Australia offers US a vast new military launchpad
in China conflict
By
Michael E. Miller
The Washington Post • August
25, 2024
The
first of four MQ-4C Tritons being added to Australia’s arsenal debuts at Royal
Australian Air Force Base Tindal, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (Seth Robson/Stars
and Stripes)
ROYAL AUSTRALIAN
AIR FORCE BASE TINDAL, Australia — Deep in the outback, a flurry of
construction by Australia and the United States is transforming this once quiet
military installation into a potential launchpad in case of conflict with
China.
Runways are being
expanded and strengthened to accommodate the allies’ biggest airplanes, including
American B-52 bombers. A pair of massive fuel depots is rising side
by side to supply U.S. and Australian fighter jets. And two earth-covered
bunkers have been built for U.S. munitions.
But the activity
at RAAF Tindal, less than 2,000 miles from the emerging flash points of the
South China Sea, isn’t unique. Across Australia, decades-old
facilities — many built by the United States during World War II - are now
being dusted off or upgraded amid growing fears of another global conflict.
“This is about
deterrence,” Australia’s defense minister, Richard Marles, said in an
interview. “We’re working together to deter future conflict and to provide for
the collective security of the region in which we live.”
The United States
has ramped up defense ties with allies across the region, including with the
Philippines and Japan, as it tries to fend off an increasingly assertive and
aggressive China. Australia offers the United States a stable and friendly
government, a small but capable military and a vast expanse from which to stage
or resupply military efforts.
U.S. Secretary of
Defense Lloyd Austin, hailing the “the extraordinary strength of our
unbreakable alliance with Australia,” said after a meeting with Marles earlier
this month that deeper cooperation — including base upgrades and more
frequent rotational bomber deployments — would help build “greater peace,
stability, and deterrence across the region.”
Australia has also
joined the AUKUS agreement, under which the United States and Britain will
provide it with nuclear-propelled submarines, some of the world’s most closely
guarded technology.
These moves
underscore a bigger shift, as Canberra has grown increasingly tight with
Washington as they both grow wary of Beijing. Military cooperation has become
so extensive that critics quip Australia is becoming the United States’ “51st
state.”
Mihai Sora, a
former Australian diplomat who is an analyst at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney
think tank, has a different metaphor. Australia is “an unsinkable aircraft
carrier right at the bottom of the critical maritime sea lanes.”
“As the stakes
increase in the South China Sea, as the risk over conflict in Taiwan increases,
northern Australia in particular becomes of increasing strategic value for the
United States,” Sora said.
American
representatives on a recent congressional delegation to Darwin, on Australia’s
northern coast, agreed.
“This provides a
central base of operations from which to project power,” Rep. Michael McCaul
(R-Tex.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during the trip.
Some Australian
experts, however, argue that the growing U.S. military footprint doesn’t deter
conflict with China so much as ensure Australia will be involved.
“I have deep
misgivings about the whole enterprise” of increased U.S. military activity in
Australia, said Sam Roggeveen, a former Australian intelligence analyst who is
also at the Lowy Institute. “It conflates America’s strategic objectives in
Asia with ours, and it makes those bases a target.”
Australia’s
center-left government inherited AUKUS from a previous conservative
administration, but it has embraced the agreement and the broader idea of
enhanced U.S.-Australia military cooperation. Still, some critics have accused
it of moving too cautiously.
“We need the
current plans times 10,” said Peter Jennings, a former senior defense official
who has urged Australia’s military to make rapid changes to deter a conflict
with China. “The direction is right, but what it needs now is money and serious
political effort.”
Australian
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, flanked by Northrop Grumman Australia
chief executive Christine Zeitz and the head of nation's air force, Air Marshal
Stephen Chappell, speaks about new MQ-4C Tritons at Royal Australian Air Force
Base Tindal, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
Catching
China’s attention
Australia has been
rattled by a decade of growing Chinese military assertiveness in the region.
But Beijing’s recent trade war on Canberra and a Chinese security agreement
with Australia’s neighbor the Solomon Islands have accelerated Australia’s tilt
away from its biggest trading partner and toward the United States.
Australia has
spent roughly $1 billion on upgrading the Tindal air force base. Built by U.S.
Army engineers in 1942 to stage bombing raids on Japanese targets in Papua New
Guinea and Indonesia, Tindal is now the site of dozens of construction
projects. A key one is the new parking apron capable of accommodating four of
Australia’s biggest planes: KC-30 tankers that can refuel fighter jets and
allow for far more distant attacks.
But there are also
plans for the United States to build its own parking apron here, big enough for
six B-52 bombers capable of reaching mainland China.
“That is
absolutely something China would pay attention to,” said Roggeveen.
Marles declined to
comment on the increasing rotations mentioned by Austin, but said the
trajectory is “an increasing American force posture in Australia.” “We see that
as very much in Australia’s national interest,” he said. “People understand
that we are living through challenging times, when the global rules-based order
is under pressure.”
Darwin, 200 miles
north of Tindal, was heavily bombed by Japan during World War II. It has hosted
six-month rotations of U.S. Marines since 2012, but what began as a training
mission has evolved into a much larger enterprise.
The United States
recently built a new fuel depot for the Marines’ MV-22 Ospreys, tilt-rotor
aircraft that can take off and land vertically like a helicopter but can
transition midair to fly like an airplane. The United States is planning to
expand the parking apron here, too, to enable more Osprey operations.
A map provided to
the visiting U.S. congressional delegation showed how midair refueling could
extend the Ospreys’ range into the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea and to
the Solomon Islands.
“As Chairman Xi
[Jinping] is looking out at all of this, he’s feeling more deterrence,” McCaul
said, pointing to the map. “Our capabilities to respond are getting stronger.”
Australia is also
surveying three “bare bases” - skeleton facilities in remote parts of Western
Australia and Queensland - with an eye to upgrading them so heavier Australian
and American airplanes can use them, said Brigadier Michael Say, who leads
Australia’s Force Posture Initiative. He said it’s still being determined whether
the United States will pay for some of the improvements.
In the Cocos
Islands, tiny coral atolls in the Indian Ocean northwest of the Australian
continent and just south of Indonesia, Canberra will soon begin upgrading the
airstrip to accommodate heavier military aircraft, including the P-8A Poseidon,
a “submarine hunter” that could monitor increased Chinese naval activity in the
area. A U.S. Navy construction contract published in June listed the Cocos as a
possible project location, but Say said it hasn’t yet been decided whether the
United States will contribute.
An
F-22 Raptor fighter assigned to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, lands
at Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal, Australia, on Sept. 1, 2022. (Seth
Robson/Stars and Stripes)
Diversifying
or redistributing?
These “bare
bases,” which stretch for 3,000 miles from east to west, fit a new U.S.
strategy of dispersing its forces to prevent China from delivering a knockout
blow.
“If one location
gets taken out, the U.S. can still project force, it can still replenish and
resupply and reinforce its troops,” Sora said. “Australia is fundamental to
that but is just one plank in America’s regional force posture.”
Roggeveen
questioned, however, whether the United States is actually increasing its
capabilities in the region or merely moving assets out of places like Guam,
which are more immediately threatened by China’s improving missile capability.
Under AUKUS, the United States will begin rotating up to four nuclear-powered
submarines through Western Australia in 2027.
“It’s not at all
clear to me if the [U.S.] Pacific Fleet is getting more submarines or if they
are just being moved from existing commitments in Guam or Pearl Harbor,”
Roggeveen said.
Commander Matthew
Comer, a spokesperson for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said it was too early to
say from where the submarines will come.
Even if the subs
are moved from Pearl Harbor or San Diego, their rotation through Perth will be
“significant strategically,” said Charles Edel, Australia chair at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We are pulling them
closer in to where they are needed.”
Some concerns
linger in Washington over Australia’s commitment, however. During the visit to
Darwin, McCaul and other representatives asked about the 99-year lease a
Chinese company holds over the port surrounding the Australian naval base.
Australian officials said two reviews had found there wasn’t a security
concern, and that in the case of a conflict the port could be nationalized.
“Australia relies
on China for prosperity and on America for security,” Rep. Jimmy Panetta
(D-Calif.) told The Washington Post. “That’s the balance they are playing.”
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