The United States, United Kingdom, and Australia have announced a new underwater drone technology development project under their military AUKUS alliance, marking the first major signature project under the pact’s Pillar Two of advanced capabilities.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore on May 30, 2026, the defence ministers of all three nations confirmed uncrewed undersea vehicle (UUV) technology expected to be operational by next year. UK Defence Secretary John Healey said Britain would contribute £150 million to the programme.
The announcement was a direct response to mounting criticism that AUKUS—the trilateral defence pact launched in 2021—had been too slow to deliver. “For too long in AUKUS, we talked too much and delivered too little,” Healey said. “That has now changed.”
The UUVs would carry cutting-edge payloads and enabling systems capable of protecting seabed infrastructure such as undersea communication cables and energy pipelines, conducting strikes, and carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance operations across the Indo-Pacific region.
Healey also confirmed that sensors and weapons systems would be developed for the drones, which he said would ‘rapidly give our forces advanced battle technologies,’ including capability to counter threats to underwater cables and pipelines. He noted the programme would strengthen deterrence in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic waters.
The project comes against a backdrop of increasing concern over undersea infrastructure vulnerabilities. British officials report a 30% rise in Russian vessels spotted in UK waters over the past years, and there have been multiple reports of undersea cables damaged in the Baltic Sea and in waters surrounding Taiwan.
Alongside the drone announcement, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to its Asia-Pacific allies while pushing them to increase defence spending. He set a target of 3.5% of GDP for allied military budgets, praising South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines for recent defence cooperation with Washington, while calling New Zealand a ‘freeloader.’
The AUKUS partnership remains widely viewed as a strategy to counter China’s growing maritime presence in the Indo-Pacific. China has declined to send its defence minister to the Shangri-La Dialogue for the second consecutive year, while Japan’s Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi strongly rebuffed Beijing’s repeated accusations of ‘new militarism’ during his speech at the summit earlier the same day.