He made the statement at a joint news conference with his Australian and British counterparts following talks to discuss the partnership, which were held in California.
"Beginning next year, our three countries will conduct a series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises," Austin said. "They will enhance capability development, improve our interoperability and rapidly accelerate the sophistication and scale of autonomous maritime systems that we can deploy and operate together."
AUKUS Defense Ministers also issued a joint statement, which also mentioned maritime systems.
"The experiments and exercises will provide opportunities for defense industry to participate in capability demonstration, development, and delivery" of such systems, the statement said.
"Through these experiments and exercises, the AUKUS partners will also further test and refine the ability to jointly operate uncrewed maritime systems, share and process maritime data from all three nations, and provide real-time maritime domain awareness to support decision-making," the ministers said in the statement.
The US, UK and Australia established AUKUS in 2021. This partnership provides, among other things, for the construction of nuclear submarines for Canberra and some joint military research. The White House said the partnership could expand in the future by admitting US partners in Europe and Asia.
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