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The UK said on Wednesday that it was going “all in” on the Aukus pact following the conclusion of a long-awaited US review.
But defence secretary John Healey said the trilateral submarine and technology pact — designed to boost deterrence against China in the Indo-Pacific — must shift decisively into the delivery phase.
“Our reviews are done. Now, we deliver,” Healey said during three-way talks with Aukus defence chiefs at the Pentagon, including US secretary of war Pete Hegseth and Australian defence minister Richard Marles.
“Aukus is too significant and the stakes are too high for it to be allowed to drift.”
He stressed that the UK was “all in”, backed by what he said was £6bn of investment in submarine infrastructure under the current government.
As part of the agreement, the US will sell a number of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, while the three countries work on a new vessel called the SSN-Aukus, which will not enter service until the end of the next decade.
Critics of the pact in Washington, including Elbridge Colby, the US under-secretary of defence for policy, have voiced concern about selling submarines abroad at a time when US shipyards are struggling to meet America’s own needs.
The future of Aukus had been in doubt following a US review led by Colby, which recently concluded. On Monday Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, quoted US President Donald Trump saying in October that Aukus was “full steam ahead”.
“Aukus is full steam ahead, as [Trump] said. And I know the Department of War — though Secretary Hegseth will discuss that further — has conducted a review, which [sets out] how we can expand this relationship, about how to build on it, so that it can be about many things,” Rubio said.
One former senior UK official said: “The UK, Australian and US administrations have taken Trump’s words to mean any scepticism has gone.”
The UK’s Strategic Defence Review, published in June, forecasts the Royal Navy acquiring as many as 12 Aukus-class submarines by the late 2030s.
The pledge accounts for nearly half of all projected weapons system spending in the SDR.
The MoD said SSN-Aukus would be the most powerful submarine ever operated by the Royal Navy.
The UK is pouring investment, around £220mn over 10 years, into Barrow-in-Furness, the Cumbrian shipyard which is to eventually make the SSN-Aukus attack submarines.
The site is in urgent need of development and will need to attract skilled workers to the massive submarine plant run by BAE Systems.