Deep in the red dirt of the Australian outback, a joint force of US and Japanese troops has begun assembling in numbers not seen since the second world war. Britain’s Five Eyes allies are bracing for a seismic shift in the Pacific’s balance of power, with the explicit target being China’s growing military reach. For the people of Alice Springs and the tiny towns that dot the Stuart Highway, this means more than foreign uniforms and heavy equipment rumbling through their streets. It means a local economy suddenly swollen with defence contracts and canteen workers, but also a creeping anxiety about what happens when the world’s superpowers choose your backyard as their chessboard.
The exercise, dubbed ‘Talisman Sabre’, has been a fixture for years, but this year’s iteration is different in scale and focus. More than 30,000 troops are expected to participate, with Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force taking a central role for the first time. In practical terms, that means thousands of Japanese soldiers living, training and spending money in remote communities that have struggled since the mining boom ended. Local pub owners report a surge in trade, and motels that were half-empty now have waiting lists. But the bonanza comes with strings. Many residents, particularly Indigenous communities whose land rights are often complicated by defence interests, express unease. “They come, they spend, they leave,” said one elder from a nearby community. “But the land remembers.”
For the labour unions representing workers at the joint facilities, the deployment is a double-edged sword. The Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) has raised concerns about safety standards and the use of contractors who pay well below award rates. Meanwhile, the Australian Defence Force insists that the training will boost local employment and skills. In Darwin, where the US Marine Corps already rotates a contingent of 2,500 marines, the economic impact is clear: housing prices have jumped 15 per cent in the past two years, pushing local renters further out. The same story is unfolding in Queensland’s Shoalwater Bay, where live-fire exercises are expected to disturb fishing grounds and tourism.
Diplomatically, the buildup is being framed as a defensive necessity. The AUKUS pact, which will see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines from Britain and the US, is the cornerstone of this strategy. But critics argue that the massive presence of foreign troops makes Australia a larger target rather than a safer one. For British readers, there is a familiar echo: the same mix of economic dependency and strategic vulnerability that underpins the UK’s own military bases in places like Cyprus and the Falklands. The difference here is the sheer scale. The outback is vast, but the hardware is immense – F-35 fighters, Aegis destroyers and long-range artillery that can reach deep into the South China Sea.
At the kitchen table level, the real impact is on the cost of living. A defence boom inflates everything from rent to groceries, as supply chains stretch to feed and house thousands of soldiers. For pensioners and low-income families in towns like Katherine and Tennant Creek, the influx means higher prices without higher wages. Local workers in hospitality and retail see only modest pay rises, while the profits flow to contractors headquartered in Sydney or overseas. Union organisers are pushing for enterprise agreements that tie any government subsidy to local hiring and living wages, but so far the federal government has sidestepped those demands.
In the long term, the Five Eyes alliance is betting that this show of force will deter conflict rather than provoke it. But for the Australians hosting this armada, the cost is being counted now – in dollars, in privacy, and in the quiet erosion of a way of life that had little to do with superpower rivalry. As one farmer near the training range put it: “We hear the jets, we feel the dust. The question is whether they’ll leave behind anything but empty fuel drums.”
