Exercise Pitch Black 2022 invaded the Top End of the NT
It took over our land, water and skies. Included in the madness were NATO planes and service personnel from several European countries. The USA has become the colonising Master and has embedded our mainstream media.
When Pitch Black stopped for 2022 on September 8, more naval war rehearsals continued the onslaught in the seas off northern Australia.
On 27 August 2023, three US Marines stationed in Darwin as part of the US Force Posture Rotation, died after an Osprey helicopter crashed on Melville Island north of Darwin. The war game this time was called Predators’ Run. The military helicopter crashed kilometres away from a primary school at Pickertaramoor.
Since 2010 there have been numerous mechanical failures with Osprey helicopters but PM Albanese insists our troops must stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with US-allied troops to support our ‘shared’ national interests.
The Australian Labor Government is carrying on billion dollar support of war industries. Is this in the national interest? The Australian Government uses borrowed money to buy deadly-offensive war toys instead of spending money on lowering emissions causing catastrophic climate change. Our national interest is beginning to look shaky. The Government has restricted essential health services, ignored people living in poverty and those made homeless through rising rents by negative-gearing landlords and given more tax cuts to the Rich. I’m beginning to feel lost in where the interests really are.
Australia should remain defensive not offensive. This is more cost-effective than remaining indebted to the US and UK for war toys that aren’t even available yet. It also ensures continued support from our essential trading partners.
The Northern Territory – from Pine Gap to the RAAF Base in Darwin – is fast becoming the USA’s place to play expensive and deadly wargames that make us a target for those with nuclear weapons ready for action.
Diana Rickard
27/11/2022
A question of War
We do live in a very unique location.
Connected geographically to the rest of the world, Darwin is my home. I love multi-cultural Darwin. With its mutual respect and the NT’s integral shared culture, we can visit many places of the world in our own city.
Here, we have it all.
I was born in Canada, spent my early childhood in Germany and lived in many different locations of Australia choosing to settle in this area.
Darwin being in such a unique position has physically felt the effects of war in 1942. My uncle speaks of being evacuated to Balaclava South Australia as a small child. He was from Katherine, 310 kilometres away when bombs fell on Darwin, killing 235 people and injuring up to 400. Civil and military facilities were destroyed as well as ships and aircraft. In the meantime, my grandfather was enlisted in the Australian Defence force on his way to fight in PNG.
On the other side of the world my father huddled in air raid shelters only 5 years old. He told me stories of seeing bodies floating in rivers and rummaging through the neighbours’ trash to find potato peels his mother could make soup from, digging in fields to collect grains that mice had collected for the winter to make bread.
My father was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1938, air raids a regular occurrence, the sound of air raid sirens blaring the norm. After an air attack in December 1943 a fire storm eventuated, fire hoses did not fit the custom-made connections to the hydrants and the water supply broke down quickly. More than 1800 people were killed. Churches, factories, homes, schools etc all destroyed. In another major air raid in 1944, 970 died and all amongst smaller raids.
One hundred and forty thousand people were left homeless and to put that into perspective the approximate population of Darwin.
I can name other areas of the world that suffered horribly from war from all sides and I am sure we all have our own stories to tell how war has affected us.
The world is changing at a tremendous pace and weapons of war have advanced to unimaginable proportions.
I will now speak of the present as the past has brought us here.
The deployment of Nuclear capable bombers to Katherine which are crucial to US strike capability marks a significant escalation to the militarising of Australia, the Indo – Pacific Region and the world. The US National Security Strategy recently proclaimed a “decisive decade of geopolitical conflict between the major powers”. It declared that “the ability to deploy US air force bombers to Australia sends a strong message to adversaries about our ability to project lethal air power“.
We are in a very convenient location, aren’t we?
Meanwhile the US is building eleven giant jet fuel tanks in Darwin and the Joint US-Australia Pine Gap facility in Alice Springs is also undergoing expansion.
In a recent ABC Four Corners report Becca Waser of the Centre for new American Security went on to declare that: ….” Darwin would inevitably be a target in any US war between China and Australia.”
This is real.
As The Australian newspaper pointed out recently: “The drumbeats of potential war are sounding across the world. This is not alarmist, it’s reality”.
I am not a fatalist. War can be prevented and diplomacy is a must. We live in such a beautiful multi-cultural environment in harmony and in appreciation of each other’s cultures. We in Darwin embrace culture. We learn from each other and see that respect and a peaceful world is possible, as we live it.
The plans to dispatch B-52s has not been discussed in parliament, has been not publicly announced and no public consultation given.
Australia is a nuclear-free nation state, so the contradictions are very alarming given the B-52s’ nuclear capabilities and the recent AUKUS alliance. Under this pact Australia is acquiring nuclear powered submarines – again – what a contradiction!
I am a member of the Darwin community and I am not clapping or smiling at the warplanes overhead while watching the sunset on Mindil Beach as shown in the 4 Corners report: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-31/war-games:-what-would-conflict-with-china-mean-for/101598584. The economic boost from War is not something to be embraced.
Because the Lord Mayor of Darwin said on the 4 corners program that he welcomed US soldiers to Darwin, I am asking questions as a citizen as follows:
Darwin is not out of reach of intercontinental ballistic missiles that have the range to carry a nuclear bomb over 5500 kilometres. This poses a very real risk to civilian life and infrastructure. Has the Darwin City Council established a strategy in this regard?
We have strategy and plans in place for cyclones as I have read your climate emergency strategy. Should we establish similar and start creating air raid shelters, sirens and warnings at what to do in case of a nuclear strike?
Please forgive my pessimism and sarcasm. I doubt anything will be done. Ignorance and denial may be the best policy! I am sure the regional economic plan does not include preparing for WW3! Imagine what that would do to our tourism industry? And – I’m not sure how our unique location would attract any one to come to live in the Northern Territory with the threat of nuclear fallout imminent.
I am asking for further discussion on this item.
Let’s promote peace, I believe this this is the best strategy.
Ingrid Schreiner
Missiles for Peace
Australia has just taken another step, as part of the AUKUS agreement with the US and the UK, that is leading us towards an event that should be unthinkable – involvement in a major war against China.
On Tuesday 16 January, Acting Defence Minister Pat Conroy announced a $37 million contract with Lockheed Martin Australia to begin the manufacturing in Australia in 2025 of GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) rockets, which have a range of around 70 kilometres. Australia will also purchase the longer range (over 500 kilometres) Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM), and will join the development program to extend their range to around 1000 kilometres in the future.
Lockheed Martin Australia’s parent company, Lockheed Martin, is the world’s biggest weapons maker, 90% of its revenue coming from weapons sales. Like other weapons companies, Lockheed Martin relies on wars and threats of wars for its existence. Its stocks rose almost immediately after the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians, its fighter jets being among those that are currently destroying Gaza. The company has profited greatly from the wars in Ukraine and Afghanistan and elsewhere.
While Minister Conroy reassured us that this investment “is contributing to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific”, long range weapons for Australia are, on the contrary, likely to have significant negative implications for peace (but very favourable impacts on Lockheed Martin’s bottom line). It should be noted also that while $37 million is small fry in terms of weapons programs, the government plans to spend $4.1 billion across the forward estimates on long range strike and missile manufacturing.
The official narrative with new weapons program announcements has become very familiar – we live in dangerous times, we face aggression from others and we have no choice but to deter attack by being better armed than any adversary, especially China. The narrative comes to a full stop at that point. There is no discussion as to what would happen if and when deterrence fails and war breaks out. There is an unspoken assumption of victory for our side, despite the experiences of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Any discussion of the vast human and other costs is taboo; they are for someone else to worry about, not the military strategists or the Lockheed Martin executives. Many other questions are similarly unanswered..
Most basically, what is the exact purpose of the missiles – to target what, and where? Given Australia’s increasingly close integration in training, hardware and doctrine with the US military, it seems extremely likely that they will be forward deployed in coalition with US forces in a major great-power war with China – a catastrophic situation that would serve no-one’s interests except those of the war profiteers. Importantly also, what are Indonesia and other neighbours to think, and will Indonesia or other regional nations plan to match Australia’s acquisition?
With long range missiles designed for offence rather than defence, Australia will in effect be feeding a regional arms race, with all the risks and costs that that carries. Michael Klare, professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in the US, states in his own country that the Pentagon’s drive for dominance in military technology “will consume an ever-increasing share of this country’s wealth and scientific talent, while providing negligible improvements in national security”. Australia faces the very same dangers.
Australians are being presented with a false choice. In August last year, ahead of the ALP National Conference, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy both sought to boost support for AUKUS, stating that the cost of deterrence was far less than that of going to war, the obvious implication being that AUKUS will prevent war. We can have AUKUS or war – take our pick.
It’s an appealing notion, but simplistic, deeply flawed and contrary to the lessons of history. Frightening arrays of military technology have repeatedly failed to deter armed attacks. Momentum towards war can become virtually unstoppable, as in 1914 when the tensions between powerful opposing militaries descended into four years of industrialised slaughter following a single assassination event.
Alfred W. McCoy, the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reminded us just a year ago, in relation to tensions over Taiwan, of “a tried-and-true historical lesson that bears repeating at this dangerous moment in history: when nations prepare for war, they are far more likely to go to war.”
Australia needs to start extricating itself from our deep entanglement with our US ally, who talks peace but is nearly always at war. With the distinct possibility of Donald Trump being the next US president, serious thought should be given to the extent of our “shared values” with that nation. Our overriding goal for the Indo-Pacific region should be the peaceful resolution of any crises and the avoidance of warfare – which are no more than our obligations under the 1951 ANZUS Treaty that unites Australia, New Zealand and the US. There is far more that Australia could be doing, such as committing to defence rather than offence in our military policies, finding an independent voice in foreign affairs matters, initiating arms control talks for the region, and, of course, giving priority attention to our existential threats – nuclear weapons and climate change
Rather than long-range missiles, we’d be better off with a long-range missive to the US telling them that war against China is not an option for Australia.
Dr Sue Wareham
President, Medical Association for Prevention of War
19 January, 2024