Pentagon eyes missile testing role for Australia
Australia could be a testing ground for US hypersonic and other long-range precision weapons under the AUKUS pact, a top Pentagon official told AFP on Wednesday. US Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said Australia's contribution to the three-way AUKUS agreement, which includes Britain, «doesn't always have to be dollars».
The pact was signed in late 2021 and is seen as a way of countering China's growing clout in the Asia-Pacific region. Work under AUKUS has so far focused on supplying Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, a fleet capable of travelling stealthily over vast distances and striking foes at long range.
But the pact is increasingly focused on developing advanced capabilities such as long-range precision firing, artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons.Wormuth said Australia could be a proving ground for these weapons. «One thing Australia has in spades is long distances and relatively unpopulated land,» she told AFP in a telephone interview from Washington.
«A challenge for us in the United States when it comes to hypersonics or even some of our things like the precision strike missile — which is not a hypersonic weapon but has very long ranges in some of its increments — for us to find open spaces in the United States where we can actually test these weapons, it's a challenge. »Australia obviously has a tremendous amount of territory where that testing is a little bit more doable — so I think that's a unique thing, as an example, that the Australians bring to the table." China has denounced the AUKUS pact as undermining peace in the region — a charge that Washington, Canberra and London reject.
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