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\n 25\/07\/2025 – 14:52 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
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The United Kingdom and Australia announced on Friday that they will sign a cooperation treaty to build Australian nuclear-powered submarines and welcomed a review by\u00a0US President Donald Trump\u2019s\u00a0administration into Washington\u2019s role in the trilateral defence deal.<\/p>\n
UK Defence Secretary John Healey and Foreign Secretary David Lammy met with their Australian counterparts\u00a0Richard Marles and Penny Wong\u00a0in Sydney for an annual meeting.<\/p>\n
Marles said he and Healey will sign a 50-year treaty on Saturday that will underpin bilateral cooperation on building an Australian fleet of submarines powered by US nuclear technology.<\/p>\n
“It is as significant a treaty as has been signed between our two countries since federation,” Marles said, referring to the unification of several British colonies to form the Australian government in 1901.<\/p>\n
The three-way alliance was announced in 2021 to contend with growing Chinese military might in the Asia-Pacific region.<\/p>\n
It would deliver Australia at least eight submarines including three to five second-hand US Virginia-class submarines.<\/p>\n
Britain and Australia would cooperate to build their own SSN-AUKUS submarines.<\/p>\n
US reviewing AUKUS submarine deal<\/p>\n
US Defence Secretary\u00a0Pete Hegseth\u00a0is reviewing the AUKUS pact, which the previous administration entered into under Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
There are concerns that the US may not provide Australia with its first Virginia-class submarine by the early 2030s as planned, due to domestic submarine construction being behind schedule.<\/p>\n
Marles and Healey declined to speculate on whether Britain and Australia would continue to jointly build submarines if the US pulled out, when questioned at a press conference.<\/p>\n
“Australia and the UK welcome the review because we see this as a chance for a new administration to renew their commitment to AUKUS. And that\u2019s what we expect,” Healey said.<\/p>\n
“Any sort of hypotheticals that you suggest simply aren\u2019t part of the picture,” Healey added, referring to the prospect of Britain and Australia proceeding without US involvement.<\/p>\n
The Australian government confirmed this week it had paid the US a second $500 million (\u20ac426 million) instalment on the AUKUS deal. The first $500 million was paid in February.<\/p>\n
The submarines are expected to cost Australia up to\u00a0$245 billion (\u20ac208 billion).<\/p>\n
Brits join Australian war games<\/p>\n
The meeting comes as 3,000 British military personnel take part in the largest military exercise ever conducted in Australia.<\/p>\n
More than 35,000 military personnel from 19 nations are taking part in\u00a0Exercise Talisman Sabre, which began in 2005 as a biennial joint exercise between the US and Australia.<\/p>\n
Marles and Healey will inspect the British aircraft\u00a0HMS Prince of Wales\u00a0at the northern port of Darwin on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Lammy said the carrier\u2019s arrival in Darwin was meant to send a clear signal to the world.<\/p>\n
“With our carrier strike group docking in Darwin, I think we’re sending a clear signal, a signal of the UK’s commitment to this region of the world. Our determination to keep the Indo-Pacific free and open and that we stand together,” he said.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 25\/07\/2025 – 14:52 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT The United Kingdom and Australia announced on Friday that they will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13798,428,59,57,58,15080,50,15081,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-23836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-aukus","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-greatbritain","13":"tag-military-drill","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-submarine","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}