The Biden administration has released some details of its global posture review, but the Pentagon document overseen by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will remain largely classified.

"In Australia, you'll see new rotational fighter and bomber aircraft deployments, you'll see ground forces training and increased logistics cooperation," US Under Secretary of Defense Mara Karlin told reporters.

"More broadly across the Indo-Pacific, you'll see a range of infrastructure improvements in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Australia."

Dr Karlin added that the Indo-Pacific region was a major focus of the assessment, because of Mr Austin's emphasis on "China as the pacing challenge" for the department.

Earlier this year, the ABC revealed senior American and Australian officials had discussed options for expanded military cooperation, including a proposal to form a new joint US marines and ADF training brigade based in Darwin.

“Restraint.” This should be the one-word diplomatic mantra for Australia about Taiwan. It should be the opening and closing of every statement an Australian prime minister utters because a descent into war between the world’s superpowers over a neuralgic issue that diplomacy has constrained for 70 years – this is the last thing our battered and bruised planet wants.

And it should be the last thing Australia should appear to be talking up. The prospect of such a clash producing a nuclear exchange is spookily high. By installing American facilities on our continent we have made Australia a target. That’s reason enough to plant us in the peace camp.

We’re left a bit exposed because alone of America’s allies we have said we will join America if there’s a showdown, presumably within the first week. It’s almost as if in the corridors of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the Defence department the hawks are humming the World War I recruiting song, Australia Will Be There.

This begs the question: is there any rigorous analysis by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on how Australia might help avert war, or whether our diplomats are entirely sidelined and relegated.

Canberra needs to commission a document for the national security committee of cabinet that scripts our leaders to press Washington and Beijing on the practical measures that would avoid a descent into war.

The USFPI are an extension of Australia’s existing Defence relationship with the US and support the common interest of promoting regional security and stability.

The MRF-D has grown in size and complexity since the first rotation of US Marines through Darwin in 2012. In 2019, the goal of 2500 US Marines training with the ADF stationed in Darwin was reached.

The structure of MRF-D continues to evolve in response to the changing environment and advances in technology, with the focus shifting to capability rather than numbers. Highly complex joint training scenarios are now being executed, which continue to challenge our forces and better prepare us to rapidly respond in the region, if and when called upon to do so.

This year, about 2200 US Marines and sailors conducted a comprehensive range of training activities, including humanitarian assistance, security operations and high-end, live-fire exercises – exercises that develop enhanced interoperability between the ADF and US Marines and key partners.

At AUSMIN in September 2021, Australia and the USA announced the agreement to enhance force posture cooperation in four key areas to: establish an integrated logistics capability, expand existing enhanced air cooperation, enhance maritime sustainment cooperation, evolve bilateral and multilateral operations and exercises.

The US military plans a dramatic and comprehensive ramping-up of its defence presence in the Northern Territory to counter the rising threat of China – measures which experts say will, for the first time, involve all four branches of the American armed services.

Senior US and Australian defence officials and analysts, speaking on background, confirmed to the Defence Special Report that while “final details were getting worked out”, the measures envisaged big increases in joint US air exercises, troop deployments, pre positioning of equipment, and the use of more sophisticated weapons systems across the Northern Territory’s key training ranges.

Spurred by growing perceptions of a rising Chinese threat, last month’s announcement of the AUKUS trilateral defence agreement will see the transformation of the Top End from a very convenient military training area for the ADF and its allies to a vital southern US defence anchor encompassing a vast area of the Pacific, linking Guam to the north and Hawaii to the east.

These are bigger consequences and will have a bigger, more immediate, impact to the region.

The AUKUS announcement has fuelled more speculation about possible expansion of the marines' presence in the Top End, which Defence Minister Peter Dutton has already said he would like to see.

In an interview with the ABC, the USA's Charges d'Affaires in Australia, Michael Goldman, said talks on the subject were ongoing.

Michael Shoebridge, the director of defence, strategy and national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said northern Australia was becoming another staging point for US personnel, logistics and resources in the Asia Pacific.

Under the 2011 agreement, marines will keep returning to Darwin each dry season for 25 years, ending in 2036. The USA Charges d'Affaires, said the deployments were "just a beginning rather than an end" of the US presence in Australia.