(Bloomberg) -- Australia and the UK have announced they will work toward a bilateral defense treaty designed to speed up delivery of a next generation nuclear-powered submarine fleet, ahead of meetings by the three Aukus powers in London.
UK Defence Secretary John Healey said in a statement on Thursday that the treaty between London and Canberra would be negotiated quickly and would create the framework for collaboration on the SSN-Aukus, as the newly-designed submarine class has been designated.
“As AUKUS partners, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder in an increasingly unstable world. This is a partnership that will boost jobs, growth and prosperity across our three nations, as well as strengthening our collective security,” Healey said in the statement.
Healey is due to meet with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in London on Thursday, in the first trilateral Aukus meeting to be held outside of the US.
Under the Aukus agreement, which was signed in 2021, the US and the UK agreed to collaborate on providing Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines to ramp up Canberra’s defense capabilities in the face of growing strategic competition with China in the Asia-Pacific.
Initially, Washington will sell a fleet of Virginia-class submarines to Canberra with the first of the vessels expected to arrive in the early 2030s. Following this, the UK and Australia will collaborate on designing and building a new model of nuclear-powered submarines known as the SSN-Aukus, with the first expected to be ready in the early 2040s.
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