SYDNEY (Reuters) – Japanese troops will begin regular deployments in Australia as part of military cooperation with Australia and the United States, Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Sunday.
Around 2,000 U.S. Marines are already hosted in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, for six months of the year amid growing concern among Washington and its allies about China’s growing military power in the Indo Pacific region.
“Today we are announcing that there will be regular deployments of Japan’s amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade to Australia,” Marles said at a televised press conference in Darwin, alongside U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani.
“Having a more forward leaning opportunity for greater training with Japan and the U.S. together is a really fantastic opportunity for our defence,” Marles told Sky News on Sunday, according to a transcript.
Austin also said on Sunday he was confident the U.S. will provide the capabilities set out in the AUKUS deal, which will see Australia buy U.S. nuclear submarines and develop a new class of nuclear-powered submarines with the U.S. and Britain.
Sunday’s trilateral meeting between Australia, the U.S. and Japan in Darwin is the 14th meeting of its kind between the three allies.
At the last trilateral, held in Singapore in June, the nations expressed serious concern about security in the East China Sea and said they opposed “any destabilising and coercive unilateral actions” there.
(Reporting by Praveen Menon and Sam McKeith; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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