WASHINGTON — What US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the “unbreakable alliance” between the United States and Australia is drawing ever closer as the two announced today a series of joint initiatives including new “operating locations,” more frequent troop rotations and the formalization of plans to coproduce two key, long-range missile systems.
“Together these efforts will help ensure that we have the capability and the capacity that we’ll need for decades to come,” Austin said today at a press conference for the 34th Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), flanked by Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong. “The United States, Australia and our other friends in the region are operating more closely and more capably than ever before.”
Austin said Washington and Canberra were “doubling down” on defense industrial cooperation and are working to finalize, by December, two memorandums of understanding: The first would formalize the plan to manufacture Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMRLS) in Australia by 2025, an initiative first agreed to in 2023.
The second would “advance” the “co-production, co-sustainment and co-development” of the Precision Guided Strike missile known as PrSM. The US and Australia had agreed to jointly work on PrSM as far back as 2021. To push ahead, officials will establish a “joint programs office” in Huntsville, Ala., a senior US defense official told reporters ahead of today’s announcement.
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“We have seen today groundbreaking discussions in respect of a much greater collaboration between our defense industry bases, particular in respect of the manufacture of guided weapons in Australia,” Marles said.
The senior US official also told reporters that the two sides are “working collaboratively on cutting edge hypersonic technologies that will provide critical advantage to the warfighter,” adding there has been “significant progress” in design and ground testing under the joint Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE) initiative. Marles separately noted plans to develop a memorandum of understanding between the US Defense Innovation Unit and its counterpart in Australia, the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator.
In Australia, Canberra has agreed to “new and longer-term operating locations” for “force posture cooperation,” the official said.
“We’re also expanding our logistics cooperation by assessing places where we could locate an enduring logistics support area in Queensland, Australia,” the official said.
Austin said there would be an increase in rotational forces, to include more maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft and more frequent rotational bomber deployments.
Marles said that put together, those kinds of moves are “greatly going to enhance the United States’s ability to operate in Australia.”
“The presence of American force posture in our nation provides an opportunity to work with our neighbors in the region,” he said, adding it also allows for a “much greater range of activities and operations and exercises.”
Earlier, the senior US defense official noted that beyond bilateral projects, the US and Australia are working together to boost intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities in the Indo-Pacific by working more closely with Japan. Austin and Marles also cited the importance of working with regional partners like India and the Philippines.
The official said the bilateral AUSMIN talks would not focus on the AUKUS security arrangement, as that’s a trilateral agreement with the UK, but during the press conference, Austin name-checked the pact, saying there has also been “outstanding progress” on that front.
“So we got a lot done today,” Austin said. “We’ll keep building on our joint achievements over the past three and a half years [since the first AUSMIN], and we’ll keep charting an ambitious course forward.”
UPDATED 7:30 p.m. ET to add comments from Austin and Marles, and to clarify that the proposed joint program office is expected to work on PrSM, not hypersonics as the original report suggested.