Rotating Marine expeditionary unit potentially coming to Australia

2/6/2012

Since President Barack Obama made the announcement last year that Marines would be deployed to the city of Darwin, Australia, military analysts and the media alike have been speculating what the new presence in the region will look like. Over the weekend, two top officers in the Navy suggested that the U.S. may deploy a rotating Marine expeditionary unit in the region, reports Military Times.

In the immediate future, this option would only mean a couple hunderd more Marines and sailors would be sent to the Robertson Barracks in Darwin. However, before 2020, this number could rise into the thousands. With that figure in mind, military leaders are working out the logistics of what equipment and vessels will be needed to sustain the presence in the future.

"We need to shake out the lift," Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, told reporters, according to the news source. "The question we need to ask ourselves, I think, is 'Are we going to go with a traditional amphibious ready group of lift and a traditional MEU, or are we going to tailor the MAGTF to something maybe different?'"

The upcoming troop dispersal to Australia isn't the only way that the U.S. military is involved with the nation. According to CNN, several military helicopters and a C-130 cargo plane were recently dispatched to Queensland to help with evacuations from floods.