Australia assures AUKUS submarine project “will come to fruition”

In 2021, Canberra sparked a major diplomatic crisis with Paris by breaking without warning a €55 billion contract to buy 12 conventionally operated submarines from the Naval Group.

Australia stressed this Friday, March 22, that a historic agreement with London and Washington to develop AUKUS nuclear submarines “will come to fruition” despite growing fears about costs, capabilities and a possible return from Donald Trump.

“The three governments involved are working at speed to achieve this,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told reporters on Friday.

“It’s going to happen and we need it to happen,” he added. Under the new AUKUS defense alliance, the three long-standing allies have pledged to jointly strengthen their military might to counter China’s military expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We live in more dangerous times”

Defense officials this week unveiled ambitious plans to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, one of the key pillars of the deal.

After barely two years of existence, there are signs that AUKUS and its flagship project may be in jeopardy. Some fear that if Donald Trump wins the November presidential election, he will abandon the treaty and return to his “America First” foreign policy.

Faced with the emergence of potential hot spots around the world and China’s increasingly aggressive stance in the Taiwan Strait, visiting British Defense Minister Grant Shaps on Friday urged AUKUS to be more important than ever.

After decades of relative peace, Grant Shaps observed that the planet was slowly transitioning from a “post-war” to a “pre-war” era.

“We live in more dangerous times,” he said during a visit to Osborne Shipyard in South Australia. Australia announced on Thursday that it is entering into a partnership with British BAE Systems to build nuclear-powered submarines.