US politicians who have championed AUKUS have stepped up lobbying efforts with the Trump administration, saying the defence technology pact is “critical” to deterring “Chinese aggression” and urging the White House not to dump it.
The Trump administration said earlier this month it would conduct a 30-day review of AUKUS, with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth telling Congress last week his department would “make sure it fits the priorities of the president and that our defence and shipbuilding industrial base can support.”
The federal government has played down the impact of the review, saying it was confident the White House would continue to endorse the initiative.
Five US congressmen who sit on multiple influential house defence committees have now written to the defense secretary to declare their support for AUKUS, saying it was a “critical mission” to “deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.”
US wants Australia to step up
The senior Pentagon official conducting the review, Elbridge Colby, has previously said the US will only be able to sell at least three Virginia-class nuclear submarines to Australia under AUKUS if it succeeds in rapidly lifting its rate of submarine production.
Australia has committed $3 billion to help bolster America’s submarine industrial base under AUKUS.
The five congressmen — including Republican and House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers as well as Democrats Joe Courtney and Adam Smith — said in their letter that they were “confident in our ability to meet both US fleet requirements and our AUKUS commitments.”
The politicians said additional funding commitments from Congress, on top of Australia’s payments, have allowed US shipyards to ramp up steel fabrication and increase construction pace.
“Shipbuilders delivered two attack submarines in 2024 (USS New Jersey and USS Iowa), with two more slated for delivery in 2025 (USS Massachusetts and USS Idaho), and another two in 2026,” they wrote.
They argued that increasing capacity would “open a pathway to selling the Virginia-class submarines to Australia in 2032, 2035, and 2038”, as planned.
The congressmen also talked up progress on skills, saying “over 120″ Australian sailors and officers were currently completing joint nuclear submarine training, with other Australian sailors already joint-crewing US Virginia-class submarines.”
Marles ‘confident’ Australia can deliver
The letter comes as AUKUS supporters in both the Senate and Congress — as well as Australian officials — intensify efforts to reassure senior Trump administration officials that it should stand.
Late last week, Democrat Senator Tim Kaine and Republican Senator Pete Ricketts introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at strengthening AUKUS by “streamlining defence industrial base collaboration” and exempting Australia and the UK from congressional notification for overseas manufacturing.
Defence Minister Richard Marles discussed AUKUS during talks with his UK counterpart John Healy in London ahead of his visit to the NATO meeting in the Hague.
He again said the review was a “perfectly natural step” for the Trump administration to take and expressed confidence in AUKUS, although he said he would not speculate on its outcome.
Mr Marles also acknowledged that developing enough highly trained submariners, engineers, and specialists would be crucial to the success of AUKUS in Australia.
“We are confident that we can get this right, but we’re not sanguine about it,” he said.