Defense Minister Richard Marles said allies were working “at pace” to ensure the security agreement became a reality.

Australia will provide 4.6 billion Australian dollars (US$3 billion) to British industry to support and ensure the construction of nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement with the United Kingdom and the United States. that his new ships arrive on time.

Senior officials from Britain and Australia, as well as the US ambassador to Australia, visited the naval shipyard where the submarines are being built in the South Australian city of Adelaide on Friday.

“The three governments involved here are working diligently to make this happen,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told reporters at the Osborne shipyard, where he was joined by his British counterpart Grant Shapps and the foreign ministers of both countries.

“This is going to happen and we need it.”

Shapps said the submarine program was expensive but necessary.

“Nuclear-powered submarines are not cheap, but we live in a much more dangerous world where we see a much more assertive region with China, a much more dangerous world all around with what’s happening in the Middle East and Europe,” Shapps said Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The announcement came a day after Australia and the United Kingdom signed a defense pact to better address security challenges such as China’s increased activities in the South China Sea and the Pacific.

Australia, Great Britain and the USA initially announced this AUKUS trilateral security alliance in 2021 and revealed more details how Australia would acquire the nuclear submarines a year ago.

The 10-year plan will increase the capacity of Britain’s Rolls-Royce factory in Derby, where the nuclear reactors for the ships will be built, while the submarines themselves will be built by BAE Systems in Adelaide, the state capital of South Australia.

The Virginia-class submarines will be primarily British-built, but will have a US weapons system on board.

Australia hopes to have eight nuclear-powered ships in the water by the 2050s, a mix of the new AUKUS-class submarines being built domestically and in the United Kingdom, and Virginia-class ships being built in the USA were purchased.

Marles said a “drumbeat” of AUKUS-class submarines would then roll off Australian production lines “every few years” in perpetuity.

“There is no country in the world that received the capability to build nuclear submarines and then shut down that capability,” he said.

“We will see that submarines will be produced here permanently.”

The nuclear submarines will be quieter and more stealthy than Australia’s existing diesel fleet and will be able to operate over long distances without surfacing.

China has claimed that the AUKUS deal could trigger an arms race in the Asia-Pacific region.

Beijing has intensified its own military activities in recent years and modernized and expanded its armed forces, including its navy.

The country has also become more assertive in its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea, where it has built artificial islands and reefs and deployed its coast guard Maritime militia. The sea is also claimed in whole or in part by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, and Beijing has ignored a 2016 ruling by an international court asserting its claim to the sea no legal basis.

Beijing has also become more assertive about its claim to the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan.

On Friday, authorities in Taiwan said they had spotted 36 Chinese military aircraft around the island in the past 24 hours, the highest number in 2024.