By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked security ally Australia to increase defence spending in a meeting with Defence Minister Richard Marles on Friday in Singapore.
The defence chiefs also discussed the need to significantly lift U.S. submarine production rates to meet AUKUS targets.
Australia is scheduled to pay the United States $2 billion by the end of 2025 to assist its submarine shipyards, in order to buy three Virginia-class submarines starting in 2032 — its biggest ever defence project.
The defence ministers meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum, is only the second between the security allies since the Trump Administration took office.
Hegseth had “respectfully” said Australia should increase defence spending, Marles said in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television interview after the meeting.
“Clearly we have increased defence spending significantly and that is acknowledged, but we want to be making sure we are calibrating our defence spending to the strategic moment that we need to meet,” he said.
“We are very much up for the conversation, and the American position has been clear,” he added.
Marles said they did not discuss a number, although a Pentagon official had previously said Australia should spend 3% of gross domestic product.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who was re-elected this month and is yet to meet U.S. President Donald Trump, did not raise defence spending in this year’s national budget, saying his government had already announced a A$50 billion boost over a decade. Albanese said on Thursday defence spending would rise to 2.4%.
“In a rational world defence spending is a function of strategic threat – there is definitely strategic threat in the world today and we are rational people,” Marles said.
The AUKUS submarine partnership and working together to provide stability in the Indo-Pacific were also discussed, Marles said.
“AUKUS is happening and we talked about the need to maintain the momentum,” he said. “We want to be seeing a significant increase in the production and sustainment rate, the availability of Virginia class submarines for the United States fleet.”
U.S. production of Virginia class attack submarines has fallen behind U.S. Navy targets, and concern has been raised in Washington over selling used submarines to Australia under AUKUS if this reduces the fleet size.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry)
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