A deserted beach south-west of Darwin is under attack in an exercise involving United States Marines and Japanese and Australian soldiers.

Fog Bay, about 70 kilometres south-west of Darwin, is where the Talisman Sabre 2015 exercise is underway.

The exercise is described by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) as a "biennial combined Australian and United States training activity, designed to train our respective military forces in planning and conducting Combined Task Force operations to improve the combat readiness and interoperability between our respective forces".

interoperability - you keep using that word.

LARGE fleets of military drones – both Australian and foreign – could soon fill the Territory’s skies.

In a submission to a Federal Government inquiry on “unmanned aircraft systems”, the NT Government said it would welcome US and Australian drones being based at RAAF Tindal, on the outskirts of Katherine.

The senate inquiry held its most recent hearings late last week, and will table a report by June 25.

“Basing such systems in the Northern Territory, particularly at RAAF Base Tindal, where population centres are small and there are vast remote areas between those centres, is likely to attract far less adverse public concern than in the major population centres such as Adelaide and Brisbane,” the submission said.

The report, authored by NT Department of Business manager of defence industry development Graham Tribe, argues that drones will play a key role in border protection, and in maintaining a military presence around strategically important offshore oil and gas projects.

The report describes Darwin as a “resilient, welcoming and united in its support of ­Defence, Defence personnel and Defence families.” The NT was the only state or Territory government to lodge a submission with the inquiry, which was dominated by aerospace companies and human rights groups.

Australia needs to come clean about its role in the US’s deadly drone program in the wake of allegations that Pine Gap provides information used to locate targets of US drone strikes and the recent reports that two Australians were killed by drone strikes in Yemen. “Drone strikes are not just undermining a rules-based international order, but they are fuelling resentment of Australia and its allies. We need a debate about what exactly Australians are willing to sign up to, what exactly is legal as well as what’s actually in our interest"

Top secret documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden are likely to reveal new details of Australia's support for deadly US drone strikes. Meanwhile, human rights lawyers have called for a UN investigation of the killing by drones of two Australian citizens in Yemen last year. The Centre has also sought an investigation of the role of the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in supporting US drone strikes.

Australian government “needs to come clean” about its support for US drone operations. “Thousands of civilians have been killed as a result of US drone strikes. We currently have no way of knowing whether our security forces are supporting unlawful killing of civilians.”

There is a tragedy hidden in the heart of Australia. On ancient, remote Aboriginal lands, a cluster of strangely shaped buildings squat in an extraordinarily remote area. For decades these buildings, and those who work within them, have silently been at the centre of a killing spree. people are being murdered at the press of a button. Drones are the weapons of choice. American military drone operators are the executioners. Military Officers sit in front of computers at Pine Gap in Australia, their rooms cool and air conditioned against the harsh desert heat, supporting the alliance which carries out dispassionate and clinical murders in the name of the “freedom” of the United States of America.

The Pine Gap spy facility is a key element in the US drone war on people that threaten its global empire.