US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin did not comment on the hypothetical possibility of deploying US hypersonic weapons on the territory of Australia or Japan.
At a news conference in Darwin, the Pentagon chief was asked if the United States could commit to deploying hypersonic weapons in Australia or Japan in the future.
“To date we have no announcements about hypersonic weapons.” — said the minister responding to journalists’ questions after negotiations with his Australian and Japanese colleagues.
He also stressed that the United States will do everything in its power to implement the agreement within the framework of the American-British-Australian alliance AUKUS. Thus, the American authorities promised to supply Canberra with three Virginia-class nuclear submarines: two dismantled by the American Navy (in 2032 and 2035) and one new one, built specifically for the Australian fleet (in 2038), TASS reports.
As a reminder, AUKUS is a security partnership between the governments of Australia, the UK and the US, established in September 2021 to implement various joint defense initiatives in two areas, called components. The first of these involves providing Australia with a fleet of nuclear attack submarines. The second is related to the joint development of military capabilities in eight areas, including underwater systems, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, cybersecurity and electronic warfare, hypersonic aircraft and their interceptors, as well as innovation and information sharing technologies.
The members of this alliance admit that it can be expanded to include partners and like-minded people, including in the Indo-Pacific region, so Russia and China express their concern and ask AUKUS members to strictly comply with their obligations in non-Western countries. proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
