WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – The Pentagon has completed its review of the AUKUS project to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and has found areas to put the deal on the “strongest possible footing,” a U.S. official said on Thursday.
President Donald Trump’s administration said in June it had launched a formal review into the AUKUS defense deal, worth hundreds of billions of dollars and also involving Britain – and a U.S. official said the outcome is expected to be discussed next week at a meeting in Washington of the U.S. and Australian defense and foreign ministers.
Washington is also expected to later host a trilateral ministerial meeting involving Britain.
“Consistent with President Trump’s guidance that AUKUS should move ‘full steam ahead,’ the review identified opportunities to put AUKUS on the strongest possible footing,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said earlier on Thursday that Australia had received the U.S. review of the AUKUS project and is “working through it.”
A British official said Britain had also received the review and welcomed its completion.
The review had sparked alarm in Canberra about what will be Australia’s biggest-ever defense commitment, but concerns were eased when Trump signaled his support for the program in a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House in October.
The plan for AUKUS announced in 2023 under the previous Biden administration envisages the U.S. selling several Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, while Britain and Australia will later build a new AUKUS-class submarine using U.S. technology.
The review was led by Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, who said last year that submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and U.S. industry could not produce enough to meet American demand.
Australia has committed to spend A$368 billion ($240 billion) over three decades on the program, which includes billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. submarine production base.
A U.S. official said the meeting of Australian defense and foreign ministers with the U.S. secretaries of defense and state was expected to take place on Monday, while a subsequent meeting of the two countries’ top defense officials along with Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey was expected to happen in Washington on Wednesday.
Britain and Australia have yet to confirm those meetings.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Toby Chopra, Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)
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