Australia, Britain sign 50-year AUKUS submarine partnership treaty
Australia’s government said on Saturday it signed a treaty with Britain to bolster cooperation over the next 50 years on the AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership.
The AUKUS pact, agreed upon by Australia, Britain and the U.S. in 2021, aims to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines from the next decade.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement that the bilateral treaty was signed with Britain’s Defence Secretary John Healey on Saturday after a meeting in the city of Geelong, in Victoria state.
“The Geelong Treaty will enable comprehensive cooperation on the design, build, operation, sustainment, and disposal of our SSN-AUKUS submarines,” the statement said.
The treaty was a “commitment for the next 50 years of UK-Australian bilateral defence cooperation under AUKUS Pillar I”, it said, adding that it built on the “strong foundation” of trilateral AUKUS cooperation.
Britain’s ministry of defence said this week that the bilateral treaty would underpin the two allies’ submarine programmes and was expected to be worth up to 20 billion pounds ($27.1 billion) for Britain in exports over the next 25 years.
AUKUS is Australia’s biggest-ever defence project, with Canberra committing to spend A$368 billion over three decades to the programme, which includes billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. production base.
