Pacific islands face militarised oceans as AUKUS drones deploy without consent

Pacific islands voiceless in AUKUS rollout

Pacific island nations have been omitted from the announcement of a sweeping new underwater drone programme that will transform their waters into a militarised zone from 2027.

Defence secretaries from the UK, US and Australia announced in Singapore on June 1 the first AUKUS pillar 2 signature project: a joint programme to develop, produce and deploy cutting-edge technologies carried by uncrewed underwater vessels across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific.

The announcement made no mention of consultation with Pacific island states whose territorial waters and exclusive economic zones will host these capabilities. The three nations described the project as delivering “ground-breaking underwater capabilities that will keep Britain safe” and “support our shared security”.

John Healey, UK defence secretary, said: “AUKUS is delivering for our security and for our economy. Together we are announcing ground-breaking underwater capabilities that will keep Britain safe, backing British businesses that are driving growth, and standing shoulder to shoulder with our closest allies.”

No Pacific island government has been named as a partner or consulted party in the programme.

The invisible coastline

The Indo-Pacific region contains over 4,000 islands spread across more than 30 million square kilometres of ocean, waters that Pacific island nations depend upon for fishing, subsistence and cultural identity.

The militarisation of these waters through autonomous underwater surveillance vessels represents an escalation of great power competition directly on the doorstep of nations that have historically been subjected to colonial rule by two of the AUKUS partners.

The UK occupied and administered Pacific territories throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Australia maintained colonial control over Papua New Guinea and other Pacific territories until the 1970s.

The new drone programme will see the Royal Navy’s transition to a “Hybrid Navy”, a more flexible, modern force that blends crewed and uncrewed platforms. The first capabilities are expected in service by 2027.

The industrial pipeline

The project lists three UK-based suppliers: Decision Analysis Services Ltd., a systems thinking and AI firm based in Basingstoke; SEA Ltd., a large enterprise based in Frome; and A-2i, a micro-consultancy based in Dorchester, Dorset.

More significantly, the UK defence ministry has deepening links to Palantir, the US AI war firm whose data analytics platforms have been deployed across conflict zones. Helsing, a European AI defence startup funded by Spotify founder Daniel Ek, opened a UK underwater drone factory in November 2025, producing the SG-1 Fathom autonomous submersible designed to “deliver persistent underwater surveillance, detecting enemy activity to protect our sea lanes and undersea critical national infrastructure”.

The AUKUS announcement represents the formal integration of these capabilities into a coordinated trilateral military architecture spanning waters thousands of miles from Britain.

The consent question

The framing of AUKUS as promoting “a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable” elides a fundamental question: free and open for whom, and secure according to whose definition?

Pacific island nations have watched as the oceans they depend upon become increasingly contested terrain between Washington, Beijing and their allies. The deployment of advanced autonomous surveillance systems across their waters proceeds without visible consent, consultation or transparent public debate in the nations most directly affected.

The defence chiefs celebrated their announcement in Singapore, not in Port Moresby, Suva, or any Pacific capital. The invisibility is deliberate and structural.

The counter-argument

Proponents will argue that AUKUS aims to deter Chinese expansion and maintain regional stability, and that Pacific island nations benefit from the security guarantee that American and British military presence provides.

This argument presupposes that Pacific voices do not matter in determining what security means for their own waters. It also ignores the long historical record of great power competition delivering catastrophe to Pacific communities, from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands to colonial exploitation and resource extraction.

The strongest objection to inverting this framing is that Pacific island nations may welcome or at least accept the AUKUS arrangement as a counterweight to Chinese pressure. But acceptance through exclusion is not consent. The very absence of their voices from the announcement is the story.