The Biden Administration will likely be "focussed on national securities," meaning Australia may have to make harder choices in the defence space, according to the Lowy Institute’s Richard McGregor.

“Trump was focussed on trade,” Mr McGregor told Sky News. “The Biden Administration might be much more focussed on national securities.

“That might mean harder choices for us in the defence space.”

Mr McGregor said this may mean the US would expect Australia to look at things including “intermediate range missiles” and the possible placement of “more Marines in Darwin”

“They might like us to do greater naval exercises in the South China Sea,” he said. “I think they’re going to expect us to step up as a strong ally.”

As tensions between the US and China continue to simmer, researchers say the Biden administration could put a strategic spotlight directly on the NT's capital, given its proximity to Asia.

"There will probably be a rotational agreement like what we see with the Marines and the Air Force, but with some US Navy warships," Mr Thomas-Noone told ABC Radio Darwin.

Professor John Blaxland, of ANU's Defence Studies Centre, said Darwin would "likely see considerable additional attention in the coming weeks and years".

He said with the new administration "likely to continue to apply pressure on China" and come looking to Australia for additional help, it may be the Top End city that answers the call.

"Darwin's going to be more on the crosshairs than it has been for some time now," Professor Blaxland said.

The Department of Defence has been busy denying that it may develop a naval port at Glyde Point, 40km northeast of Darwin. It doesn’t deny that the territory government may be encouraged to build one itself. Wink, wink.

If Australia is keen to ensure that the US remains engaged in the region (and dedicated to Australia’s defence), nothing says commitment like infrastructure.

The most attractive feature of building a naval port at Glyde Point may be its future use by the RAN itself. China has announced plans to build a “fishery industrial park” at Daru on the south coast of Papua New Guinea. With no fish in the water but Australia within sight, the planned facility presumably is aimed at threatening the Torres Strait.

"no American ally is potentially more important than"

HEIGHTENED US-China tensions have increased the risk of an accidental nuclear exchange between the two superpowers — and whether or not the Northern Territory’s Pine Gap surveillance base is playing a role in hyping this up needs to be looked at.

Though the current US-China tensions has fewer nuclear risks than the Cold War-era US-Soviet relationship, the standing dynamics shouldn’t be ignored, according to new a research paper from the United States Studies Centre, based out of the University of Sydney.

As the US and China entered into a period of “intense strategic competition” the risk of accidental nuclear warfare between the two had grown.

Warning Australian politicians to be attentive, Dr Cunningham said Canberra needed to determine whether the country was inadvertently contributing to heightening nuclear risks through joint intelligence facilities on Australian soil.

This includes the Northern Territory’s Pine Gap, a joint US-Australia run station about 18 km out of Alice Springs which houses a US satellite surveillance base and Australian Earth station, and set up in the late 60s in the throes of the Cold War.

Australia’s strategy, Dr Cunningham argued, should be based on three national security interests: avoiding nuclear threats or nuclear use in a future conflict, ensuring that Chinese military actions are adequately countered at the conventional level and preserving the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

It’s history now that the then-US president Barack Obama was shocked in 2015 to read that the Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party government had awarded a Chinese company — with alleged links to the People’s Liberation Army — a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin, in a $506m deal.

The ABC reported in June 2019, citing “multiple officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity”, that “secret planning” had begun for a new port facility just outside Darwin, which could eventually help US Marines operate more readily in the Indo-Pacific.

In July this year, a Northern Territory government report on developing Gunn Point, just west of Glyde Point, contained a tantalising reference to a possible port.

However, the report’s author — the NT Planning Commission — stated on its website that “there are no current plans for Defence infrastructure within the Gunn Point Peninsula”.

so I guess that means there may be Defence infrastructure within the Gunn Point Peninsula?