The U.S. and Australia announced new agreements on basing and building weapons together Tuesday, part of an attempt to cement the Biden administrationâs strategy in the region.
The first initiative will increase Americaâs access to bases on Australiaâs western and northern coasts. The U.S. has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on military construction there in recent years, in part because of the areaâs proximity to the South China Sea, where Beijing has lately grown more aggressive.
Going forward, the U.S. will now be able to work at Royal Australian Air Force Base Learmonth, on Australiaâs western shores, and will also expand its construction work on Scherger and Curtin, two other bases on different ends of the northern coast, according to the Pentagon.
âAll of this will mean more a maritime patrol aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft operating from bases across northern Australia,â American Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at a Tuesday press conference.
The two countries will also work to build, sustain and develop weapons more closely together. Most of these will be munitions: either the guided multiple launch rocket system, or GMLRS, or the precision strike missile, known as PrSM.
By December, the two countries will finish plans to assemble the first munition and produce and sustain the second together. To coordinate the work, the U.S. will open a new joint programs office in Huntsville, Alabama, next year.
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The two efforts were unveiled following an annual meeting of the countriesâ top defense and diplomatic officials at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
All of this work is riding the coattails of AUKUS, an agreement inked three years ago between the U.S., U.K. and Australia to share nuclear-powered submarines and develop high-tech weapons. That pact has helped loosen each countryâs regulations on sharing such technology, particularly tight American restrictions that have long frustrated U.S. allies.
American defense officials described the Australia meeting as the final leg in a race to make their work in Asia more enduring. Austin traveled last week to Japan and the Philippines, where he held similar meetings with his counterparts there. The Annapolis summit would be the end of what a senior U.S. defense official labeled, with a flourish, the â10 most consequential days for U.S. defense ties in the region since the start of the administration.â
âThe Biden administration has done a lot to deepen and expandâ its alliances, said Eric Sayers, who studies the region at the American Enterprise Institute. âThe work now is less on building and more on implementing.â
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In the shadow of these meetings, of course, is how long either country has to implement the plans. Americaâs election in November could make Washingtonâs foreign policy more transactional if Donald Trump returns to the White House. And Australiaâs own elections next September could end in a hung parliament, perhaps empowering parties that are more skeptical of the alliance with America, said Rory Medcalf, an Australian defense analyst.
That said, Washington and Canberra have long been close, despite political change. While Pentagon officials have a nickname for each of their partners in the region, itâs telling that Austin calls U.S.-Australia ties âthe unbreakable alliance.â
And the motivating force behind their recent cooperation â a more aggressive and powerful China â isnât likely to change anytime soon.
âI believe thereâs a clear direction of travel for the Australian-American relationship,â said Charles Edel, the Australia chair at CSIS. âThe question increasingly is the speed of delivery.â
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelorâs degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
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