This year’s deployment to Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory, hasn’t gone as initially planned. Travel restrictions and quarantining requirements due to the novel coronavirus drove the Marine Corps to send a smaller, 1,200-member force for the rotational deployment program, now in its ninth year. That’s less than half the size that deployed in 2019, the first time Marine Rotational Force-Darwin reached its 2,500-personnel maximum.

The deployment will culminate in exercise Koolendong in September with Australian Defence Force units.