US military, seeking strategic advantages

26/7/2024 14:34

        The U.S. military is building infrastructure in northern Australia to help it project power into the South China Sea if a crisis with China erupts, a Reuters review of documents and interviews with U.S. and Australian defence officials show. Closer to the Philippines than Australia's east coast capital, Canberra, Darwin has long been a garrison town for the Australian Defence Force and a U.S. Marine Rotational Force that spends six months of each year there. A few hundred kilometres to the south, RAAF Base Tindal is home to key elements of Australia's airpower, and was a temporary base for U.S. jets in recent exercises. As northern Australia re-emerges as a strategically vital Indo-Pacific location amid rising tensions with China, the United States has quietly begun constructing hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of facilities there to support B-52 bombers, F-22 stealth fighters, and refuelling and transport aircraft - all part of a larger effort to distribute U.S. forces around the reg
        ion and make them less vulnerable. "When you look at the positioning of northern Australia, particularly Darwin, in relation to the region ... it's always good to have multiple options in where you would want to put your forces in any type of crisis," said Colonel Brian Mulvihill, commanding officer of the U.S. Marine Rotational Force. Tender documents show that intelligence briefing rooms, upgraded runways for bombers, warehouses, data centres and maintenance hangars are in the works. Massive fuel storage facilities are already built, officials told Reuters on a rare visit to the two northern bases. The projects, scheduled for construction in 2024 and 2025, make northern Australia the top overseas location for U.S. Air Force and Navy construction spending, with more than $300 million set aside under the U.S. congressional defence authorisations for those years. There is more on the horizon: The U.S. Navy in June sought contractors for projects worth up to $2 billion to build
        wharves, runways, fuel storage and hangars in places including Australia's Cocos Islands, and neighbouring Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste, under a program to counter China. China's defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.