The Tritons would complement the current surveillance aircraft Australia already uses to survey its maritime borders, conduct search and rescue, and carry out Freedom of Navigation exercises in the contested South China Sea.
“It is very important for us to know who is operating in our area and therefore be able to respond if necessary to any threats,” Pyne told ABC News.
“Australia insists on its right to be able to travel through the South China Sea in international waters as we have always done, whether that is with surface ships or with aircraft.”
Whatever intelligence the Australian Navy is able to glean from its surveillance operations will be shared with the other nations that are members of the “Five Eyes” — the United States, New Zealand, Canada and the UK.
“I think there is a view that this is a long time coming, previous prime ministers have been talking about these things, now it’s real, not just an idea,” said Michael Shoebridge, director of defense and strategy at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
He believes the announcement was prompted by the news that Canberra was spending $150 million of that money on a joint program with the US Navy to develop and sustain the aircraft at the Royal Australian Air Force base in Edinburgh, north of Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia state.
“I don’t think this will be news for the Chinese because it’s been a public thing that the Australian government has been investing in it,” Shoebridge told CNN. “It’ll just complement the Freedom of Navigation and overflight activities that the Australian Navy and Air Force are doing all the time, but it is making the point that it is having more Australian presence up there.”
China claims a great swathe of the South China Sea as its own territory, a claim that overlaps with Vietnamese and Filipino and other regional interests. The waters are some of the most hotly contested in the world.
Beijing held its own drills in the disputed territory in April, including a huge military parade overseen by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A statement from ministry spokesman Lu Kang called on the US to “immediately stop such provocative actions that encroach upon China’s sovereignty and threaten China’s security.”
The first of the new spy drones are not expected to come into operation until 2023, Turnbull announced, adding that all six would be delivered and in operation by late 2025.
Part of that alliance now serves to check China’s expanding influence in the Asia-Pacific, of which those freedom of navigation exercises are key.
You can’t have freedom of navigation and overflight if you don’t exercise it,” said Shoebridge of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“It’s empty words unless you have physical presence,” he said.
Source : Nbcnewyork