Australia is barrelling ahead with its AUKUS commitments at a pace unmatched by its partners, particularly the United Kingdom, raising serious questions about sovereignty, strategic wisdom, and whether the Albanese government is locking the nation into a military-industrial orbit before the full costs and consequences are known.
The announcement this week that Greenroom Robotics, an Australian maritime AI company, has received AUKUS “authorised user” status under Pillar II of the pact is only the latest data point in a trend that has so far attracted remarkably little scrutiny. While hailed in press releases as a breakthrough in fast-tracked alliance integration, the real story is how far and fast Australia is embedding itself into the defence architecture of the United States, before Phase 1 of AUKUS has even been fully reviewed by the US Congress.
By the numbers, Australia is leaping ahead. As of May 2025, 344 Australian companies had been approved for licence-free technology exchange under the AUKUS agreement. That’s more than three times the number of authorised users in the UK: a discrepancy UK Defence Procurement Minister Maria Eagle explained to Parliament by pointing out that Australia simply repurposed its existing Defence Trade Cooperation Treaty (DTCT) community. But the speed of this migration also signals something else: a political will in Canberra to accelerate Pillar II of AUKUS with far less hesitation than its counterparts in London or Washington.
That haste stands in stark contrast to the far more cautious and deliberative approach being taken by the US. The review of Phase 1 - the pillar concerning nuclear-powered submarines - by the US Department of Defense is still underway, led by none other than Elbridge Colby, a former Trump official who has openly questioned whether selling submarines to Australia might weaken US naval readiness. In other words, while the United States is pausing to consider whether AUKUS is in its own national interest, Australia is rushing to prove its utility before the ink on the original agreement has dried.
Meanwhile, the UK remains preoccupied with the herculean industrial challenges of submarine production. With BAE Systems facing immense delays, building Astute-class submarines at an average of 128 months each, it is unlikely Britain can produce a single SSN-AUKUS submarine before 2038. By contrast, Australia is charging ahead on industrial integration, technology transfer, and AI partnerships, seemingly in the belief that this will secure the country’s defence future.
But defence is not built on paperwork, press releases, or robotic widgets alone. It is about sovereignty, capability, and clear-eyed assessment of risk. And here, the rapid adoption of AUKUS Pillar II raises deep questions about whether Australia is being swept into an American technological ecosystem with limited understanding of long-term implications for its independence.
The eight research areas under Pillar II, ranging from hypersonics to quantum computing, are indeed areas of critical importance for modern warfare. But Australia’s enthusiasm to participate in every stream may risk strategic overextension. There is a qualitative difference between being an innovation partner and becoming a dependency node in a military supply chain controlled elsewhere.
The Albanese government has framed AUKUS as a ticket to sovereign capability. But as the Greenroom Robotics example shows, much of what is being fast-tracked under AUKUS are systems designed for interoperability with American platforms - technologies that will make Australian systems reliant on American architecture, updates, and approval. The more deeply integrated Australia becomes, the more difficult it will be to act autonomously in the future.
This is especially troubling given the unresolved status of Taiwan. Colby’s push to get allies to commit troops in advance of any Chinese aggression, while still reviewing the submarine deal, exposes the strategic imbalance of the pact. Australia may find itself asked to signal a military commitment in advance of actual capability delivery. Worse, it may find itself bound to decisions made in Washington rather than Canberra.
None of this is to argue that Australia should turn away from strategic partnerships. But there is a difference between cautious engagement and rushed alignment. As former DFAT Secretary Peter Varghese warned, “nuclear submarines distort both the cost and focus of the force structure Australia needs for the defence of the nation.” That warning is just as relevant to Pillar II, where vast political capital and administrative bandwidth are being poured into tech exports and integration agreements—rather than into robust sovereign defence planning.
At a time when the UK is still crawling through its submarine production bottlenecks and the US is questioning the entire arrangement, Canberra’s eager acceleration into AUKUS Pillar II looks more like a sprint to lock in dependence than a strategy for security.
Australia should not have to choose between alliance and autonomy. But it must demand a deliberative pace, one that recognises that sovereignty is eroded not only through military subservience, but also through technological capture and bureaucratic momentum. The future of Australian defence must be built not at the speed of ambition, but at the pace of prudence.
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