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Pentagon launches review of Aukus nuclear submarine deal

​Ending pact would be blow to security alliance with Australia and UK


The Pentagon has launched a review of the 2021 Aukus submarine deal with the UK and Australia, throwing the security pact into doubt at a time of heightened tension with China.

The review to determine whether the US should scrap the project is being led by Elbridge Colby, a top defence department official who previously expressed scepticism about Aukus, according to six people familiar with the matter.

Ending the submarine and advanced technology development agreement would destroy a pillar of security co-operation between the allies. The review has triggered anxiety in London and Canberra.

https://www.ft.com/content/4a9355d9-4aff-49ec-bf7e-ea21de97917b

Could become aukward.

Pentagon launches review of Aukus nuclear submarine deal

​Ending pact would be blow to security alliance with Australia and UK


The Pentagon has launched a review of the 2021 Aukus submarine deal with the UK and Australia, throwing the security pact into doubt at a time of heightened tension with China.

The review to determine whether the US should scrap the project is being led by Elbridge Colby, a top defence department official who previously expressed scepticism about Aukus, according to six people familiar with the matter.

Ending the submarine and advanced technology development agreement would destroy a pillar of security co-operation between the allies. The review has triggered anxiety in London and Canberra.

https://www.ft.com/content/4a9355d9-4aff-49ec-bf7e-ea21de97917b

If Trump's minions kill AUKUS that will do catastrophic damage to relations with Aus and the UK. I wish I could believe Trump isn't that stupid, but he very much is.

On the bright side it would be a significant opportunity for the UK to sell SSNs (or at least designs and reactors) to selected allies if the US decides they're uninterested in doing that.

AUKUS was a branchild of the last administration, therefore it must be bad. It's oppositionalism at it's worse.

There's an extraordinary blindness to the fact that the US gets its gear cheaper, because the cost of development is subsidised by the British, the Japanese and a host of other nations, while the US gets first dibs, and (ulimately) control.

But if you cease to be a reliable partner, then who will buy your defence exports? Who wants to be dependent on a country that doesn't seem interested in keeping its commitments?

Which in turn means that the US will need to spend more money to be in the same position.

European defence companies have been handed the most extraordinary lifeline by the US.

Roads not mentioned by Reeves - literally not one single word.

Given the huge sums of capital investment announced, you would have thought roads (you know, the way most journeys are done) would get something.

Just astonishing that nothing said about going ahead with the A66 - the most obvious, big, important project ready to go.

And of course it's in the north - which Labour is meant to be favouring for investment.

Even Tim Farron (of the usually anti-roads Lib Dems) is very unhappy (of course it would benefit his own constituency!).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9q0zl0j73po

So nothing about duelling the A1 to Scotland either?

That's already been cancelled.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdxvppgjj0o

£68 million already spent on the project without it even being started.

WTF!?

There's an issue with these projects. They're not just planned by an ignoramus crayoning lines onto a map. Potential routes need surveying; geological, environmental, archeological and flora and fauna data all needs to go into the decision of which route to take. And if you want prices anywhere near accurate, you don't just say: "We'll put a concrete beam bridge over that stream"; you say: "Actually, the ground there is mud and peat down to twenty feet. We'll need piles down to the bedrock, and because the area often flash floods, we'll put in culverts either side to relieve floodwaters. Oh, and one can be used for an access track for a farmer, meaning we don't need to build that occupation bridge over there. We'll spend £5 million on the culverts, but save £8 million on not building the occupation bridge. Lifetime maintenance costs should also be lower for the culverts, and electrification clearances are not relevant."

This is outline, not detailed design, but until such decisions are made, costs are incredibly vague. This early work saves vast amounts of money later.

The surveys along cost money. Some work is being done on the EWR rail route near us, and some scrotes stole (from memory) over £200,000 of metal track that had been placed across fields to allow the surveys to occur. That's stuff needed just to support the surveys.

So the question becomes how much of these things do you do before detailed planning and construction starts: none, and have costs balloon during design and construction, or a large amount, and risk the money being lost if the project does not go ahead?

(And yes, there will be stupid costs in there, such as legal costs... )

Two lovely articles in today's Telegraph.


"Annabel Denham
I didn’t think we were heading for civil war. Now I’m not so sure
We are not there yet, but uncontrolled immigration means that our nation’s cohesion is fraying fast" (£)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/10/britain-could-be-heading-towards-civil-war-labour-reform-uk/


"Neil O'Brien
Britain is heading for utter oblivion. Here is why
From immigration and demographics to welfare and low productivity, we are facing terminal decline" (£)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/08/these-are-the-things-destroying-britain/

With such negative dross as this, the Telegraph has become part of the problem rather than looking for solutions. These and other commentators/politicians are incessantly talking the country, and its people, down. Depressing clickbait journalism.

WRT Reform, I commented a few days ago that almost everyone I befriended through the Conservative Party had joined them,

A big issue, over and above policy details, is that people like to be in at the start of something, rather than in at the end of it. If you join Reform, you're joining a party that's winning new seats, every week. If you've been an experienced activist, in another party, you'll be fast-tracked to fight council seats, Senedd seats, and on to the candidates' list.

As one put it to me, there's a buzz and excitement, that he hasn't known since he was a YC, in the late eighties. Not least, the fact that lots of young people are involved, which has not been true of the Conservatives for a long time.

If you join the Conservatives, you're joining an organisation that has a great future behind it.

It's like being a centre-left person, interested in a political career, in c.1925. Labour are the more attractive option than the Liberals.

A couple of comments from the article and the comments:

1) It is not at all clear to me that the economy is broken. As a GDP we remain 6th in the world. There are imbalances and problems but we remain as a country OK. GDP per capita is comparable with France and Germany. We are talking ourselves down. There are political and redistributist solutions to many of the messes.

The starting point for serious discussion should not be: 'We are a broken third world disaster zone'. We aren't.

2) I don't support Reform, on competence grounds and on then grounds of the company they keep. And some other reasons. But it is delusional to think that they plan to enter 2029 with a Trussplus manifesto. We have to wait and see but a certainty is that they will produce a centrist, socially conservative, gimmick filled, as costed as any other party, social democrat, high tax, high spend programme, reflecting very precisely the socially conservative welfarist opinions of the people of Clacton.

Those arguing that we're Argentina and need a Millei are just idiots wishing catastrophe on the country.

What need to be is Poland.

We need to think as if we are a growing, successful eastern European economy: That means when we spend we don’t try and pretend we’re the most powerful country in the world that can afford the best of everything. No, we buy the optimal £/outcome option & accept that it’s not cutting edge, nor will it be perfect in terms of environmental or other concerns: getting a good enough outcome quickly is more important than a more perfect outcome that arrives late& expensive.

That means spending much, much less on endless legal niceties (see HS2, the proposed Thames Crossing, Nuclear plants). It means spending much less on local customisation (see every MoD project ever, HS2, Nuclear plants, etc etc). It means buying cheap & working over buying expensive & might work sometime in the future.

We need a bunch of warships for the Navy? We buy them off-the-peg from South Korea or Japan. We need a new large nuclear plant? We buy a few of the ones South Korea is turning out at the rate of one every two or three years, with no customisations or changes. etc etc etc. We need a Thames Crossing? We do it, or we don’t, without faffing about for fifteen years racking up enormous legal bills. We need to electrify the rail network? We set an annual budget & just get on with it at a steady pace, instead of endless stop-start Treasury angst which just ends up delaying the project & tripling the cost. And so on & on & on.

The problem is that doing all of this cuts into the income & raison d’être of a whole swathe of special interests, both inside & outside government. All of whom have got very used to justifying their absolute necessity to every project this country ever undertakes.

There’s a weird double-think in this country that budgets are limited, but simultaneously we must only have the best. New projects end up enormously expensive, squeezing budgets for the maintenance of existing infrastructure & often ending up with the new project itself being cheese pared back in order to fit within what is financially viable.