Biden, Sunak and Albanese announce nuclear-powered submarine plan for Australia

The United States, Australia and Britain on Monday announced the plan of providing Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines, a major step towards countering the ambitions of China in the Indo-Pacific.

In a joint statement, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the plan for the AUKUS project at the US naval base in San Diego, California.

At the ceremony, PM Albanese said that the purchase of US nuclear-powered submarines and the target of constructing its own vessels marks the "biggest" investment ever made in the defence sector in the history of the country.

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The deal with the United States and Britain is "the biggest single investment in Australia's defence capability in all of our history," he said in San Diego, California, alongside British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden.

The Prime Minister made the statement as Australia entered the deal with the US and Britain, according to which it will be purchasing five US nuclear-powered submarines and will later work on building a new model with British and US technology as part of an ambitious plan.

US President Biden was hosting his British and Australian counterparts, Prime Minister Albanese and Prime Minister Sunak, on a US naval base in San Diego, California for announcing the plan.

Biden emphasised that the submarines would not be nuclear armed and only nuclear-powered. "These boats will not have nuclear weapons of any kind on them," he stated.

In the late 2030s, Britain will receive delivery of its first SSN-AUKUS submarine, and Australia would take its first delivery in the early 2040s, stated Albanese and the British statement.

The vessels will be built by Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, said the British statement.

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Meanwhile, National security advisor of Biden, Jake Sullivan, said that the submarine plan illustrated the long-term commitment of Washington to guard "peace and stability" in the Asia-Pacific region.

US' partnership with Australia, which includes exchanging secret nuclear technology which was previously shared only withBritain, is "a decades-long, maybe a century-long commitment," said Sullivan.

Three nuclear-powered, conventionally armed Virginia class vessels will be sold "over the course of the 2030s," with the "possibility of going up to five if that is needed," Sullivan added.

The new model, which is nuclear-powered and carries conventional weapons, is a long-term project and will be dubbed the SSN-AUKUS, he stated.

It will be constructed using US technology and with the base of a British design, and "significant investments in all three industrial bases," said Sullivan.

(With inputs from agencies)

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