Secretary of State for Defence (): Just over two years ago, the
United Kingdom, the United States and Australia launched the
ground-breaking new strategic partnership – known as AUKUS. As we
have seen over the last two years or so, the world has become
more dangerous. That’s why Defence partnerships like AUKUS only
become more important in ensuring the UK and our allies maintain
a strategic advantage.
For more than a century, our nations have stood shoulder to
shoulder, along with other allies and partners, to help sustain
peace, stability, and prosperity around the world.
On Friday, I was delighted to meet with the US Secretary for
Defense, Lloyd Austin, and the Australian Defence Minister and
Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles at the Defense Innovation
Unit in California for the annual AUKUS Defence Ministers’
Meeting.
For Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed,
nuclear-powered submarines (Pillar I), we are collaborating to
deliver this capability at the earliest possible date while
upholding the highest nuclear non-proliferation standard.
For Advanced Capabilities (Pillar II), we are significantly
deepening cooperation on a range of security and defence
capabilities, making sure that each nation has the capabilities
needed to defend against rapidly evolving threats.
Through these efforts, AUKUS contributes to integrated deterrence
by pursuing layered and asymmetric capabilities that promote
deterrence and stability.
We reflected on the exceptional progress made as part of
delivering on the Optimal Pathway to develop a conventionally
armed, nuclear powered, submarine capability to the Royal Navy
and Royal Australian Navy, as announced by the AUKUS leaders in
March this year. This includes increased training opportunities
for Australian sailors in the UK and US, and the introduction of
enabling legislation to the US Congress and Australian
Parliament. We reaffirmed our shared commitment to upholding the
highest standard for nuclear non-proliferation.
Our industry is supporting Australia in this endeavour. Both BAE
Systems in Barrow and Rolls Royce in Derby are playing a key role
in the delivery of this world-class capability.
We also reflected on how the strategic alignment of our national
defence strategies, anchored by our shared values, is
facilitating unprecedented collaboration in advanced
technologies. Through Pillar II, we are accelerating and
deepening the development and delivery of advanced military
capabilities, based on the most important challenges we face.
This progress will improve our shared ability to tackle emerging
threats.
We are significantly scaling up our cooperation on maritime
capabilities and have committed to test these through a landmark
maritime autonomy experimentation and exercise series. This will
help us test our interoperability and increase the sophistication
and scale of autonomous systems in the maritime domain. There
will be significant opportunities for UK industry to engage.
We are advancing our trilateral anti-submarine warfare activities
and undersea vehicle launch and recovery. These capabilities help
to increase the range and capability of our undersea forces and
will also support SSN-AUKUS. This follows our successful trials
last month, where HMS Tamar played a key role in
combined exercises off the east coast of Australia.
We are strengthening cyber capabilities across the three AUKUS
partners, ensuring that we are working hand in hand with our
industry partners across all our supply chains and protecting
this endeavour for the future.
We are developing quantum technologies to increase resilience for
our trilateral forces in Global Positioning System-degraded
environments and enhance stealth in the undersea domain,
including on future SSN-AUKUS submarines.
Critical to all of our capability development is our ability to
facilitate faster and deeper defence trade between our nations.
These efforts will increase private-sector cooperation across our
nations, which is crucial to our ambition in emerging
technologies. The Advanced Capabilities Industry Forum will
provide a mechanism for industry-industry and government-industry
consultation on how to transfer the necessary technology, data,
and know-how needed to deliver capability quickly. We have also
previewed our first AUKUS Innovation Challenge.
In addition, we have confirmed our trilateral cooperation on the
Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) programme. This will
provide 24/7, all-weather capabilities that will increase AUKUS
nations’ ability to characterise objects deep in space up to
22,000 miles (36,000 kilometres) away from earth, supporting
HMG’s commitments to be a meaningful actor in space under the
National Space Strategy (2021). Cawdor Barracks in South-West
Wales has been identified as the UK’s preferred host site, which
will progress subject to planning permission.
Together, these initiatives provide us with a solid foundation to
enhance our collective security and deterrence to keep all three
nations’ safe in a world which is becoming more dangerous by the
day.
For additional detail, I refer members to the AUKUS Defence
Ministers’ communique https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3604511/aukus-defense-ministers-meeting-joint-statement/
