Runway extensions, new military infrastructure and US planning are transforming the Cocos Islands into a strategically important forward operating base, with little public debate about the role Australia is assuming in a future conflict with China.
Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands are being prepared for a significant role in a future US military conflict with China. Military infrastructure developments on the islands are accelerating but the location has not been publicly announced as a new US military base. Instead, military construction is proceeding, veiled through separate Australian construction projects, American military tenders, alliance force-posture arrangements and commercial port infrastructure.
Cocos is a tiny island atoll 2,800 kms northwest of Perth, and 1,000 kms south of Indonesia. It is a colonial remnant without an indigenous population, incorporated as a territory into Australia in 1958 and which the last census tells us is home to 593 people.
An understated Australian effort is underway to upgrade the airstrip without letting on to the public that it’s part of a much bigger US military plan to militarise the island for a potential confrontation with China. The US military plan for the islands was not reported to the public by an Australian minister or in a government press release. The full picture was not picked up by defence and security experts. The earliest solid evidence came from an Australian reporter. In August 2024, Kirsty Needham working for Reuters news agency unearthed military documents proving that the US military was eyeing off the Australian islands: “A US Navy construction tender published in June for various base infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific lists Cocos Islands as a possible project location.”
In June 2024, the US Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Pacific listed infrastructure works for new forward based military facilities under what it calls, its ‘Pacific Deterrence Initiative’. Locations listed include the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea, and quietly included in the list is a valuable piece of Australian territory, the Cocos Islands.
The Pacific Deterrence Initiative is a US$15-billion eight-year project intended to disperse and strengthen American military infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific in preparation for possible conflict with China. It is the largest US military expenditure in the Pacific region in 80 years, and it comes as the US prepares to militarily challenge China’s growing economic competition and influence in the region.
The document reveals the United States is specifically looking to use the Cocos Islands to project airborne power across the eastern Indian Ocean, through the Indonesian archipelago shipping passages, and into the South China Sea.
The United States finally looks to be realising its long-held wish to make Cocos Islands an airbase for American military. In March 2012 the Washington Post had reported: “US and Australian officials said the atoll could be an ideal site not only for manned US surveillance aircraft, but for Global Hawks, an unarmed, high-altitude surveillance drone.”
The US military’s plans for Cocos will develop the island far beyond the 2023 Defence Strategic Review to upgrade Australia’s northern air bases. Moreover, these plans would appear to breach an agreement with the United Nations not to “militarise” the islands made by Australia when persuading key nations to support the transfer of the former British possession to Australian sovereignty in the 1950s.
The significance of the Cocos Islands base is unlikely to register high in the public’s mind until it is a fully functioning base for United States military operations against China. Still, an Australian Defence Force spokesperson disingenuously buried the truth by saying in August 2024, following the Reuters report: “There is currently no US investment at Cocos.” With the revelation that the US investment on Cocos had already kicked off two months earlier with the opening of the billion-dollar construction tender process for US facilities on the island, this official statement was manifestly intentionally misleading.
‘Here come the marines’
The type of US military use of Cocos Islands may have been unintentionally revealed by a US spokesperson when he said of the US plans for infrastructure construction on Cocos Islands: “These projects may or may not support the Darwin Marines Rotational Force.”
This force, which is on permanent rotation through Darwin, has grown incrementally from an initial deployment of 200 marines in 2012 to 2,500 personnel today. There are some defence experts who want it boosted significantly in size and capability, perhaps to as many as 16,000 marines. With support ships and aircraft, such a large number would make up a complete Marine Expeditionary Brigade of 20 battalions of marines, sailors and air crew.
The US marine forces in Australia and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region are an important part of an emerging American policy that aims to challenge China’s economic rise by targeting China’s essential sea lanes. This distant blockading strategy would aim to cripple China’s economy or bring about regime change, without a full-scale war or invasion. Whether China would accept its own ‘death by a thousand cuts’ seems remote, and a wider war would seem inevitable.
The strategy of blocking China’s sea-borne trade is being openly debated and refined in strategic and defence circles in Washington and by major pro-US ‘think tanks’. In 2013, the RAND Corporation examined the military strategies to succeed in defeating China, and in 2026, the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), published a study of the trade implications of maritime chokepoints on countries like Australia. The strangulation of shipping chokepoints – especially oil and gas shipping lanes – has been exposed in the US war of aggression against Iran as a crucial offensive strategy.
Implementing a “distant blockade” to intercept Chinese shipping at key chokepoints relies heavily on the marines force, according to strategic analyst, Brian Berletic, a former US marine who has studied US warfighting and strategic planning. He points out: “The entire US Marine Corps has been tailored solely to wage war against Chinese shipping across the Asia-Pacific and beyond.”
The large expeditionary force of US marines, aircraft and amphibious ships operating regularly out of Darwin would be certain to use the massive airstrip and new harbour facilities, along with new US military infrastructure, being built on Cocos Islands as “support [for] the Darwin Marines Rotational Force”, and as a forward staging point in a conflict with China.
Half a billion dollars for ‘an airstrip’
Plans for upgrading the civilian airport runway on the main West Island of Cocos Islands were announced by the Australian government in January 2020. A $184 million Defence contract was signed to widen and strengthen the island’s civilian airstrip “to support the P-8A Poseidon Maritime Surveillance and Response aircraft, and other aircraft operations”. Construction was due to be complete by mid-2023.
As is often the case, Defence intentions are revealed by increments. From the initial widening and strengthening of the airstrip, a much expanded project was announced in January 2023. The full project’s new estimated cost has blown out to a massive $568 million, three times the original cost. Defence says this is due to an increase in “the project’s scope to extend the runway”. A 150-metre runway extension was needed to allow the P-8A Poseidon aircraft to take off with a full fuel load and a maximum weapons payload. The expanded parking aprons and upgraded fuel storage are part of the plan.
What was previously a temporary construction wharf at the Rumah Baru Port Facility on West Island to offload materials for the construction works has been expanded. A permanent wharf and support facilities are now being constructed at the port for offloading substantial quantities of materiel, fuel, maintenance equipment, spare parts, ground vehicles and personnel.
The full extent of the US’s ‘Pacific Deterrence Initiative’ project for the Cocos Islands is being kept a close secret by both governments. At the same time, while billions are to be spent on the new military base facilities, islanders are suspicious of federal government plans for relocations of many of the islands’ 600 residents, ostensibly due to the costs of responding to predicted sea-level rises driven by climate change.
The potentially billion-dollar military development of Cocos Islands awaits Australia’s completion of the massive runway extension works, with the delayed work scheduled for 2029 completion. The US military works are set to begin soon after.
The submarine hunter-killer airbase
The Department of Defence states the RAAF’s P-8A Poseidon submarine hunter-killer will be the principal aircraft to use the upgraded Cocos Islands runway, along with new Triton MQ-4C unmanned surveillance drones. These are some extraordinarily capable war-fighting aircraft.
The P-8A Poseidon is in extensive use around the world by the US Air Force (USAF) and has just been acquired by the RAAF. It is described by the USAF when used by its allies like Australia, as its “global force multiplier”.
The aircraft and the drones to fly from Cocos complement each other in global surveillance and war-fighting. The MQ-4C drones fly high-altitude broad area maritime surveillance and target acquisition missions from Australia that can take them huge distances over China, Russia, Africa and the Middle East.
With a range of over 15,000 kms, flying at an altitude of 15 kms, the missions can last more than 24 hours. The RAAF operates three of these MQ-4C Tritons of its intended fleet of seven, presently flying them from RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory.
The crewed P-8A Poseidon aircraft performs the lower altitude intelligence gathering and reconnaissance role, described by the RAAF as maritime surveillance, a benign sounding term more associated by the public with detecting people smuggling vessels or illegal fishing.
It is far more than that – the P-8A Poseidon is a formidable submarine hunter-killer and anti-ship attack platform, making the plan to base these aircraft on Cocos clearer. With a mission range of over 2,000 kms, they can hunt down and target vessels across the whole of the Malacca Strait between Malaysia and Indonesia. The Strait is a chokepoint for around 25 per cent of the globe’s maritime trade, and 80 per cent of China’s oil importation.
The Poseidon has what’s titled an ISTAR role – intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, reconnaissance. It is equipped with radar, acoustic sensors, electronic-surveillance equipment, plus a total of 129 submarine-detecting sonobuoys that can identify and track warships and submarines, and generate targeting data.
The aircraft is armed to be able to attack those targets with its complement of four anti-ship Harpoon cruise missiles on its wings, and five MK-54 anti-submarine torpedoes in internal bomb bays. The USAF’s 128 Poseidons and the RAAF’s 14 aircraft are presently being upgraded to carry even more advanced long-range weaponry.
They will be fitted with two new missiles – the new Lockheed Martin AI autonomous AGM-158C LRASM (long range anti-ship missile) and Northrop Grumman’s supersonic anti-radar defence missile, the AGM-88G AARGM-ER (advanced anti-radiation guided missile – extended range) – each doubling the range of the aircraft’s present armoury to 300 kms.
These missile payloads make the P-8A Poseidon a far, far more lethal attack aircraft, than the benign description of ‘maritime surveillance’ that the Defence Department would have you believe.
The expanding war-fighting role of Cocos
In February 2023, the Defence Department announced a $22-million project on Cocos Islands to upgrade it as a ‘forward operating base’ for electronic warfare support. The building works include an Air Operations and Mission Planning facility, and a secure data and communications hub for connection to the main operating base at RAAF Base Edinburgh in South Australia.
This improved data handling and operational capacity being developed at this Cocos airbase will see operation of four newly acquired MC-55A Peregrine aircraft for ISREW missions – intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, electronic warfare. These aircraft intercept and analyse electronic communications and data signals. They are used to target hostile radar systems and other threats, in a seamless web of data sharing with other allied air forces and militaries.
The aerial spying by the MC-55A Peregrine aircraft surpasses the land-based Defence radio receiving station that has been operated by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) on the southern end of West Island since the 1990s.
First reported by journalist Philip Dorling in 2013 the listening post intercepts signals and radio traffic in Asian nations, particularly Indonesian naval, air force and military communications. The facility is remotely operated from ASD headquarters in Russell Hill, Canberra.
The upgraded Cocos Islands ‘forward operating base’ will also host the RAAF’s E-7A Wedgetail aircraft, an enormously capable aircraft used for electronic surveillance, complex battle management, air tracking and radar coordination during a live conflict. This plane is war-tested, having already been used in support of the US and NATO in conflict operations in Europe and the Middle East. Two were deployed in March this year to assist the UAE in the American war of aggression against Iran, and in Poland last year to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia. With the Cocos Islands base upgraded for ‘forward operations’, these aircraft will certainly see action in any US conflict with China.
Fuelling the extended range of US bombers
It is the airfield’s expanded use by military refuelling tankers that is another important reason for the runway workings being undertaken.
Aerial tankers operating from the airbase on Cocos Islands will extend the 1,000 km combat range for Australia’s F-35A Lightning II fighter jets from continental defence to more than 1,500 kms, well over the shipping chokepoints in the South China Sea.
The tarmac reinforcement works on Cocos is being done specifically to allow operation of massively heavy airborne refueller planes, which can weigh as much as 233,000 kg fully loaded. Australia has seven of the KC-30A refueller aircraft, the US has more than 400 aerial refuellers, many of which operate on rotation out of its 15 major Asia-Pacific US airbases.
Construction of an operational US base at Darwin airport for American KC refuellers, and for six B-52 long-range nuclear bombers, is presently advancing. These will add to the six US B-52 bombers sent to operate out of RAAF Base Tindal. For refuelling these and other planes in flight, the US Air Force has deployed as many as 12 of its KC-46A Pegasus and KC-135 Stratotankers to Darwin and Tindal RAAF bases, during extended exercises.
The Cocos runway upgrades, with the tarmac being built stronger for the heavy refuellers, will allow a much further ‘forward deployment’ of USAF aircraft and refuellers, extending the range of their military aircraft heading on lethal missions in a conflict in the seas to the north.
These plans, the enhancement of the massive half-billion-dollar runway, the permanent wharf and airbase infrastructure – alongside the upcoming expansion under the US military’s ‘Pacific Deterrence Initiative’ – will transform Cocos from a limited civilian airfield with occasional military use, into a forward operating base supporting a much larger military presence.
The base will become “critical geography” for the US deterring and applying pressure to China, says maritime security expert, Darshana Baruah of the Australia India Institute: “The strategic location of Cocos Islands, close to both the Strait of Malacca as well as Australia’s northern approaches, gives it immense geostrategic advantages.”
The Cocos Islands are becoming a frontline player in a future war against China.
* Prepared with valuable research assistance from David Higginbottom.
Republished from Declassified Australia
Peter Cronau is an investigative journalist and co-founder of Declassified Australia. He is a former senior producer for ABC TV’s investigative documentary program Four Corners, and has won numerous journalism awards including the Gold Walkley.