strike, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
- In parallel, the United Kingdom and the United States are
strengthening superiority in the maritime domain by integrating
the Sting Ray lightweight torpedo into the P-8A Maritime Patrol
Aircraft alongside the Mk 54 torpedo, with trials planned for
2025. This will increase the opportunity for interchangeability
and potential work on future torpedo programmes. These
efforts will ultimately enhance the survivability of our surface
combatant and submarine fleets.
- In the area of long-range precision strike, we are increasing
our collective ability to develop and deliver offensive and
defensive hypersonic technologies through a robust series of
trilateral tests and experiments that will accelerate the
development of hypersonic concepts and critical enabling
technologies. These capabilities will hold time critical
and heavily defended targets at risk from increased ranges,
enhancing the survivability of our forces and defending our
homelands and forces against potential threats.
- Advancing our maritime domain autonomy and decision advantage
efforts, AUKUS partners demonstrated and deployed common advanced
artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms on P8-A Maritime Patrol
aircraft to process data from each nations' sonobuoys. These
advances allow for faster data processing and improved target
identification in congested acoustic environments, enhancing our
combined anti-submarine warfare capabilities. The Secretaries and
Deputy Prime Minister welcomed plans to scale these technologies
in 2025.
- Our joint forces demonstrated several innovative uses of AI
technologies to enhance decision making and bolster combined
military effects. In March, AUKUS partners demonstrated the
ability to rapidly co-develop and deploy trilateral AI algorithms
to find and fix targets for strike. The Secretaries and
Deputy Prime Minister welcomed trilateral plans to explore the
introduction of these capabilities into operational units in the
coming years.
The International Joint Requirements Oversight Council (I-JROC)
remains a critical collaborative forum to identify and validate
joint and combined requirements to ensure capability development
considers interoperability and interchangeability from the very
start. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the
establishment of trilaterally determined key operational
problems, leveraging existing activities to achieve capability
development priorities endorsed by I-JROC. AUKUS partners seek:
- An enhanced multi-domain long-range strike capability that
incorporates asymmetric capabilities and integrated targeting;
- Strengthened multi-domain integrated air and missile defence
capability;
- Resilient command and control systems that maintain a diverse
range of information; and
- Enhanced logistical networks that are able to deliver
persistent support and sustainment for operations in contested
environments.
To this end, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed
work underway across our trilateral Armies, Navies, and Air
Forces to explore additional opportunities for collaboration in
the land, maritime, air, and other domains under AUKUS Pillar
II.
A cornerstone of our AUKUS Pillar II program remains the
opportunity to leverage the best of our defence industrial bases
and innovation ecosystems. Over the past year we have
further integrated our innovation ecosystems and fostered
increased collaboration with these stakeholder communities to
explore opportunities in all aspects of Pillar II.
- AUKUS partners executed the first trilaterally sponsored
innovation prize challenge, which focused on electronic
warfare. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister are
pleased to announce Advanced Design Technology Pty Ltd, Inovor
Technologies Pty Ltd and Penten Pty Ltd (AUS), Amiosec Ltd,
University of Liverpool, Roke Manor Research Ltd, Autonomous
Devices Ltd (UK), and Distributed Spectrum (U.S.) as the winners
for this challenge. The selection of these companies
demonstrates the important contributions that our trilateral
commercial sectors and innovation bases can make in addressing
critical operational requirements.
- Building on the success of this first challenge, the
Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister were pleased to endorse
plans for a robust two-year agenda that will increase
collaboration between and among our innovation centres of
excellence. Through this collaboration, AUKUS partners will
leverage innovative tools to reach our entrepreneurs and actively
solicit new and powerful capabilities from our trilateral
innovation ecosystem and industrial base.
- In coordination with industry associations representing the
trilateral defence industrial base, the Advanced Capabilities
Industry Forum, continues to provide an opportunity for
representatives across government and industry to exchange ideas
and deepen industrial collaboration in Pillar II. By the
end of this year, AUKUS partners will have convened meetings in
each country and facilitated discussions with technology and
policy subject matter experts to increase understanding and
information sharing.
- In response to industry feedback and as current projects
mature beyond traditional research and development projects, the
National Armaments Directors from each nation are identifying
opportunities to harmonise acquisition processes and reducing
barriers to facilitate the accelerated delivery of Pillar II
advanced capabilities.
In April 2024, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister
announced principles for engaging additional partners on
opportunities to collaborate on AUKUS Pillar II projects.
The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed progress on
consultations with Japan on improving interoperability with
Japan's maritime autonomous systems as an initial area of
cooperation. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister noted
ongoing consultations with Canada, New Zealand, and the Republic
of Korea to identify possibilities for collaboration on advanced
capabilities under AUKUS Pillar II on a project by project
basis.
Defence trade and industrial base collaboration
To promote innovation and realise the goals of AUKUS, Australia,
the United Kingdom, and the United States implemented momentous
amendments to our respective export control regimes. These
historic efforts will maximise secure, licence-free defence trade
and stimulate innovation across the full breadth of our defence
collaboration, mutually strengthening our three defence
industrial bases, while maintaining rigour and security in all
three systems. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister
reaffirmed support to reduce bureaucratic barriers to
collaboration to enable deeper defence industrial base
cooperation.
