MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th November, 2022) Australia has set the course of its next defense strategy, which includes the development of nuclear-powered submarines to repel attacks far from the country's shores, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Tuesday.
"Increasingly, we are going to need to think about our Defence Force in terms of being able to provide the country with impactful projection, meaning an ability to hold an adversary at risk much further from our shores across the full spectrum of proportionate response," Marles said, delivering a speech at a university in Canberra, as quoted by the Australian Financial Review newspaper.
The minister also said that the new defense strategy relies on the establishment of a submarine fleet in cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom within the AUKUS trilateral partnership.
Australia, the US and the UK announced the AUKUS defense partnership in September 2021. The first initiative announced under the AUKUS pact was the development of nuclear-powered submarine technology for the Royal Australian Navy, which prompted the Australian government to abandon a $66 billion agreement with France's Naval Group company for the construction of diesel-electric submarines.
