A US Air Force B-52H Stratofortress and a Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18F Super Hornet fly over the Northern Territory during Exercise Talisman Sabre 23. (Australian MoD)
SYDNEY — For the first time, the United States and an array of allies and partners were able to share communications, targeting and other data all through a single system during the just-completed Talisman Sabre exercise here.
“One of the chief things that’s plagued these exercises in the past is our ability to communicate. To that tend, we’ve developed a mission partner environment which will be standing long after this exercise,” US Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of Army I Corps, told Breaking Defense in an interview during the exercise.
“It allows us to stay in contact in the region that provides both chat and data, voice and video,” he said. The potential demonstrated by this is huge.”
More than 34,000 military personnel from 13 nations joined forces across sea, land, air, cyber and space during the exercise, which spread across most of Australia. The two main participants, Australia and the United States, operated with soldiers, sailors, marines and aviators from Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Tonga and the UK.
In addition, personnel from India, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand observed the exercise. (Brunson said India and Singapore plan to participate in the next iteration of the biennial exercise.) It was the first time participating for Indonesia, Fiji, France, Germany, Papua New Guinea and Tonga, sending a clear message to China that allied and partner militaries are willing and capable of training together across vast distances and to effectively share information.
The new mission partner environment, which Brunson referred to as a “unit,” is formally the Combined Joint Network Operations Security Center (CJ-NOSC). The new center “gives us the ability [to] collaborate along with our partners, which hasn’t existed before,” he said. “We’ve never set up this kind of construct before.”
In the past, if an ally or partner walked into a US Tactical Operations Center (TOC) they would only have access to information equal to the clearance level their country had. As a simple example, the Five Eyes nations would have access to almost everything, but other partners wouldn’t. A new security setup allows partners “to access the information necessary for [them] to conduct operations.” This mean that, for the first time, Brunson said, those partners “were able to to participate fully.”
He compared this capability to the JADC2 effort in the US, which is designed to bring all American domains of operation together, but he was clear that the CJ-NOSC is not part of the JADC2 formal line of effort.
US Stocks, Operations Center To Remain In Australia
On top of leaving this new capability in place in Australia, the United States is also taking a number of other steps to increase regional readiness for Australia and the US. As Breaking Defense reported yesterday, the US plans to leave behind “logistic support equipment,” such as tanker trucks and other transportation equipment instead of loading it back onto US ships carrying prepositioned equipment. That means that in the future, instead of having to go through Australia’s rigors pest and agriculture inspections before unloading equipment, some of that gear will simply stay here.
Brunson pointed to the simple tyranny of distance as a major factor the US has to plan for as it’s looking at potential operations across the mighty Pacific Ocean. “There’s this recognition that my base is 11,600 kilometers away from the region where I just participated in an exercise. So for me, this was a rehearsal, he said. “And it causes me to think about really challenging assumptions I had about how we deploy, how we alert, marshal and how we posture in the region to achieve the objective set for it. I think that what we see is, it’s difficult.”
In addition to the prepositioned stocks remaining in Australia, a US Air Force “mission planning” and operations center will be built in Darwin, Northern Territory, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported last week. That will doubtless help support the B-52s, B-2s, F-35s and other US aircraft that persistently visit Australia. Permanent facilities are planned for Tindal Air Base, near Darwin, to house and service up to six B-52s.
At least one Chinese spy ship was on hand to observe portions of the exercise. A Dongdiao Class Auxiliary General Intelligence (AGI) vessel was tracked near Shoalwater Bay, where much of Talisman Sabre’s live fire exercises occurred.
The Royal Australian Air Force Deployable Defence Air Traffic Management and Control System (DDATMCS) Operations Cabin and Transportable Air Operations Tower (TAOT) set up at RAAF Base Curtin, Western Australia, during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2023. Credit: Australian LACW Annika Smit
Australian Chief of Joint Operations Lt. Gen. Greg Bilton said he deployed a P-8 surveillance aircraft to contact the Chinese vessel. “It located the AGI, we hailed the AGI, we got a courteous response as you’d expect in normal interactions in international waters,” Bilton told reporters who observed live fire exercises in late July.
There were a number of firsts achieved during Talisman Sabre 2023. The Australian Defense Force and US troops employed the US Army Tactical Missile System (ATACAMS), “which successfully fired and struck a long range target,” an official release on the exercise said. Japan demonstrated its first live fire here of a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Type 12 Surface-to-Ship and Type 3 Chu-SAM Surface-to-Air missiles.
South Korea deployed its K-239 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems and K-9 Thunder Self-Propelled artillery system to Australia for the first time. And the RAAF used its Deployable Defence Air Traffic Management and Control System for the first time to provide Joint Battlefield Airspace Control and air traffic management throughout the exercise.
So what is the overriding lesson of Talisman Sabre? “The key assumption proved here is the participation of other nations in this exercise that gives us insight into their willingness to participate and stand alongside us in the region. I think that if there was an assumption that’s proven out, it’s the fact that nations are willing to come together to great effect,” Brunson said. “This is more than just Australia and the United States. This is the region coming together to participate and contribute to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
