U.S. and Australia Discuss Defense Progress

In advance of tomorrow's 34th Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met at the Pentagon with Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles to discuss the historic military-to-military progress between the two nations. 

"We share with Australia a vision for a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific," Austin said. "Together, our unbreakable alliance is helping to make that vision a reality. We're delivering on major force posture initiatives, deepening our defense industrial cooperation and expanding efforts with our regional allies and partners." 

Included in those efforts, Austin said, is the historic trilateral Australia, U.K. and U.S. partnership, called AUKUS. The partnership, announced in September 2021, involves two pillars.

The secretary acknowledged his counterpart as a driving force behind the momentum and progress of the partnership between the U.S. and Australia. 

Since Austin has been the U.S. secretary of defense, Marles said, the partnership between the two nations has grown significantly. 

"So much has happened over the last few years," Marles said. "You mentioned AUKUS, which is transforming Australia's military capability. That can't happen but for the partnership that we have. We're seeing America's force posture in Australia grow really significantly, AUKUS is part of that, but it's not the only part of that. The marine rotation in Darwin is growing across all the domains. We're now seeing more activities, which has been really fantastic. We are doing more industrially and the breakthrough legislation that went through the Congress at the end of last year in terms of defense export controls is again a transformational change in terms of our relationship." 

Washington and Canberra are close allies, cooperating most notably on counterbalancing China, which is playing an increasingly assertive role in the Pacific region.