Submarine deal as leaders of US, UK, Australia expected to meet next week

Washington:

The leaders of the United States, Britain and Australia will meet in the United States next week to discuss security and foreign policy, the three countries said on Wednesday, ahead of a possible nuclear submarine deal aimed at countering China’s growing aggression in the Pacific. Will meet.

After 18 months of negotiations, it is speculated that Australia will unveil plans to acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines, in what Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called “the biggest leap” in defense capability in his country’s history. .

The deal is part of the new regional security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, known as AUKUS.

The White House said President Joe Biden would discuss the issue with Albanian and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday in San Diego, California, and also hold separate bilateral talks with them. The meeting was also announced by Australia and Britain.

A spokesman for Sunak said in London that on Monday the British government would also publish an update to its so-called “integrated review” of security, defense and foreign policy.

The last update two years ago was billed as the most comprehensive since the Cold War era and marked London’s reimagining of its post-Brexit foreign policy.

London has insisted that the new three-way defense alliance is not intended to be adversarial towards any other nation. But it has been widely seen as a Western response to China’s growing influence in the region and concern about the pace and size of Beijing’s military expansion.

From September 2021, behind-the-scenes talks are taking place between AUKUS partners about how to equip Australia’s military with sensitive nuclear-propulsion technology.

Australia does not have the expertise to build its own nuclear submarines – which have an extended range and powerful strike capabilities – and must buy them from the United States or Britain.

The looming deal has worried some of Australia’s biggest regional allies, with both Indonesia and Malaysia questioning whether it could spark a nuclear arms race in the Indo-Pacific.

While the submarines will be powered by a nuclear reactor, Australia has ruled out equipping them with nuclear weapons.

The submarine contract is expected to be worth tens of billions of US dollars, but experts say its significance goes beyond the jobs created and the investment it promises.

– Beijing protest –

Nuclear-powered submarines are difficult to detect, can travel long distances for extended periods of time and can be armed with sophisticated cruise missiles.

This would allow Australia to launch strikes or counter-attacks deep into enemy territory with little warning.

Beijing is deeply opposed to the project, which it considers “dangerous” and designed to encircle China.

Key questions still linger, including whether Australia would rather buy US or British submarines, where they would be built, and when they would be in the water.

Britain’s The Times newspaper reported on Tuesday that under the AUKUS pact, Australia is expected to acquire UK-built submarines instead of the United States because smaller UK vessels are easier to crew.

If the submarines are from the United States, it would be the first time US-derived nuclear submarine technologies had been exported since the 1960s, when the United States helped Britain design its underwater fleet. It was

“The AUKUS partnership seeks to provide Australia with a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability as quickly as possible,” a Pentagon spokesman told AFP before Albanese’s announcement.

“Strengthening our deterrence means boosting all of our industrial bases, enhancing our collective capabilities, and sharing technology like never before.”

The AUKUS pact also expects cooperation between the three allies on hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence and cyber warfare.

The sub deal has been controversial in the United States, which is struggling to develop its fleet of nuclear submarines.

Democrat Jack Reed, chairman of the influential US Senate Armed Services Committee, warned Biden in December that selling subs to Australia could undermine US naval prowess.

In a leaked letter sent to Biden, Reid also wrote that the AUKUS agreement risked “stressing the US submarine industrial base to the breaking point”.

Australia had originally planned to purchase the diesel-powered submarines in a lucrative deal with France, but abruptly canceled that deal in favor of the Aucus.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)