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Reference News reported on August 18 According to the U.S. Defense News Weekly website on August 16, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom have reached an agreement on new rules for sharing weapons, which is an important step towards making it easier for the defense industries of the three countries to engage with each other.

The three countries updated their rules on the 15th to exempt each other from arms export restrictions. The old rules acted like a fence around equipment that countries could share. Before Australia could order American weapons, for example, it first needed a license from the U.S. State Department - a highly technical application that takes more than a month to process.

Through revised rules, the United States, Britain and Australia — whose burgeoning trilateral defense partnership is known as the Australia-UK-US alliance (AUKUS) — are now dismantling part of that fence.

In the United States, the change involves updating the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), a lengthy bureaucratic process. The State Department said on the 15th that it would issue an "interim final rule" exempting Australia and the United Kingdom from license requirements for 80% of commercial defense sales to the United States.

"These waivers will boost billions of dollars in security and defense trade among the AUKUS countries," a U.S. State Department official said.

Australia and the United Kingdom are also in the process of making similar updates - implementing laws each passed to make the changes possible. The U.K. said in a statement that the exemptions will cover the country's $643 million in annual defense exports. The Australian government said it would eliminate 900 licenses required to export goods to the United States and the United Kingdom - covering $5 billion worth of exports each year.