Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that the US will increase its military presence in Australia in a buildup aimed at China.

In a joint press conference with Australia’s defense minister and foreign minister, Austin said that the US will increase its rotational forces in Australia. “That includes rotations of bomber task forces, fighters, and future rotations of US Navy and US Army capabilities,” Austin said.

Many countries in the region are not eager to get on board with the US’s confrontational approach to China. The prime minister of Papua New Guinea said this week that his country can’t afford to get caught between the US and China and said he told the US your “enemy is not my enemy.”

Indonesia’s president expressed similar concerns during a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in November, saying the ASEAN must not let the region turn into a frontline for a new Cold War.

Details on the rotational deployments aren’t clear, but they will likely focus on the Australian city of Darwin in the Northern Territory, where US Marines have been rotating through for years.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles meet their US counterparts in Washington, discussing the rise of China in the Pacific as well as Australia's defence "capability gap". 

At a joint press conference after the talks, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the increased military cooperation would result in an "increased rotational presence of US forces in Australia". 

"That includes rotations of bomber task forces, fighters, and future rotations of US Navy and US Army capabilities that will also expand our logistics and sustainment cooperation," he said.

"We'll also continue to find ways to further integrate our defence industrial bases in the years ahead."

The USA Air Force is planning to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Tindal air base near Darwin, as fears grow that China is preparing for an assault on Taiwan. 

"It's a great expansion of Australian commitment to the United States' war plan with China," says Richard Tanter, a senior research associate at the Nautilus Institute and a long-time, anti-nuclear activist.

"It's very hard to think of a more open commitment that we could make. A more open signal to the Chinese that we are going along with American planning for a war with China," Mr Tanter says.

Pine Gap is also undergoing a major upgrade

Following the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal, a senior US official reportedly said recently that the US would consider providing Australia with nuclear-capable B-21 bombers, the in-development successor to the B-2 stealth bomber that experts said on Wednesday would enable Australia to launch long-range strikes against China, thus posing serious threats to China.

US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made the remark at a media briefing after meeting with newly minted Royal Australian Air Force chief Air Marshal Robert Chipman on August 22 in Canberra, The Strategist, a website affiliated with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, reported on Tuesday.

Kendall again hyped the "China threat" theory, claiming the US and its allies were "concerned about Chinese behavior" in the South China Sea as well as China's military modernization program.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, said if Australia obtains the B-21, the country would essentially become an overseas bomber base of the US,

The prime minister has confirmed the 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin to Chinese-owned company Landbridge will be reviewed.

The seven-year-old lease became a flash point during the second debate of the recent federal election campaign, with Albanese criticising the former government for its handling of the matter.

“When I was a minister, we put US Marines into Darwin. When you have been a minister we have had the Port of Darwin sold to a company connected with the Chinese Communist Party,” he said at the time.

Former US president Barack Obama expressed concern about the lease at the time, while China hawks in the Defence establishment have also questioned the leasing of the Port undertaken by the former NT Liberal government.