In June, the U.S. Department of Defense announced it would spend the summer conducting a review of AUKUS: the security partnership established in 2021 among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The review—designed to determine if the AUKUS agreement is aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s priorities—has sparked angst among stakeholders in all three countries. The second Trump administration, after all, has not been shy about revamping Washington’s major partnerships.

It is not unusual for an incoming administration to review major programs and initiatives in its early days, as the Trump administration is now doing with AUKUS. We are hopeful that the Pentagon will find that the alliance is more than worth the investment—and perfectly in keeping with Trump’s “America first” agenda. In an unsettled international environment, AUKUS serves each member country’s urgent national security needs and advances shared priorities. It enables a frictionless defense environment among the three countries, and is a stimulus for reforming dated yet compatible defense industrial bases. It can be a model and an incentive for strengthening relations with other allies and special partners. A vibrant AUKUS is a deterrent in the Indo-Pacific and beyond, as relevant in the Arctic and the higher reaches of the North Atlantic as it is in the western Pacific. Moreover, it helps the Australian, British, and U.S. militaries adopt the advanced technologies necessary to win in the future.

AUKUS is often seen in terms of its pillars and programs. But a focus on just its components is too superficial and narrow a perspective. Its significance, like that of all great alliances, is that it formalizes decades of entwined initiatives and enduring interests. At a time when questioning the meaning, value, and obligations of partnerships is in vogue and doubts about the United States’ reliability swirl, AUKUS can show that Washington remains dependable and prove that democratic forms of government, particularly when working together, yield strong economies and military capabilities. It can show that democracies form strong alliances. Washington should thus do more than just recommit to AUKUS. It should revitalize the pact for the decades ahead.

Joining Forces

In matters of defense, AUKUS can help all three countries rapidly adopt new technologies. It can aid them in developing coherent research initiatives, leveraging their comparative advantages, and coordinating (rather than replicating) investments so that they can quickly apply game-changing innovations in a variety of areas—such as undersea warfare, hypersonic weapons, cyber-capabilities, and drones. These advances are essential to modern warfare. All of them have been highlighted by national security leaders from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. AUKUS can also help speed up the delivery processes for new technologies by acting as a forcing function and convening mechanism.

Defense manufacturing offers a case in point. Over the past three decades, the defense industrial bases of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have atrophied. The reasons for this decline can be debated, but the fact remains that each country’s base must be revitalized. That can be done singularly or collectively, but a singular approach would be more costly and disjointed. A collective approach, by contrast, could build integrated workforces and supply chains and establish more locations from which the three countries’ forces could operate with common support. This would boost interoperability during a conflict. The benefits of working together will become even more consequential, for example, as digital designing and the 3D printing of complex parts allow the military to more quickly repair its platforms and systems. AUKUS could help its members take advantage of these advances by providing a global allied logistics and maintenance network, in which engineers, technicians, and artisans collaborate across time zones. This shared enterprise would serve as a strong deterrent against China and Russia, which see the allies’ distance from their areas of interest and potential conflict as a liability that works to China’s and Russia’s advantage. Instead, under this evolved AUKUS model, the tyranny of long supply lines would come to an end. Defense platforms would no longer be tied to each country’s specific support sites and systems.

Consider, for example, nuclear submarines. Australia’s investments in its naval industrial base will, for the first time, provide AUKUS partners with a substantial, modern nuclear submarine base and maintenance and repair facility in the Indian Ocean. That base, named HMAS Stirling, will give all three countries access to key sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. It will be the closest facility that each country’s nuclear submarines have to critical Indo-Pacific chokepoints, making it essential in the event of a crisis in the East China or South China Seas. HMAS Stirling, for example, is approximately 2,750 miles from the Strait of Malacca, which is the shortest shipping route between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and thus facilitates massive amounts of global trade and energy flows among Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Currently, the closest similar base and nuclear-capable maintenance and repair complex is in Hawaii, which is 7,800 miles away from the strait. HMAS Stirling, when fully developed, will enable extensive repair capability and can thus enable more time on mission for Australian, British, and U.S. submarines and less time spent traveling for maintenance and resupply. Even if it didn’t shorten transit, having two robust nuclear submarine repair facilities serving the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean is better than one. Building up HMAS Stirling is, to be sure, costly. But bringing the base to full operational and repair capability must be a top priority for the Australian government. To call it game-changing would be an understatement.

Once and Future

AUKUS has two pillars. Pillar 1 is a combined effort to deliver nuclear submarine capability to Australia and to enhance that of the United Kingdom and the United States. Pillar 2 is the collaborative development of emerging technologies. These goals may appear bifurcated, but they will become increasingly intertwined in the years ahead. The extreme endurance of stealthy nuclear submarines—which can remain submerged far longer and move much faster than conventionally powered submarines—makes them essential to deterrence. They will become more versatile and valuable as emerging technologies, such as hypersonic weapons, mature and are fielded. Because they can reposition quickly and stealthily and remain poised and undetected for long periods, hypersonic missile-armed submarines will be the platform of choice for prompt strikes. Nuclear submarines will also be the silent motherships for advanced autonomous undersea and, potentially, air systems. Nuclear submarines, paired with those Pillar 2 offshoots, will therefore be transformational. They will confound and erode adversaries’ confidence.

But the partnership’s work on emerging Pillar 2 technologies is less coherent than AUKUS plans for Australian nuclear submarines. Frankly, this effort is operationally adrift, and hopefully, the Department of Defense review should drive change. AUKUS has succeeded in catalyzing some long-needed reforms to export regulations that limit the sale of emerging military and dual-use technologies to other countries, and it has facilitated collaboration in some technology development. But more must be done, particularly to help small- and medium-sized defense firms that lack large compliance teams but want to grow their customer bases. A revitalized AUKUS should aim higher. Its members should agree on Pillar 2 technology priorities—emphasizing, for example, those that enhance undersea warfare and autonomous systems—and quickly remove the remaining impediments to the diffusion of U.S. technologies. One target should be the parameters and constraints of the outdated Missile Technology Control Regime, which was designed to control missile technology proliferation and predated the drone world of today. Government and industry leaders must come together to synchronize efforts—not to talk past one another or relegate key strategic decisions. Washington needs a tool for breaking through defense industrial bureaucratic inertia, so even if there weren’t an AUKUS, the United States would have to create one.

A vibrant AUKUS is a deterrent in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

The strongest argument for AUKUS is that China and Russia object to it. When a country’s adversaries don’t like what it is doing, it should usually press on. China and Russia are right to see AUKUS as a threat. Increased numbers of more capable nuclear submarines among all three partners, operating out of a closer operating base, would complicate their nuclear strategies. Additional nuclear attack submarines in the Pacific, even if they lacked nuclear warheads, would put China’s sea-based nuclear deterrent at risk. They also would threaten Chinese ships and military installations, including those recently established in the South China Sea.

The same can be said for Russia’s calculus in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the Russian Far East. Although Moscow has spent decades contending with U.S. and British submarines operating in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, adding Australian nuclear submarines to the mix would make AUKUS submarine numbers greater and more fungible. The addition of Australian nuclear submarines in the Pacific would enable U.S. and British submarines to be on patrol elsewhere as circumstances demand. When it comes to the advanced technologies of Pillar 2, meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing have already made significant progress in many of those areas on their own, and they do not want Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to apply their innovation engines toward shared military ends. AUKUS, then, should do exactly that.

Process Makes Perfect

The Trump administration, in concert with Australia and the United Kingdom, can refine AUKUS and make it fit for today’s purpose. It can resoundingly deliver on the alliance’s potential. In fact, AUKUS can serve as a vehicle for the administration’s drive to streamline government. In doing so, AUKUS can reinforce an “America first” agenda and still advance the interests of all three partners.

AUKUS, for example, can serve as the impetus for streamlining processes, clearing out burdensome bureaucratic hurdles, and thinning out regulations around technology and defense manufacturing. American investors, businesses, and, just as important, their workforces and suppliers need such changes to better help the armed services. National security leaders in all three countries must commit to more multiyear procurement contracts and authorize and appropriate more funding for cutting-edge defense technologies. They must be willing to gamble—yes, gamble—on introducing emerging technologies faster. Otherwise, new innovations will struggle to take root and thrive. Officials cannot expect small companies and their investors to participate if orders cannot be assured and if those orders are limited to a single year.

Some officials within defense departments, ministries, and legislatures have raised legitimate concerns about AUKUS and the U.S. submarine force structure. One argument is that nuclear submarines are more expensive than a conventional alternative—which is true. Another is that providing nuclear submarines to Australia will mean fewer submarines for the United States, at a time when the U.S. industrial base can’t meet U.S. needs. But these costs are worth the benefits. The three states will essentially be operating common submarines, which will ultimately provide industry with a longer runway and thus the necessary industrial predictability to increase production. It will mean stability for the submarine, for the submarine workforce, and for myriad suppliers. It will create a more fungible allied submarine force over time that will improve responsiveness to the challenges of the future. Accordingly, it will enhance deterrence.

Finally, AUKUS partners must establish a more decisive leadership and coordination model. Vesting oversight primarily in defense departments and ministries is a traditional inclination. But the scope of AUKUS––particularly regarding dual-use emerging technologies—means that the leadership of AUKUS should come from a consortium of defense, foreign, and commerce departments or ministries. The leader of each country’s delegation should be deemed an ambassador, or have a title and organizational stature commensurate with the scope and complexity of the endeavor. Such leaders must possess the authority necessary to effectively coordinate and, when required, compel action. AUKUS should be further managed by a trilateral secretariat staffed with requisite experience and competence from relevant organizations and industries, as a counterweight to the tendencies of parochialism and bureaucratic insularity.

This is, unquestionably, an unusual and potentially bureaucratically contentious proposal. But the old means of doing things are not delivering in the ways and at the speed required to match China’s and Russia’s ambitions, investments, and progress. Abandoning AUKUS would do the work of Washington’s adversaries for them. It is time to change the order of things and, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, go forward together.

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