Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Australian Minister of Defense Richard Marles and U.K. Secretary of State for Defense John Healey 10 December 2025 at the Pentagon for the annual AUKUS defense ministers ministerial, US Naval Institute News reports.
The meeting between the defense leaders comes after the Defense Department completed a review of the agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States under the Trump administration.
“You see through AUKUS and the review that we conducted, its continued commitment to a pragmatic practical application of hard power between our countries that reflect peace through strength and also hard power, real capabilities that demonstrate a deterrent effect that we all want,” Hegseth said during the meeting, according to a transcript from the Pentagon.
Under the trilateral agreement, the U.S. is slated to sell several Virginia-class attack boats to Australia starting in the 2030s while Canberra develops the domestic infrastructure and workforce needed to build and maintain an indigenous nuclear-powered submarine capability. Under the deal’s current parameters, Australia can buy up to five Virginia-class boats from the U.S. and is already buying three boats – a new Block VII boat and two Block IV Virginia-class submarines that are already in U.S. Navy service.
The Defense Department initiated a review of the agreement in June, with the expectation to complete the review in the fall. The review, Navy Secretary John Phelan said in October, allowed for the clarification of some ambiguous language within the pact. President Donald Trump voiced support for the agreement in October, USNI News previously reported.
“There shouldn’t be any more clarifications because we’re just going now full steam ahead building,” Trump said.
Australia received the findings of the review last week, Marles told reporters on Monday. Marles also participated in a ministerial consultation on Monday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong, as well as Hegseth. Marles told reporters the U.S. included Australia in the process, allowing them to contribute to the review.
“The review is essentially looking at ways in which AUKUS can be done better, and we continue to work with the United States and the United Kingdom about how we can do AUKUS better,” Marles said, according to a transcript released by the Australian government.
Following the consultation, Marles told reporters that Australia will soon deliver the next $1 billion payment as scheduled to invest in expanding U.S. submarine production capacity. This brings Australia’s contribution to the U.S. submarine industrial base to $2 billion so far.
“It is about improving both the production and sustainment rates of the industrial base here in the United States in respect of Virginia-class submarines going into the United States Navv,” Marles said of the payments,” Marles said.
Beyond monetary contributions, Australia has also sent 200 Australian workers to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to train on the sustainment of Virginia class submarines.
“All of this is working to increase the production and sustainment rate, and we will be seeing a really significant growth in the number of sea days available to the U.S. Navy, and we’re very confident that that will give rise to the space for the transfer of the U.S. Virginia class submarine at the beginning, in the early 2030s,” Marles said.
Navy officials have repeatedly said that the U.S. industrial base must build 2.33 attack boats per year, while also constructing one Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine each year, to sell the Virginia-class submarines to the Australians. The industrial base is currently building about 1.3 attack boats per year.
A new nuclear-powered submarine design – a joint venture between the U.K. and Australian known as SSN AUKUS – is slated to come online in the 2040s.
Healey, during Wednesday’s defense ministers meeting, said the U.K. has created 3,000 nuclear jobs and pledged an $8 billion investment to boost production in U.K. shipyards and to deliver up to 12 new Royal Navy attack submarines as part of AUKUS.
“The U.K. is all in on AUKUS,” Marles said. “The generations ahead of us will share its strength. They will inherit security – in the jobs that we create, in the technologies that we develop and in the peace that we preserve.”
