The White House is hopeful that the US, UK, and Australia will overcome the biggest problem with their historic security deal. This will allow for technology transfers that will let Australia get nuclear-powered submarines. Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said there is progress in easing restrictions on exporting technology. The US partners have been worried for a long time that these restrictions could slow or even stop the so-called Aukus security pact.
According to Sullivan, “I feel very good about the path on Aukus.” This was the most confident statement from Washington about how to get around the regulatory barriers that have made the deal hard. Sullivan told a small group of reporters that Aukus had “challenged some of the historical assumptions about what the United States could or wouldn’t be willing to do in a different era.”
The groundbreaking Aukus pact was made public in 2021. It was a three-way agreement to counter China’s military power by giving them nuclear-powered submarines and technology like quantum computing and hypersonic weapons. Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the partners were “close to an announcement.” This came after an 18-month planning phase to figure out how and where to build the boats and what US technology and information would be needed.
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said at a White House press briefing that he felt “very good about the path on Aukus.” But planning has been hard because the US has always put limits on sharing technology and information. These limits apply to Australia and the UK, even though they are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, which is led by Washington and includes Canada and New Zealand.
There are worries that America’s shipyards need more space, so the design of the submarine and where it will be built will be very important. Even though some people in Australia are optimistic, there are worries that US restrictions, called the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, could severely limit cooperation not just on submarines but also in areas like artificial intelligence and undersea warfare that are part of the Aukus agreement.
Marles said in London that the goal was to create a “more seamless defence industrial space” between all three countries,” he also said that there was “a long way to go” to make that happen. Becca Wasser, a defence expert at the CNAS think tank, said there was a push to progress on the tech transfer issue, but she warned that it would be hard to change Itar all at once. Marles also said that the talks with Aukus had been a “deeply cooperative process” that was “basically about sharing technology.”
