WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The nominee to be the Pentagon’s senior official for the Indo-Pacific region said on Tuesday the U.S. Defense Department was continuing to conduct a review of the AUKUS project to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.
John Noh, currently serving at the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary for East Asia, has been nominated to be assistant secretary. He said that U.S. submarine production needs to rise from 1.2 Virginia-class submarines a year to 2.33 annually to meet AUKUS obligations.
He said there were things the AUKUS partners – the U.S., Australia and the United Kingdom – can do to make AUKUS more sustainable and be believed Pentagon Under Secretary Elbridge Colby and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would have the opportunity to discuss specific recommendations on this.
When asked by Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen why the review, which began in July, was taking so long, Noh reiterated past Pentagon statements that the department planned to conclude it “by this fall.”
Noh noted that both Australia and the United Kingdom had conducted reviews. Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate committee, said the U.S. review had come “as a surprise to this committee, to the Congress and to the general public, and as a distressing surprise to our steadfast ally, Australia.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed confidence last month that AUKUS, the biggest defense initiative in Australia history will move forward. He is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump on Oct. 20 in Washington, with the project likely to top his agenda.
Under AUKUS, the U.S, will sell several Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra, while Britain and Australia will later build a new AUKUS-class submarine.
The Pentagon review is being led by Colby, who said last year that submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and U.S. industry could not produce enough to meet American demand.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Idrees Ali; Editing by David Gregorio)
