Australia and Britain have announced plans to sign a bilateral treaty to jointly produce a new class of nuclear-powered submarines as part of the AUKUS partnership,

which also includes the United States.

Under the AUKUS pact, which was unveiled in 2023, Australia will first acquire U.S.-made Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines over the next decade. Subsequently, Britain and Australia will collaborate on building a new class of AUKUS submarines, with production taking place at Barrow-in-Furness in the UK and in South Australia.

"We will be negotiating a bilateral treaty between Australia and the UK to facilitate our part in AUKUS," Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said after meeting with his British and U.S. counterparts in London on Thursday.

Marles emphasized that both countries would operate the same class of submarines, requiring close industrial cooperation, technology transfer, and other key processes, all of which will be covered under the treaty.

British Defence Secretary John Healey added that the AUKUS defence ministers had also agreed to equip British-made Stingray torpedoes on P-8A Maritime Patrol Aircraft, which are utilized for submarine hunting in the Indo-Pacific region.

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin highlighted the progress made by AUKUS partners, noting that significant experiments had been conducted across various domains—land, sea, and electromagnetic spectrum—to enhance warfighting capabilities under AUKUS’s "Pillar Two" cooperation.

In a joint statement, the AUKUS partners announced plans to further strengthen their offensive and defensive hypersonic technologies and conduct a large-scale drone exercise later this year. Photo by BAE Systems, Wikimedia commons.