The Marine Corps is making good on a 2011 promise to send 2,500 Marines annually to Australia as part of a strengthened alliance in the face of Chinese expansionism, with over 1,000 Marines and 17 aircraft from Hawaii in the mix.
Approximately 800 Hawaii Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, who deployed to Okinawa last month will relocate to northern Australia this month to be part of Marine Rotational Force-Darwin and train with Australian counterparts, officials said.
Some 1,700 Marines — including 300 aviation personnel from Hawaii and others from units in California — made up an earlier arriving group.
Gradually ramping up its presence down under, the Corps sent about 200 Marines in 2012 and increased that to nearly 1,600 last year.
The increase to 2,500 Marines for the first time “is a tangible demonstration of the United States’ sustained commitment to the Australia-U.S. alliance and to maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” said 1st Lt. Colin Kennard, a spokesman for Marine Rotational Force-Darwin.
The United States and Australia, meanwhile, are scrambling to shore up relationships in the Western and South Pacific where China has been making military inroads and investing millions in construction projects, buying influence in the process.
China “seeks to reorder the region to its advantage by leveraging military modernization, influence operations and predatory economics to coerce other nations,” former acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said in a new Indo-Pacific Strategy Report.
U.S. Pacific Fleet confirmed the Navy is exploring the viability of returning to Subic Bay in the Philippines with the use of bankrupt South Korean Hanjin Shipyard as a ship repair facility.
In 2011, President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard agreed to the Marine rotational force and an increased U.S. Air Force presence in Australia.
The post Marines Head To Australia To Counter China Influence In Pacific appeared first on Independent Newspapers Nigeria.
Source: Independent
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