President Donald Trump clearly approved of the trilateral AUKUS agreement Monday and even indicated the U.S. would expedite the sale and delivery of three to five nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Trump’s remarks came as he appeared next to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sign a bilateral agreement on critical mineral mining.
When Trump was asked if the AUKUS submarine sales deal is still viable given submarine production issues, he responded “we do actually have a lot of submarines, we have the best submarines anywhere in the world and we’re building a few more currently under construction.”
“And now we’re starting – we have it all set with Anthony – We’ve worked on this long and hard and we’re starting that process right now, and I think it’s moving along very rapidly, very well,” Trump added.
This meeting came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday passed the AUKUS Improvement Act of 2025, first introduced in June by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), which would provide exemptions to Australia and the United Kingdom from needing Congressional approval for overseas manufacturing and the sale and exchange of defense items.
When asked if the administration would expedite the plan to sell three to five Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) to Australia, set to occur in the 2030s, Trump said, “We are doing that, yeah. We have them moving very, very quickly.”
Asked by Trump to comment during the event, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan alluded to the current Defense Department review of AUKUS, spearheaded by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby over the summer.
Phelan said, “I think what we’re trying to do is take the original AUKUS framework and improve it for all three parties and make it better and clarify some ambiguity that was in the prior agreements. So it should be a win-win for everybody.”
When asked by reporters about Phelan’s notes on previous AUKUS ambiguities, Trump said the Navy secretary would take care of those details.
Trump also expressed some confidence in Australia’s overall defense investments. “Well, I’d always like more, but they have to do what they have to do. You know, you can only do so much. I think they’ve been great,” he said.
A fact sheet released by the White House concurrent with Monday’s event noted beyond critical mineral issues, the two countries are deepening defense cooperation.
Earlier in the month during his confirmation hearing, John Noh, nominated to be assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, said as findings of the review come out he believed Colby and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will make specific recommendations to strengthen Pillar 1 and “make it more sustainable.”
AUKUS Pillar 1 is focused on boosting Australia’s submarine maintenance and production facilities, including the future U.S. SSN sales and eventual Australian production of SSN-AUKUS boats starting in the 2040s, while Pillar 2 focuses on non-submarine defense technology cooperation.
The U.S. attack submarine production rate currently hovers around 1.2 boats per year against a Navy demand for two per year. If the Navy hopes to make up for the sale of at least three Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s, that rate has to increase consistently to 2.33 submarines per year.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle previously told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) that the U.S. submarine industrial base needs to go through a fully transformational improvement in production capacity to meet all of these needs.
During his confirmation, Noh said these are the issues DoD is looking into under the AUKUS review as well as if it is properly funded.
During that hearing, SASC Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) added the AUKUS review itself was a surprise to the committee and Congress as a whole as well as a “distressing surprise to our steadfast ally, Australia.”
Previously, during his March confirmation hearing, Colby warned that if the U.S. cannot produce attack submarines in sufficient numbers and speed that would become a very difficult problem so he has told the British and Australians and that he thinks “it should be the policy of the United States Government to do everything we can to make this work.”
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this article.