US, Australia announce additional basing and weapons plans

The U.S. and Australia announced new agreements on basing and building weapons together Tuesday, part of an attempt to cement the Biden administration’s strategy in the region.

The first initiative will increase America’s access to bases on Australia’s western and northern coasts. The U.S. has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on military construction there in recent years, in part because of the area’s proximity to the South China Sea, where Beijing has lately grown more aggressive.

Going forward, the U.S. will now be able to work at Royal Australian Air Force Base Learmonth, on Australia’s western shores, and will also expand its construction work on Scherger and Curtin, two other bases on different ends of the northern coast, according to the Pentagon.

“All of this will mean more a maritime patrol aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft operating from bases across northern Australia,” American Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at a Tuesday press conference.

The two countries will also work to build, sustain and develop weapons more closely together. Most of these will be munitions: either the guided multiple launch rocket system, or GMLRS, or the precision strike missile, known as PrSM.

By December, the two countries will finish plans to assemble the first munition and produce and sustain the second together. To coordinate the work, the U.S. will open a new joint programs office in Huntsville, Alabama, next year.

Australia unveils record $37 billion defense budget

The two efforts were unveiled following an annual meeting of the countries’ top defense and diplomatic officials at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

All of this work is riding the coattails of AUKUS, an agreement inked three years ago between the U.S., U.K. and Australia to share nuclear-powered submarines and develop high-tech weapons. That pact has helped loosen each country’s regulations on sharing such technology, particularly tight American restrictions that have long frustrated U.S. allies.

American defense officials described the Australia meeting as the final leg in a race to make their work in Asia more enduring. Austin traveled last week to Japan and the Philippines, where he held similar meetings with his counterparts there. The Annapolis summit would be the end of what a senior U.S. defense official labeled, with a flourish, the “10 most consequential days for U.S. defense ties in the region since the start of the administration.”

“The Biden administration has done a lot to deepen and expand” its alliances, said Eric Sayers, who studies the region at the American Enterprise Institute. “The work now is less on building and more on implementing.”

Australia fast-tracks its hunt for replacement frigates

In the shadow of these meetings, of course, is how long either country has to implement the plans. America’s election in November could make Washington’s foreign policy more transactional if Donald Trump returns to the White House. And Australia’s own elections next September could end in a hung parliament, perhaps empowering parties that are more skeptical of the alliance with America, said Rory Medcalf, an Australian defense analyst.

That said, Washington and Canberra have long been close, despite political change. While Pentagon officials have a nickname for each of their partners in the region, it’s telling that Austin calls U.S.-Australia ties “the unbreakable alliance.”

And the motivating force behind their recent cooperation — a more aggressive and powerful China — isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

“I believe there’s a clear direction of travel for the Australian-American relationship,” said Charles Edel, the Australia chair at CSIS . “The question increasingly is the speed of delivery.”