Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Sunday that the United States would be able to use planned defense facilities in Western Australia to help deliver submarines under the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.
The government on Saturday said it would spend A$12 billion ($8 billion) to upgrade facilities at the Henderson shipyard near Perth, as part of a 20-year plan to transform it into the maintenance hub for its AUKUS submarine fleet.
The AUKUS pact, agreed upon by Australia, Britain and the US in 2021, aims to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines from the next decade to counter China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region. President Donald Trump’s administration is undertaking a formal review of the pact.
When asked on Sunday if the US would be able to use dry docks at the facility for its nuclear-powered submarines, Marles said “this is an AUKUS facility and so I would expect so.”
“This is about being able to sustain and maintain Australia’s future submarines but it is very much a facility that is being built in the context of AUKUS,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation television. “I would expect that in the future this would be available to the US.”
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