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Australia and the United States are on track to hit their defence production goals under a collective defence strategy, according to recent comments from US Under Secretary of War Elbridge A Colby.
Colby, who serves as the principal adviser to the secretary of war on matters of defence and foreign policy, made the comments during an Asia-Pacific media briefing on Thursday, 13 August.
The US official was quizzed by Australian media on his assessment of Virginia Class submarine production and whether the US was on track to permit the sale of three submarines to Australia in the 2030s. Virginia Class submarine production is reportedly only 1.2 boats per year at the moment.
“On the first, we’re very pleased to say that AUKUS is, as the president said, full steam ahead. And we have a very tight discussion and a very clear understanding between the Pentagon and the broader administration and the Australian government, and we’ve been very pleased with the progress that has been made since the conclusion of the AUKUS review, which has, basically, I think, provided a roadmap for the success of the AUKUS program,” Colby said.
“We all know this is a historic endeavour on the part of both countries, but particularly for Australia, and that requires a real sort of level of effort that we see the evidence for. And so we remain optimistic but also clear-eyed about what we all need to do to achieve that. We, in the Pentagon, are very focused on submarine production, submarine maintenance, and making sure that that’s in as strong a place it can be.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of things that the Australian side needs to do. We have been pleased with progress on SRF-West, which is tremendously important and is one of the key values that benefit not just the United States but Australia itself, because I think one of the things that we’ve been impressed with our close ally, no better ally, Australia, is that Australia really sees things through the lens of collective defence and a strategy of deterrence by denial designed to sustain a balance of power in this key region.
“So we see a deep alignment of thinking and we see an energy and a focus more and more on the Australian side that we’re optimistic. And we’ll just keep knocking down the targets on our side, and we have every expectation the Australian side will do the same. They know what is required. We’ve been very clear in private with them, designed to give everybody a reasonable, stable and realistic set of expectations to achieve this historic ambition that will put us all in a stronger place, and we’re hopeful that that will continue.”
In addition, Colby addressed recent speculation that the US is developing a new nuclear strategy with greater emphasis on short-range, low-yield tactical nuclear weapons to deter China and Russia.
“Well, this is pre-decisional … We’re still undertaking the review, which is a relatively narrow review. It’s not a full nuclear posture review. It’s more related to kind of the particular potential employment, God forbid, of nuclear weapons. Obviously, the goal here, I stress, is to maintain deterrence and stability rather than to exacerbate it,” Colby said during the media briefing.
“One thing I would like to specifically clarify is that we are not seeking to accentuate or increase the focus on theatre-range nuclear weapons. There is a little bit of, I think, an error in the reporting that we’re focused on that. It’s not an exclusion of theatre-range systems, but I would just kind of like to clarify that because that has more to do with the range and the launch – potential launch location of a nuclear weapon. Our view is that the more important elements about nuclear weapons, God forbid they were ever used, again, would be crossing of the nuclear threshold itself as well as the effect it might have.
“The main thing, as I stressed, is really to make sure that – and again, this is the whole – and if you’re interested, I also gave some remarks at the National War College in May laying this out. And this is very, obviously very consistent with our National Defense Strategy and what Secretary Hegseth said in multiple different venues, is to make sure that our military strategy, including our nuclear strategy, backing up our overall strategy, which is designed for favourable balances of power and stability, is a rational one in which the potential employment of military force at great scale, including nuclear weapons, would be rational and correlated with the interests at stake for the United States of America.
“And this, of course, this has multiple ramifications, obviously our focus on denial. Denial, let me stress, at the conventional or nuclear level, is status quo-oriented. It’s designed to defend the territorial integrity of our allies and partners. It’s not designed to go regime change. The US military used to be sized and shaped to conduct regime change operations. That’s not what we’re sizing and shaping. We’re shaping for a defensive function of denial. It’s also one of the key reasons why we’re pushing so much on burden sharing, is that we recognise that our allies and partners, including places like South Korea, Germany, Japan, Australia, Poland, these are very wealthy countries that can and are prepared to do more. And that will also make the military problem, particularly in the context of potential multiple concurrent scenarios, much more – we’ll have an alliance-wide military and defence strategy that’s more viable and sustainable, and that will make the whole thing more sustainable and ultimately be better postured to deter conflict.
“So that’s really the logic. I have no kind of statements to make about a change in our nuclear strategy at this time. We don’t anticipate radical changes. Really what we’re looking at is making sure that the nuclear strategy, just as the conventional strategy that we have, is fit for purpose for the time and the strategic context in which we find ourselves.”
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