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Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom have met to negotiate defence treaty conditions during the first ever UK-hosted meeting of AUKUS Defence Ministers.
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UK Defence Secretary John Healey met with Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin III in London to negotiate the conditions of the UK–Australia treaty to define defence relationship for decades.
A first-of-its-kind bilateral AUKUS treaty between the UK and Australia is expected to establish the strategic and operational framework for bilateral cooperation under AUKUS with a focus on the core elements of the delivery of SSN-AUKUS.
Billions of pounds of UK submarine components and exports are expected to support Australian submarine build, with AUKUS to sponsor more than 21,000 UK jobs, an additional 7,000 skilled roles and significant growth to the UK economy, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.
In addition, the negotiations have also been given a high priority to accelerate the design, build and delivery of SSN-AUKUS, according to UK Defence Secretary John Healey.
“I’m proud to be the first UK Defence Secretary to host a meeting of AUKUS Defence Ministers in Britain,” Secretary Healey said.
“As AUKUS partners, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder in an increasingly unstable world. This is a partnership that will boost jobs, growth and prosperity across our three nations, as well as strengthening our collective security.
“I’m delighted that we will soon be commencing negotiations on a bilateral AUKUS treaty with Australia, which will help create a more secure and stable Indo-Pacific for decades to come.”
A UK-Australia Defence and Security Cooperation Agreement was signed earlier this year to assist the operation of defence forces in each country and facilitate UK submarine crews visiting Australia as part of the AUKUS partnership.
Since the AUKUS launch, nearly £10 billion of investment has been allocated towards UK nuclear work and infrastructure, including £4 billion to progress SSN-AUKUS UK submarines through design, prototyping and initial purchases, £3 billion for new advanced manufacturing capabilities in Barrow-in-Furness and Derby and £2.4 billion over 10 years from Australia to boost Rolls-Royce infrastructure and to share costs on SSN-AUKUS submarine design.
Four UK companies have been selected by the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator to receive a share of £2 million of funding to develop solutions in electromagnetic targeting and protection, in particular, the development of low-cost, disposable, high-volume and highly autonomous electromagnetic technology that can detect enemy actions or protect against them.
“We have announced that we will be negotiating a treaty, a bilateral treaty, between Australia and the UK to enable our portion of AUKUS,” said Minister Marles, speaking during a media doorstop in London on 26 September.
“What we announced in March of last year as a trilateral optimal pathway by which Australia would acquire a nuclear‑powered submarine capability, was legally underpinned by a trilateral treaty that we signed between our three countries in August.
“From that emanates a number of bilateral arrangements between the three parties, and we’ve today announced that we will begin the negotiations for those arrangements as they pertain to Australia and the UK.
“Now, when you look particularly at that dimension of AUKUS, it really centres around the build of SSN-AUKUS in Australia, but also here in the UK. So we will establish a production line in Adelaide to build our future nuclear‑powered submarines.
“There will be a production line, there is a production line at Barrow-in-Furness here in the UK, which is building Astute Class submarines today, will build the future SSN-AUKUS submarines in the future.
“We will be operating the same class of submarine. So when you look at the industrial cooperation, the technology transfer, the way in which all of those mechanisms operate to do that, that is the subject of the treaty that we will be negotiating with the United Kingdom. And it’s a really important step in the league of arrangements which allow AUKUS to transpire.”
