AUKUS ‘full steam ahead’ toward greater deterrence, stability in Indo-Pacific
FORUM Staff
The security alliance among Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) is proceeding “full steam ahead,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in mid-October 2025, clearing the way for Canberra to obtain conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines from the U.S. to enhance deterrence and promote stability in the Indo-Pacific.
AUKUS is “a key facet of collaborating with allies to counter China,” Derek Grossman, a University of Southern California professor of political science and international relations, wrote for the U.S.-based Foreign Policy magazine.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) coercion of Canberra has been marked by reckless intercepts of Australian military aircraft, including a Chinese fighter jet dropping flares near an Australian plane on routine patrol in international airspace over the South China Sea in mid-October 2025. A People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) flotilla conducted an unannounced live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February 2025, forcing commercial airlines to divert flights abruptly and prompting condemnation.
The AUKUS partners announced in March 2023 that Australia would be able to buy at least three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S. and eventually deploy a new class of nuclear-powered submarines, called SSN-AUKUS, jointly developed by the three nations. The agreement “serves as a critical deterrent to the CCP’s malign activities in the Indo-Pacific,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told The Guardian newspaper in early 2025.
The submarine purchases “should be a win-win for everybody,” U.S. Navy Secretary John Phelan said during an October 2025 meeting with President Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Albanese hailed the agreement. “On defense, we’ve already had a discussion about taking it to the next level. Our defense and security partnership with AUKUS is so important for us,” he said.
AUKUS will provide Australia with “the single biggest increase in our military capability since the establishment of the Navy more than a century ago. It will be profoundly important for Australia’s national security,” said Defence Minister Richard Marles, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
AUKUS is divided into two pillars. Pillar 1 involves the sale of the U.S.-manufactured submarines to Australia and development of SSN-AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines for Australia and the U.K. SNN-AUKUS will incorporate the U.K.’s next-generation SSN design and integrate U.S. submarine technologies. Nuclear-powered vessels can travel farther and faster than conventional submarines powered by diesel and electric batteries.
U.K. and U.S. rotational submarine forces are scheduled to base out of Western Australia in 2027, and the U.S. will begin selling submarines to Australia in the 2030s as Canberra develops the domestic infrastructure and workforce to build and maintain its own nuclear-powered submarines. Australia has bought three of a potential five Virginia-class vessels from the U.S. — a Block VII and two Block IV submarines, according to the U.S. Naval Institute.
The U.K. intends to deliver its first SSN-AUKUS to the Royal Navy in the late 2030s, and Australia plans to deliver its first domestically built SSN-AUKUS to the Royal Australian Navy in the early 2040s. Australia announced in September 2025 that it would invest $8 billion in a shipbuilding facility in Western Australia to support the rotational submarines.
AUKUS Pillar 2 calls for jointly developing critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and hypersonic missiles.
AUKUS “stands as perhaps the boldest strategic declaration of the 21st century” by the U.S. and its Allies and Partners, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S.-based think tank, reported in August 2025.
