US and UK to now furnish Australia with nuclear submarines.

No it won't. Nothing about the NATO arrangement will change, because the Germans appear to be completely incapable of handling the concept that they need to spend some of their precious geld on defence. To a lesser extent, the same could be said for some other EU states.

The notion of an EU army is long-term.

It's not just assigning troops, it's a need to streamlining equipment requirements and homogeneous equipment.

NATO has standards for intraoperability and ammunition and so on but there is still a huge range of equipment from rifles, and boots through to tanks, aircraft and transport that are all at the whims of individual procurement and countries self interest with regard local industry.

NATO took a step towards homogeneous equipment in the 50's with projects like the NBMR-1 that led to the G91. It was quickly and quietly abandoned as each country went about ensuring its own interests.

The consolidation of European defence industries into the current conglomerates makes the standardisation of any future EU military force a given. The requirements driven by a top-down specification and work allocated on workshare to keep local industry ticking over.

This is really a topic for a separate thread but a train of thought has been set in motion on how an EU wide military force would work?

I certainly agree with and see the need for a well equipped rapid response force. Take the EU Battlegroup concept and expand it. Where I do see problems for expanding that further to an "EU army" is this.

What manner of deployment and structure would it follow? Not just as an overseas force but in the mode of its training and basing? Would each country still recruit, train and deploy its own forces? What would the command structure look like? What would actual deployment look like? Some modern day version of the 1914 German empire? With the individual states and regiments marching in their own contingents? Or would there be some degree of consolidation?

If we take the US, India, Canada or China as examples purely in terms of their area?

We would be looking towards at least streamlining the training cadre to 2/3 EU locations. Similar with air training and Naval too. What happens to long standing and very valued military and naval acadamies? They can't all be kept as viable, would they move to being kept in name only?

I have gone off on a huge tangent here and feel free to ignore as it is probably more the military forum or even Walter Mitty but the opportunity and risk of such a move are massive and easily a 20yr project that the current EU is not capable of undertaking due to national interests IMO.

(edit) Doesn't the intelligence cooperation between US/UK/Australia etc predate UKs EEC (EU) membership?

This doesn't look like a typical "sale" of military equipment and I'm no military expert but (as pointed out by another poster) these are very potent weapons and on another level to what France was selling Australia. That's the whole point of it and why Australia wants them (fear, they think they might need them to deter China).

Being out of the EU creates more distance + opportunity for the UK to take independent actions like this (well, independent of the likes of France or Germany). 

Yes the UK could theoretically do this secret deal inside the EU, but is it likely?

I think it just would have been much harder for the UK to act like that (as I described it before, as a very strong competitor + almost a "frenemy" blindsiding another member completely) while inside the EU.

I'm not sure if you are trying to convince yourself of something? I don't think this is in the world of normal business competition over a contract (even state backed businesses, and strange products like weapons). Trying to shoehorn it in to fit there doesn't make sense to me.

It reminds me of the discussions here of UK's behaviour procuring its Covid-19 vaccines, another episode I think could not have happened in the way that it did with UK inside the EU. 

Afair there was a narrative you were fond of there as well at one point (?) that it was all just business and the UK has the better business nous.

Indeed using just the Indians as an example.

IIRC, they are operating a russian akula class on lease whilst they develop experience in operations and build their own. Also I think the French might be involved in that with technical assistance?(stand to be corrected)

Which torpedoes the anti-proliferation argument IMO, if the Russians can let their nuclear subs and tech out? So can the rest.

The AUKUS deal is an Anglophone deal and is IMO from the US standpoint at least a means of ensuring an Ally in its area of strategic interest is armed with and able to support similar equipment to its own. It also gives Boris a deal to point at that ties into his own notion of an Anglosphere trading bloc that he has alluded to a few times.

What do you think is going to happen this week? Just throwing out a vague statement like that is pretty silly.

How should the French have reacted? Stiff upper lip, fair play old boy!

I think its more that a pact is being formed in an area of the World important to them without them. Leave Oceania to it and tell them not to come crying when they need help