Defence chiefs back boosting US military presence in Australia

Washington and Canberra agreed to boost the US military presence in Australia and speed up cooperation, both countries said.

Wary of China's unprecedented military build-up, US ally Australia has reshaped its defence force in recent years to focus on its missile strike capability and deterring would-be foes from its northern approaches.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Canberra understood "the gravity of maintaining a favorable balance of power in the region" as he met with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles in Washington on Wednesday.

The two "agreed to accelerate force posture initiatives at Australian bases, bolster cooperation in combined logistics, and build greater interoperability through joint exercises," the Pentagon said.

"They also discussed progress on defense industrial cooperation to enable shared capacity for guided weapons and next-generation capabilities," it added.

Australia does not permit foreign military bases on its soil, but hosts US Marines for exercises for six months of the year in the northern city of Darwin.

A rotating force of US-commanded submarines will arrive in Western Australia next year.

Pressed on what the expanding force posture would entail, Marles told journalists cooperation was also taking place in "logistics, cooperation, in respect of our air forces, cyber, and space".

He said the expanding cooperation was a response to "the biggest conventional military build-up by any country in the world since the Second World War in the form of China".

"We need to be ensuring that we build deterrence, that we build balance, so that we can provide for the peace and stability of the region in which we live," he said.

"Collaboration through the alliance with the United States is fundamentally important to that."

Among those areas of cooperation are US Marine Corps plans for a crisis-ready stockpile in Australia, AFP reported in June.

Australia has also embarked on its largest-ever military spending project to build nuclear-powered submarines next decade under the AUKUS agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom.

Critics have said the deal does not guarantee that Australia will ever receive the submarines.