Sign in Australian facility Australian facility with US military access Australian facility with US access unresolved US facility with Australian access US corporate access RAAF Base Amberley RAAF Base Amberley RAAF Base Tindal Harold E. Holt Communication Station Pine Gap Scroll down
In the near pitch blackness of a wet June morning, a US B-2 Spirit stealth bomber swoops from the sky, touching down on the outskirts of Brisbane to swiftly refuel – engines still running – at one of the US air force’s key allied bases. Before the sun is up, the nuclear-capable warplane is back in the air.
RAAF Base Amberley, about 50km south-west of Brisbane, is a vital staging point for US military operations across the region. But it is hardly alone.
This map shows every military base in Australia, which includes US- and Australian-run bases.
Analysts warn of a “saturation” of the continent by the US military, and argue that Australia’s most important security ally could drag the country unwillingly into war.
Amid the red dirt of Katherine, the runway at RAAF Base Tindal is being expanded to be able to better accommodate massive American B-52 bombers, the so-called “Stratofortresses”. These aircraft are able to land on Australian soil carrying nuclear weapons. The US government won’t tell Australia if and when they are. The Australian government won’t ask.
On the remote coast of Western Australia, a cluster of highly technological assets – deep space radar, space surveillance telescope, and the Harold Holt naval communication station – provide vital information to enable US submarine and space warfare.
The naval communication station is designed to reach submerged submarines. Its antenna array broadcasts on very low frequency radio.
The US-run Pine Gap, in the centre of the country, is regarded by some as the US military’s most valuable intelligence site outside the continental United States.
The satellite tracking and signals intelligence base detects missile launches, intercepts military communications and provides targeting information for US forces around the world.
Essentially incorruptible – difficult to access, physically or otherwise – in a desert valley in the centre of a massive continent, it downloads and transmits masses of data from powerful US satellites constantly monitoring vast swathes of the globe.
For the US military, Australia represents, in the words of one now-retired general, “location, location, location”.
Exclusive: US-controlled weapons corporations and forces have control or access to more than 100 facilities across the continent, which some analysts describe as a ‘colonisation’ of Australia’s military. Find a map of them here
US military interests control or have access to more than 100 defence facilities on Australian soil, in what some analysts describe as a “saturation” – even a “colonisation” – of the Australian continent.
New data compiled by the Nautilus Institute and published by Guardian Australia maps the extent of US militarisation. The US military controls 17 facilities on mainland Australia and has access to 75 more Australian-run military installations. US defence corporations have access to an additional 18.
In total, the US military and US defence corporations have control of or access to 110 facilities on Australian territory, well over half of all the military installations in Australia.
“We have been thinking about American influence on Australian defence policy as a matter of penetration,” the database’s author, Prof Richard Tanter, tells the Guardian, “and we’re aware of the closeness of the alliance, the integration of the armed forces …
“But what this database shows is it’s not a matter of penetration, it’s a matter of saturation. Over half of the defence facilities that we have looked at have some level of American access: that means American personnel, it means American corporations, some of the biggest armaments companies in the world.”
The US military controls or has access to 92 defence facilities on Australian soil for:
Gathering intelligence, accessing satellite data for targeting information and communications intercepts.
Training, including for 2,500 marines on dry-season rotation in the Northern Territory.
Pre-positioning warfighting assets such as Osprey aircraft.
Logistics hubs holding weapons, munitions and fuel, stored in case of a war in the Pacific.
Some bases, including Pine Gap, play critical roles in identifying targets for US strikes overseas and are well known by Australians, even if their operations are highly classified.
Others are massive – the Bradshaw field training area in the Northern Territory is the size of Cyprus – but barely known.
Read moreAnnounced in June, Bandiana base in Wodonga will be the site of tens of millions of dollars worth of pre-positioned US weapons, munitions, fuel and vehicles, stationed for rapid deployment in the event of conflict in the Pacific.
Beyond the military’s presence, at least 42 Australian military facilities are accessed by US defence contractors – some of the biggest weapons manufacturers in the world – which use Australian sites for manufacturing, testing and training of weapons systems deployed by militaries across the globe.
Lockheed Martin assembles guided missiles in Port Wakefield, South Australia. Northrop Grumman signed a multimillion-dollar contract this year to build rocket motors for guided weapons at Mulwala in New South Wales. Collaboration with US manufacturers will “promote allied interoperability and provide a second source of supply for critical munitions”, the Australian defence force says.
Of the military bases that operate under US control, with Australian access, Pine Gap is the best known. But its precise role in US warfighting is hidden from public view.
Like several large military bases across Australia, Pine Gap hosts multiple defence facilities, each with distinct functions: a ground-control station for signals intelligence satellites; a relay ground station for early-warning missile launch systems; and a site for intercepting foreign satellite communications.
View image in fullscreenWorkers with a missile at the Port Wakefield facility. Photograph: Lockheed MartinThe Nautilus Institute database counts defence facilities, rather than bases, so Pine Gap consists of three distinct, co-located facilities.
Critical to US operations around the world, including conflicts in the Middle East, it is formally a “joint defence facility” but it is always commanded by an American.
The Force Posture agreement – “with full respect for Australian sovereignty” – gives US forces and contractors “unimpeded access to and use of” agreed Australian facilities, including for deploying forces and materiel, bunkering vessels and refuelling aircraft.
The US military presence will continue to expand. From next year up to 1,200 uniformed military personnel will operate from the HMAS Stirling submarine base just off Fremantle. The government insists that technically this will not be a US base – rather a “rotation” – but there is little contestation of its actual implication.
Arguing in favour of the Aukus nuclear submarine agreement, the former defence minister Christopher Pyne told a public inquiry the multibillion-dollar deal was “a lot more than the submarine procurement”.
“From a strategic point of view, it’s not something that’s ever really discussed in the public, but it’s one of the most important aspects of it: Aukus is also a new United States submarine base in the Indian Ocean.
“For the Americans, being able to have a submarine base in the Indian Ocean is a massive strategic advantage.”
Tanter, a senior research associate at the independent public policy thinktank the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability and an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, says the US military’s expanding presence is not in service of its junior alliance partner but rather US interests alone.
“Over more than a decade, the United States has been preparing the capacity for high-tempo warfighting operations with China, springboarding from Australia,” he says. “And that means we are aligning ourselves completely with American strategic planning.
“From a Chinese perspective, Australia is not so much hosting US bases on its territory, it’s a US base in its own right … Australia is a serious piece of real estate in the US warfighting machine.”
There exists no comprehensive public record of foreign military access to bases on Australian territory. This database has been compiled from open-source information, responses provided to parliament, and government and commercial reporting.
Tanter argues that the acceptance of the US military presence has become so ingrained within the government and defence that unwinding Australia’s enmeshment within the world’s most powerful military is increasingly difficult.
“This is a massive institutional failure in Australia, a kind of learned incapacity at a political, parliamentary and bureaucratic level,” he says. “We’ve learned how not to ask those questions.”
‘Waltzing its way into a war’At a press conference in June, the defence minister, Richard Marles, demonstrated the breadth of the US military presence in Australia.
Speaking in Rockingham, Western Australia – across a narrow bay from HMAS Stirling – Marles was announcing the establishment of a $30m US logistics base in Wodonga, Victoria.
“We are seeing a growing US footprint in Australia that is important in terms of building our own military capability but also it’s very important for Australia’s national security,” Marles said.
