The upgrade to the Australian air force base at Tindal in the Northern Territory is about much more than an extended runway and extra engineering and fuel storage facilities.
And it is about much more than getting ready for the new Joint Strike Fighter F-35 fifth-generation multipurpose jets that will be the spine of our air combat capability. Tindal will also be able to host US B-52 strategic bombers and other giant American combat aircraft.
The Tindal upgrade is a key step in the progressive rollout of the US’s commitment to Australia and our theatre.
It rebuts the three related falsehoods that the US under Donald Trump is retreating from the Indo-Pacific region; that it is declining in military capability; and that it has become less important as an ally to Australia.
The ability of the US to deploy the full range of its strategic aircraft to bases in northern Australia, and the extended ability of the US and Australia to conduct sophisticated aerial exercises, operates in the direct interests of the US and Australia.
For the US, the move continues its long-term process to disperse its forces throughout the Indo-Pacific, to make them harder to hit and less focused on the two islands of Okinawa and Guam.
Politicians will be too polite to mention it explicitly but this makes US forces less vulnerable to potential strikes by Chinese forces in the event of military conflict between the US and China.
For more than 100 years, Australian policy has been to encourage the strongest possible US presence in the region. But deeper US air force involvement in northern Australia also represents a deepening US commitment specifically to Australia’s security.
In 2011, Barack Obama and Julia Gillard announced the rotation of US marines through the Northern Territory for six months a year.
The agreement was slow to proceed under Obama, not least because of arguments over who would pay how much of the bill to upgrade local facilities.
That the agreement has continued under Trump demonstrates the deep continuity in basic US strategic policy.
The agreement always had three legs: ground forces, air forces and naval units.
The plan’s architects in Washington and Canberra held the quiet ambition that it might be possible to get US naval ships or a taskforce to be based in northern or Western Australia, with US crews being flown in and out as necessary.
Any development like that is still some time away.
But the Tindal upgrade is strategically constructive and makes Australia, and the region, more secure.
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