SYDNEY: Australia and Britain stated they might strike a bilateral treaty to provide a brand new class of nuclear-powered submarine, beneath the AUKUS partnership which additionally contains the USA.
Australia will purchase US Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines from the USA within the subsequent decade, with Britain and Australia later constructing a brand new class of AUKUS submarine at Barrow-in-Furness in Britain, and in South Australia, beneath the AUKUS pact introduced in 2023.
“We will likely be negotiating a treaty, a bilateral treaty, between Australia and the UK to allow our portion of AUKUS,” Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles informed reporters after a gathering along with his British and US counterparts on Thursday in London.
“We will likely be working the identical class of submarine. So whenever you take a look at the economic cooperation, the know-how switch, the best way during which all of these mechanisms function to do this, that’s the topic of the treaty,” he added.
British Defence Secretary John Healey stated the assembly of AUKUS defence ministers had additionally agreed to make use of British-made Stingray torpedoes in P-8A Maritime Patrol Plane that are used as submarine-hunting plane within the Indo Pacific area.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin stated the AUKUS companions had performed vital experiments throughout the bottom, undersea and electromagnetic spectrum to reinforce warfighting capabilities as a part of cooperation beneath the so-called AUKUS “Pillar Two”.
A joint assertion stated the AUKUS companions had been rising their potential to develop and ship offensive and defensive hypersonic applied sciences, and can conduct a big scale drone train later this yr.
