Washington
Reuters
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US defense officials said US President Donald Trump has launched a formal review of former President Joe Biden’s Australia-UK defense agreement with the UK, allowing Australia to acquire nuclear submarines.
As tensions grow over China’s vast military accumulation, Australia, which believes submarines are important for their own defense, said it continues to be committed to the project and looks forward to working closely with the US in its review.
Not only will it raise alarms in Australia, this review could also throw a wrench in the UK’s defense plan. The hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Orcas is at the heart of the planned expansion of the British submarine fleet.
“We are reviewing Orcas as part of ensuring that this initiative from the previous administration coincides with the President’s first American agenda,” a US official said of the review first reported by the Financial Times.
“If necessary, changes to the administration’s approach to Ouchus will be notified through official channels.”
Orcas was formed in 2021 to address concerns about China’s growth potential.
Australia is expected to acquire up to five US Virginia class submarines starting in 2032. The UK and Australia will then design and build a new class of submarines with US support. The UK made its first delivery in the late 2030s and delivered to Australia in the early 2040s.
Prior to that, the US and the UK began advancing submarines from Australian Navy Base in Western Australia in 2027.
Voice skeptics among Trump’s senior policymakers include Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy advisor. He warned last year that submarines are rare and important commodities and that the US industry cannot produce enough production to meet American demand.
The submarines will run from Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo, and will be the centre of US military strategy in conflict with China, which surrounds China’s coastal seas.
“My concern is why we are handing out this Crown Jewel property when we need it most,” Colby said last year.
Six countries operate nuclear submarines in the US, UK, Russia, China, France and India.
A spokesman for Australia’s Minister of Defense, Richard Marless, said the US has notified Australia and the UK of the review.
“Occas will grow both the US and Australian defence industry, and will generate thousands of new manufacturing jobs,” the spokesman said.
A spokesman for the UK government called Orcas, “one of the most strategically important partnerships of decades,” also creates “employment and economic growth for communities in all three countries.”
“I understand that the new administration would like to review such a major partnership approach, as did the UK last year,” the official said, adding that the UK “continue to work closely with the US and Australia … to maximize profits and opportunities.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but one official told Reuters that the Trump administration is “regularly reviewing foreign agreements to match the interests of the American people, particularly those launched under the failed Biden foreign policy agenda.”
Sen. Tim Kane, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Orcus was “crucial to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific,” and that the administration should work to strengthen that and the U.S. submarine industrial base.
“Everything will play directly into the hands of China,” said Kane, representing Virginia, where the US submarine was built.
Orcas is Australia’s largest defence project, with Canberra pledging to spend $368 billion ($240 billion) on the program over 30 years. This includes billions of dollars in investments in US production bases.
On Tuesday, the UK announced plans to invest billions of pounds to upgrade the submarine industry, including Barrow’s BAE Systems and Derby’s Rolls-Royce Submarines, to boost submarine production, as announced in the UK’s Strategic Defence Review. Based on this, we will build up a next-generation attack submarine of up to 12th century, a model aimed at jointly developing by the UK, the US and Australia under Orcas.
During U.S. Congress on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegses said “We are having honest conversations with our allies,” adding in relation to Australia:
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signed an earlier agreement to acquire French submarines that were shelved in Orcas’ favor, but last week said “Australia is likely to provide a large Western Australian base, not submarines at all.”
John Lee, an expert at Orcus, a think tank at Washington’s conservative Hudson Institute, said the Pentagon review is intended to determine whether they can afford to sell up to five submarines when they are not meeting their own production targets.
Kathryn Pike, a Biden White House official at the Washington Center for Strategic International Studies, said providing submarines to Australia would not cost the US preparations, but instead increase collective deterrence.
“This review definitely relates Canberra and London’s allies, and could question our credibility as allies and partners,” she said.