The Australian defence force expects that Chinese intelligence will seek to monitor Talisman Sabre, a military training exercise involving 30,000 personnel from 13 countries including the US and Pacific neighbours.
There is precedent for such monitoring attempts. In 2021, the Australian government said it was keeping an eye on the Chinese auxiliary general intelligence vessel Tianwangxing as it approached Australia’s east coast in the run-up to Talisman Sabre.
Germany and Indonesia will be among the countries participating for the first time in Talisman Sabre. The two-week exercise begins on Friday and will be held across numerous locations including Queensland’s Shoalwater Bay.
The director of the exercise, Brig Damian Hill, said he expected Chinese intelligence to seek to monitor the event again this year.
“Even though they’re not invited, they still turn up,” he said. “But they haven’t asked to be invited either.”
Hill said such monitoring had not impeded previous Talisman Sabre exercises, and Australia’s expectation was that any such vessels operate in accordance with international law.
In 2021, the Tianwangxing was reported to remain outside Australian territorial waters but within Australia’s exclusive economic zone.
Hill declined to say whether the ADF had already detected any Chinese vessels in transit, saying it was “not within my remit to do so” but added: “Our expectation is that there will be.”
He confirmed that Australia and other countries put in place measures to protect communications during the exercise: “Absolutely we do.”
Hill said it was “fantastic” to have Germany participate in Talisman Sabre for the first time and for South Korea to be making an “expanded commitment” since the last exercise. Japan, he said, would fire its type 12 surface-to-ship missile in Jervis Bay, south of Sydney.
“It’s really great to see more nations - specifically nations that either have a Pacific strategy or are actually in the Indo-Pacific – participating in the exercise,” he said.
Indonesia, which will be a full participant in Talisman Sabre for the first time, would have two focus areas.
“The first one is integrating and undertaking amphibious activities, so they’ll be integrating with us some Indonesian marines,” Hill said.
“The second one is they’ll undertake a parachute insertion into Shoalwater Bay in early August alongside our US friends as well, which is a particular interest to them.”
Hill said it was also the first time a number of Pacific nations – including Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga – would be integrated within the ADF units in Talisman Sabre.
“So we’ve had them around the exercise before, but not in the nature that we have this time. What we’ve tried to do is incorporate them more fully into the exercise,” he said.
“We share the same region, we are effectively geographic families and so we should be working more closely together more often.
“The great benefit of working with people in the region is that if there is a disaster, or something that needs to be done, we can immediately speak to the person who we may have exercised with a year ago or five minutes ago.”
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told reporters in New Delhi in March that India had been invited to participate in Talisman Sabre – but the country has since confirmed that it won’t join this year.
Hill said India was fully committed to the upcoming exercise Malabar and had “made a careful decision based upon what they can and cannot do”.
“But it’s great that we’ve got four Indian officers participating once again as observers – and we’re working very hard with India to offer them the opportunity to participate fully in 2025.”
Logistics will be a key focus of this year’s exercise, with the US planning to build a 540m-long temporary pier in Bowen in north Queensland over 10 days.
“Then we’ll bring some US army and other amphibious vessels alongside and then effectively deliver vehicles, armoured vehicles and the like from offshore onshore and then drive them through the streets of Bowen – carefully – and then up to the exercise area in Townsville,” Hill said.
Australia and the US are also planning to establish a logistics and medical headquarters at Gallipoli barracks in Brisbane, with “nodes” connected to all of the areas where the exercises will be happening.
“The exercise is more geographically spread than it ever has been … it’s about 6,000km from the westernmost part of the exercise to the easternmost part, which is the distance between Hawaii and Chicago.
“It requires very careful logistics and medical planning. So we’ve created two combined headquarters, that are specifically looking at how do we support and protect the people operating across vast distances.
“Even though we’re doing this in Australia, it absolutely could be replicated if we were operating in the region.”
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the Australian deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, are expected to visit troops participating in the exercise in north Queensland.
Austin and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will first travel to Brisbane next week for annual talks with Marles and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong.
The Australian government said the meeting would focus on “ways to deepen collaboration across the breadth of the relationship, including on defence and security cooperation, climate and clean energy and economic resilience”.
