The United States unveiled a partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom to develop unmanned and underwater drones by 2027.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the plan at the AUKUS Defense Ministers meeting, which was held at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore on May 30.
“The signature project will deliver a suite of highly adaptable multi-mission [nmanned underwater vehicle] payloads designed to support undersea operations and maintain our collective advantage in the maritime domain,” Hegseth shared during a press conference on Saturday.
AUKUS is a trilateral defense pact formed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia in 2021 to push back on China’s growing power in the Indo-Pacific region.
Hegseth added that U.S. Navy sailors will begin arriving in Australia as officials there gear up to invest up to 5 billion Australian dollars (about $3.5 billion) in HMAS Stirling, a major Royal Australian Navy base.
Australia also committed to investing 8 billion Australian dollars ($5.7 billion) at its Henderson shipyard in the southwestern part of the country and, separately, 21 billion Australian dollars ($15 billion) at the Osborne shipyard in the southeastern part.
The multi-billion-dollar investments will help support submarine construction during the partnership.
The United States said it wants to move “as quickly as possible” to enhance combined submarine presence in the Pacific region.
The drones will be delivered starting in 2027.
“This project is intended to significantly enhance AUKUS partners’ ability to protect critical national seabed infrastructure; deploy cutting-edge surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike capabilities; conduct logistics operations; and bolster superiority in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, mine countermeasures, electronic warfare, and contested littoral maneuver,” according to a joint statement by AUKUS Defense Ministers.
Deputy Prime Minister of Australia Richard Marles called the partnership a “momentous occasion.”
“This will rapidly give our forces the very most advanced battlefield technologies as together we produce a range of cutting-edge sensors and weapons systems for undersea drones,” Marles said on Saturday.
A third phase of the partnership will be building submarines in Australia, which will be delivered in the “early 2040s.”
Marles noted that efforts are underway to build a Submarine Construction Yard at the Osborne shipyard, which he said will be the single biggest industrial project in the country’s history.
“All of this represents the biggest link in Australia’s military capability in more than a century, really, since the establishment of the Navy, and it is being achieved through the cooperation with the UK and with the United States, and I am deeply indebted to both Pete [Hegseth] and [British Secretary of State for Defence] John [Healey] for their enormous cooperation in making this happen,” Marles said.
