State Department Begins Public Outreach Effort for AUKUS

The State Department recently launched an informal, voluntary network for the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) security partnership to share information with stakeholders who are outside the traditional defense industry, an agency official said June 21.

The AUKUS Partnership Network will allow the department to engage with a wide range of groups, including venture capitalists, small and medium-sized businesses, academia and think tanks, said Matthew Steinhelfer, the department’s AUKUS senior adviser.

The State Department’s “job is to talk to people, reach out to audiences, listen and bring that back into the conversation, so we’ll be focusing on doing a lot more of that outreach,” Steinhelfer said at a Center for a New American Security event.

Steinhelfer’s remarks came as the department works to finalize a rule to exempt Australia and the U.K. from the International Traffic in Arms Regulations under the AUKUS partnership. Public comments on the proposed rule were due May 31 (see 2404300050). Among those submitting comments was the Aerospace Industries Association, which said the rule is too restrictive and should be revised to remove barriers to defense trade among the three countries (see 2406030056).

While AUKUS Pillar I is intended to provide conventionally armed, nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, Pillar II "is the open field that's just as broad as we might imagine," said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. "Collaboration on exquisite technologies -- hypersonics, quantum computing, unmanned undersea technologies, artificial intelligence -- just gives us such an opportunity. It's exciting to think about how much there is to really enhance each other's capabilities."

As part of Pillar II, AUKUS partners have begun demonstrating AI and machine learning algorithms as well as the ability to launch and recover uncrewed undersea vehicles, said Madeline Mortelmans, the Defense Department's acting assistant secretary for strategies, plans and capabilities. Over the next year, “we’ll identify new opportunities to increase our collective collaboration," Mortelmans said. The partners also will launch a trilateral maritime experiment with autonomous systems “from the sea floor to the stratosphere."

Although next month's U.K. general election is expected to usher in a new government, Trevor Taylor, director of the Defence, Industries & Society Programme at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said he expects the country will remain supportive of AUKUS.

“I don’t think that the impact of the election will be great,” Taylor said. The new government “will do a review and I think a lot of it will be continuing with where we are now.”