MILITARISM IN THE NT NEWSLETTER
Hello!
Welcome to the sixth edition of the Militarism in the NT newsletter. I plan to send out a newsletter with updates on US and Australian military plans and presence in the NT, and perhaps in northern Australia more broadly, roughly monthly.
Further information on the context and intention behind this newsletter at the bottom of the text.
Russia cites US missile launch from the NT in statement announcing exit from nuclear treaty
When the Russian foreign ministry declared that Russia “no longer considers itself bound” by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on Tuesday, August 5, 2025, it cited the US military’s firing of the mid-range Typhon missile system from the NT during the recent Talisman Sabre war drills as one of the reasons for leaving the treaty. An SM-6 missile was fired by the US military from a Typhon missile system on July 16 from the Bradshaw field training area in the Kimberlies, sinking a cargo ship dedicated to the purpose in waters off northern Australia.
The INF is an arms-control pact between the United States and the Soviet Union signed by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The INF treaty banned all U.S. and Russian ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles (both nuclear and conventional) with ranges between 500km to 5,500km, as well as their associated launchers. “By banning an entire class of weapons system”, writes the Australia Institute for International Affairs, “the treaty was more disarmament than arms control, and it closely articulated with the Reagan-Gorbachev grand vision of deep cuts in nuclear weapons”. The collapse of the INF treaty accelerates a new nuclear arms race that is already underway.
The US exited the treaty in 2019, testing a ground-launched cruise missile just 16 days after leaving the treaty. The launch of the SM-6 missile from the Bradshaw Training Area using the Typhon missile system would have been a prohibited activity under the terms of the treaty. In abandoning the treaty, the Russian foreign ministry noted that “[i]n the Asia-Pacific, under the pretext of exercises in April 2024, a Typhon medium-range missile system was delivered to the Philippines, where it remains. A similar system was used in July 2025 in Australia during the multinational Talisman Sabre 2025 exercises”.
Where is the Typhon weapon system now?
The 2023 Talisman Sabre war drills, the Guardian reports, provided a “discrete” opportunity for the US to preposition military equipment on this continent. Those war rehearsals “helped create new stockpiles of military equipment that were established in Australia after the drills ended in August”. “We’re looking to do this more and more,” said General Charles Flynn, the US army’s Pacific commander, at the time.
Likewise, analysts in the Philippines have accused the US of “using [military] exercises to de facto deploy key weapons to the region”.
A Typhon weapon system transported to the Philippines in April 2024 as part of the Salaknib war games has remained in the country ever since, where it is within striking range of mainland China. US officials claim that the weapons system remains in the Philippines at the request of the Philippines government. A spokesperson for the Philippine military contradicted this claim, saying that it is “up to the United States Army Pacific (USARPAC) to decide how long the missile system would stay”. A Chinese defence spokesperson has described the missile deployment as “a strategic offensive weapon reminiscent of the Cold War”.
A month after its deployment during the Talisman Sabre war drills, neither the US or Australian militaries have commented on where the system is now located. After the US exited the INF treaty in 2019, the Australian government stated that it would not allow this continent to be used for “land-launched mid-range missiles previously banned under the 1987 [INF]Treaty”. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at the time “It’s not been asked of us, not being considered, not been put to us. I think I can rule a line under that”.
The US military, however, has been clear that the transport of the Typhon weapon system to the Philippines and Australia is a stepping stone towards the “permanent basing” of the systems in the “Indo-Pacific region”.
Precedent in the Philippines and following previous Talisman Sabre war drills suggests there is a likelihood the US will once again make use of the “discrete” opportunity war drills present for pre-positioning military equipment without occasioning too much public backlash to permanently station weaponry previously banned under international treaties on this continent.
ABOUT THE MILITARISM IN THE NT NEWSLETTER
Many people are aware of US and Australian military presence in the NT, but perhaps less people are aware of just how much this military presence is intensifying as a perennially belligerent US prepares for war with China, and how much a new wave of extractivism in the NT is bound up with the US military industrial complex. For the fiscal year 2024/2025, northern Australia is “the top overseas location for U.S. Air Force and Navy construction spending, with more than $300 million set aside under the U.S. congressional defence authorisations for those years”, Reuters reports. Over the next decade, the Australian government will spend $30 billion on “hardening and upgrading” northern military bases, “partly to meet US requirements and partly paid for by the United States”.
The Northern Territory jurisdiction has participated in the US/Israeli holocaust in Gaza via the provision of intelligence gathered at the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility in Central Australia to Israel’s Signals Intelligence National Unit, and on to the Israeli military. The Northern Territory government is also busy renewing settler dominion at “home” by imprisoning unprecedented numbers of Aboriginal people. Politicians and the media have once again manufactured a racialised crime hysteria that is seeing Aboriginal children being brutalised by the police, prison wardens and an ever-expanding private security and surveillance apparatus. The mayor of Alice springs has called for the military to be deployed in the town.
The newsletter is motivated by a desire to contribute to activist movements against militarism and extractivism on this continent, and the deprivations of ecological justice and land rights for First Nations they cause. It is conceived as a small contribution to the international fight against imperialism and an effort at solidarity with colonised and subjugated peoples struggling for liberation and justice. It is also intended to precipitate more reporting and investigative journalism on these issues on the part of independent journalists and journalists working within traditional media organisations.
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested and/or forward me their email address and I’ll add it to my mailing list for future newsletters. If you’d rather not receive this newsletter in the future, let me know and I’ll remove your email address from the list.