US to help Australia develop guided missiles by 2025: Defence Secretary Austin
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong during the meeting for AUSMIN talks in Australia, on July 29.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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SYDNEY – The United States will help Australia produce guided multiple-launch rocket systems by 2025, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday, after the two nations’ top officials pledged to engage with China but also oppose it if needed.
Mr Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are in Queensland state for the annual Australia-US Ministerial (Ausmin) dialogue with their Australian counterparts.
“We are pursuing several mutually beneficial initiatives with Australia’s defence industry, and these include a commitment to help Australia produce guided multiple-launch rocket systems... by 2025,” Mr Austin told a press conference.
The US is also accelerating Australia’s access to priority munitions through a streamlined acquisition process, he said.
It is the first time Australia has hosted the high-level meeting since 2019, due to the Covid-19 disruption.
Australia’s Labor government has been bolstering military ties with the US, a longstanding ally, amid a military build-up in the region from a more assertive China.
“We are really pleased with the steps that we are taking in respect of establishing a guided weapons and explosive ordnance enterprise in this country,” Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said.
He expressed hope that missile manufacturing could begin in Australia in two years, as part of a collective industrial base between the two countries.
Mr Marles said there would be an “increased tempo of visits from American nuclear-powered submarines to our waters” as part of the bilateral engagement.
US Secretary of State Blinken said “chief” among Saturday’s high-profile talks with Australia was a shared commitment to a free and secure Indo-Pacific region.
“Our two countries are defending the international rules-based order, which has underwritten peace and security for decades,” he said.
“We’re doing that in part by engaging China, but also, as necessary, opposing its efforts to disrupt freedom of navigation and overflight in the South and East China seas, to upend the status quo that has preserved peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, to pressure countries through economic coercion or threats to their citizens.”
After the two-day talks that ended on Saturday, Mr Marles and Mr Austin were set to travel to north Queensland, where Australian and US military forces are taking part in the Talisman Sabre war games along with 11 other nations.
The war games, however, were put on hold after an Australian military helicopter participating in the exercises crashed into the ocean, with at least four people on board feared dead.
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Mr Blinken said China has assured the US repeatedly that it was not providing “material lethal assistance” to Russia for use in Ukraine.
“We take those assurances very seriously,” he said, adding that the US has shared concerns with Beijing about individual entities providing technology that could be used for drones and other kinds of weapons in Ukraine. REUTERS
