Trump administration reviewing Biden-era submarine pact with Australia, UK

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By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a formal review of a defense pact that former President Joe Biden made with Australia and the United Kingdom to allow Australia to acquire conventionally armed nuclear submarines, a U.S. defense official told Reuters.

The formal Pentagon-led review is likely to alarm Australia, which sees the submarines as critical to its own defense as tensions grow over China’s expansive military buildup. It could also throw a wrench in Britain’s defense planning. AUKUS, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, is at the center of a planned expansion of Britain’s submarine fleet.

“We are reviewing AUKUS as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the President’s America First agenda,” the U.S. official said of the review, first reported by Financial Times.

“Any changes to the administration’s approach for AUKUS will be communicated through official channels, when appropriate.”

AUKUS, formed in 2021 to address worries about China’s growing power, allows Australia to acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines and other advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles.

Vocal skeptics among Trump’s senior policy officials include Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy adviser.

In a 2024 talk with Britain’s Policy Exchange think-tank, Colby cautioned that U.S. military submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and that U.S. industry could not produce enough to meet American demand.

They would also be central to U.S. military strategy in any confrontation with China centered in the First Island Chain, running from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.

“My concern is why are we giving away this crown jewel asset when we most need it,” Colby said.

The Australian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a British government spokesperson called AUKUS “one of the most strategically important partnerships in decades” that also produces “jobs and economic growth in communities across all three nations.”

“It is understandable that a new administration would want to review its approach to such a major partnership, just as the UK did last year,” the official said, adding that Britain will “continue to work closely with the U.S. and Australia … to maximize the benefits and opportunities” of the pact.

The U.S. National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but one official told Reuters the administration “is regularly reviewing foreign agreements to ensure they align with the American people’s interests – especially those initiated under the failed Biden foreign policy agenda.”

AUSTRALIA’S BIGGEST DEFENSE INVESTMENT

AUKUS is Australia’s biggest-ever defense project, with Canberra committing to spend A$368 billion ($240 billion) over three decades to the program, which includes billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. production base.

On Tuesday, the British government announced plans to invest billions of pounds to upgrade its submarine industry, including at BAE Systems in Barrow and Rolls-Royce Submarines in Derby, to boost the submarine production rate as announced in Britain’s Strategic Defence Review.

Britain said this month it would build up to 12 next-generation attack submarines of the model intended to be jointly developed by the UK, U.S. and Australia under AUKUS.

Only six countries operate nuclear submarines: the U.S., the UK, Russia, China, France and India.

AUKUS would add Australia starting in 2032 with the U.S. sale of Virginia-class submarines. Before that, the U.S. and Britain would start forward rotations of their submarines in 2027 out of an Australian naval base in Western Australia.

Later, Britain and Australia would design and build a new class of submarines, with U.S. assistance, with the first delivery to the UK in the late 2030s and to Australia in the early 2040s.

Speaking in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “we’re having honest conversations with our allies.”

On Australia, Hegseth said: “We want to make sure those capabilities are part of how they use them with their submarines, but also how they integrate with us as allies.”

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who signed a previous agreement to acquire French submarines shelved in favor of AUKUS, told CNBC last week it was “more likely than not that Australia will not end up with any submarines at all, but instead, simply provide a large base in Western Australia for the American Navy and maintenance facilities there.”

John Lee, an Australian Indo-Pacific expert at Washington’s conservative Hudson Institute think tank, said the Pentagon review was “primarily an audit of American capability” and whether it could afford to sell up to five submarines when it was not meeting its own production targets.

Kathryn Paik, a member of Biden’s NSC now with the Australia program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, called Colby’s logic “flawed” and said providing submarines to Australia would not sacrifice U.S. readiness “flawed” but instead boost collective deterrence.

“This review most definitely makes our allies in Canberra and London concerned, and could cause them to doubt U.S. reliability as an ally and partner,” she said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Don Durfee and David Gregorio)