Washington | The alliance between Australia and America is “unbreakable” in the face of critics and competitors in the Indo-Pacific, and both countries will continue to take ambitious steps such as the AUKUS pact, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has assured visiting Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles.

Meeting inside the Pentagon for the second time this year and a day before the annual Australian-US Ministerial (AUSMIN) Dialogues, the two defence ministers, flanked by US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy and America’s highest-ranking military officer General Mark Milley, on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) conveyed a heightened sense of security compared with this time last year.