Australian Ships Tour the South Pacific

At the start of June, four ships from Australia’s naval fleet set off from the northeastern Australian city of Townsville for the South Pacific. The vessels, led by the HMAS Adelaide, one of the Royal Australian Navy’s two Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ships, were off to begin this year’s Indo-Pacific Endeavor (IPE 18). The exercise is the second iteration of the IPE and forms part of Australian Defense Force (ADF) efforts to reaffirm its constructive relationships with the defenses forces of other friendly nations.

Last year’s initial Indo-Pacific Endeavor (IPE 17) traversed Northeast and Southeast Asia, as well as into the Indian Ocean, making port calls in Micronesia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Timor-Leste, Cambodia, Thailand, and India. However, this year the Indo-Pacific Endeavor is demonstrating a significant pivot toward Australia’s South Pacific neighborhood. In doing so, it’s delivering on the 2016 Defense White Paper, and the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper, which both stressed the importance of Australia’s re-engagement with its traditional area of influence. IPE18 is geared toward enhancing interoperability with Australia's key regional partners, including Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands.

Over 1,200 ADF personnel will be engaged in a range of practical cooperation exercises with national security forces throughout the South Pacific. These exercises will include disaster assistance planning, a number of community engagement initiatives, multinational naval maneuvers, as well as significant on-shore defense and security training. The IPE 18 exercise is also notable for having several dozen United States Marines embedded into the Australian naval forces, as well as a number of Sri Lankan personnel involved in cooperative activities within the ADF.

For Australia, the pivot toward the South Pacific is a re-establishment of its primary strategic goal of preventing outside actors – or non-like-minded actors – from establishing too strong a presence throughout the region. For this to be enhanced in a constructive manner requires sustained and cooperative engagement, something that seems to have been lacking in recent years as Australia has prioritized its more economically lucrative partnerships. It seems that only through the increase in Chinese activity in the region – and potentially the uncertainty around future U.S. regional commitment – has Australia been able to recognize how important its immediate region is to its own interests, and security responsibilities.

Alongside its traditional defense cooperation with regional security forces, IPE 18 has also coordinated with the South Pacific’s Pacific Patrol Boat program. This is an initiative begun by Canberra in 1987 to provide Pacific Island states with some means of patrolling their own (often very large) exclusive economic zones (EEZ), and to protect their own economic sovereignty (and in particular crack down on the overfishing of the region’s tuna). The program provides both patrol vessels and technical assistance to local maritime security agencies for this task. In 2002 the program was continuously funded by the Howard government until 2027.

While IPE 18 has mostly been designed as a naval exercise, it has engaged in some essential practical actions. In response to the ongoing impact of volcanic activity on Vanuatu’s Ambae Island, the HMAS Success – a naval supply vessel – delivered much needed emergency supplies including tents, solar street lighting, solar lanterns for personal use, bed nets, and water tanks to support the basic needs of those who have been evacuated from the island and the communities hosting them. On its Tongan leg IPE 18 also delivered five new Unimog transport vehicles to the Tongan security forces, in order to enhance their capability to respond to natural disasters. In light of an increase in regional natural disasters, an enhanced disaster response capacity is the primary focus for most of the security forces of Pacific Island states.

At the completion of the IPE 18 exercises, the four naval vessels will head north to take part in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), the biennial multinational joint exercise staged in and around the Hawaiian Islands, that will run throughout July. RIMPAC is the world’s largest maritime exercise and this year the navies from 26 states will be participating, with Tongan maritime forces traveling with the Australian forces to the exercise. This year’s exercise is notable for China being “disinvited” due to its activity in the South China Sea. The Chinese Navy had previously participated in RIMPAC 2014 and 2016.