By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine partnership with Australia will benefit the United States and is the kind of "burden sharing" deal that President-elect Donald Trump has talked about, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
In an interview with Australia's Lowy Institute think tank published on Tuesday, Sullivan said he had confidence AUKUS would endure under the Trump presidency, as it enhances U.S. deterrent capability in the Indo-Pacific and has Australia contributing to the U.S. industrial base.
The trilateral AUKUS deal struck in 2021 is Australia's biggest defence project, with a cost of A$368 billion ($245 billion) by 2055, as Australia buys several Virginia-class submarines from the United States while also building a new class of nuclear-powered submarine in Britain and Australia.
"The United States is benefiting from burden sharing - exactly the kind of thing that Mr Trump has talked a lot about," Sullivan said of the AUKUS agreement.
Australia has agreed to invest $3 billion in U.S. shipyards that build the Virginia-class nuclear submarines it will be sold early next decade amid concerns that a backlog of orders could jeopardize the deal.
Australia having conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines enhances America's deterrent capability in the Indo-Pacific, Sullivan said.
"Australia is directly contributing to the U.S. submarine industrial base so that we can build out this submarine capability, supply Australia in the nearer term with Virginia class submarines and then in the longer term with the AUKUS class submarine," he added.
Australia's defence and foreign ministers, meanwhile, met their counterparts in London on Monday to discuss progress on AUKUS for the first time since a change of government in Britain, and ahead of Trump's inauguration as U.S. president in January.
Britain's Defence Secretary John Healey said they discussed "the challenge of maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific, the challenge of China - increasingly active, increasingly assertive in the region - and the vital importance of maintaining both deterrence and freedom of navigation".
Australia's Defence Minister Richard Marles said they discussed accelerating the process of bringing Australian companies into the supply chain in Britain for building submarines.