More American military equipment could soon be repaired in Australia, rather than returning to the USA for maintenance.
The Pentagon wants to increase the use of regional maintenance, repair and overhaul providers to support equipment that is forward deployed in the Indo-Pacific, as Washington seeks to better prepare its forces for any potential conflict in the vast region.
Under an initiative called the Regional Sustainment Framework (RSF) announced in 2024, the US Department of Defense says that, when possible, it will seek to move away from repairing its ships and aircraft at home and instead make use of locally available MRO resources.
“Currently, we return assets to the continental United States for major repairs, missing an opportunity to use existing ally or partner nation MRO capabilities for shared weapons systems,” the RSF strategy document says.
Instead, the Pentagon will attempt to fill those sustainment needs locally with assets owned by “partner nations, industrial partners or through cooperative partnerships”.
Washington says this will allow it to service critical equipment closer to the point of need, “in both competition and conflict”.
How exactly that will work in practical terms remains nebulous. Since the RSF strategy was unveiled, new leadership has come to power in Washington, preaching the signature “America First” transactional nationalist philosophy of President Donald Trump.
That could mean a renewed preference for steering business toward American firms at home.
Alternatively, regional MRO partnerships could be seen as furthering the priorities of the new defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who emphasised a “laser focus on readiness, lethality and war-fighting” during his first month in office.
Without offering specifics as to how the RSF will be rolled out, the Pentagon tells FlightGlobal the strategy is ”still a priority for the department as far as how we sustain the force”.
Some hints are available as to how the new approach may unfold. The RSF strategic outline calls for weapon platforms to be selected based on “relevance to operational plans” and overlap with Foreign Military Sales customers.
Industry sources also tell FlightGlobal that Australia is Washington’s first priority when it comes to expanding the use of local MRO providers for American-owned equipment.
Deeper sustainment cooperation with Australia would support all three of the goals outlined in the RSF strategy: prevailing in a contested logistics environment, enhancing military readiness and strengthening regional partnerships.
Canberra also operates many of the same systems deployed by the US military in the Indo-Pacific, including the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter, Boeing EA-18G electronic attack fighter, Northrop Grumman MQ-4C uncrewed surveillance aircraft and Boeing P-8A maritime patrol jet.
The Royal Australian Air Force also operates the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control platform, which the US Air Force is in the process of acquiring.
That overlap would allow the Pentagon to take advantage of existing sustainment networks, in addition to Australia’s strategic geographic position much closer to potential flash points around Taiwan and the South China Sea – moving key repair hubs forward across thousands of miles of potentially contested ocean.
Australia also stands to benefit from the new arrangement, and not just from additional contracts for domestic firms.
In its 2024 Defence Industry Development Strategy, Canberra said close industrial collaboration will help the country build “strategic weight” and make Australia “less vulnerable to coercion”.
“The goal is to build capable, resilient, competitive and secure supply chains that include Australian businesses, and create economies of scale of scale for the security and stability of the Indo-Pacific,” the strategy notes.
Despite enjoying support from both the US and Australian governments, the push to deepen industrial linkages between the two countries does face some impediments from within the defence industry itself.
Chief among these is apprehension from American firms about proprietary company secrets finding their way into the hands of potential competitors.
“Concerns about there being documents that would be interesting to Australian industry that they just can’t see and that they don’t know about was a pretty pervasive concern,” says Cynthia Cook, with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The group earlier this month released a report (sponsored by the Australian government) detailing pathways and barriers to further defence industrial cooperation between the USA and Australia.
Cook notes there is a culture of caution within the US defence industry when it comes to sharing information, driven in part by the USA’s strict International Traffic in Arms Regulations that restrict the export of sensitive military technologies, even to allies.
“We had one company tell us that they were concerned about talking to foreign nationals about things that appeared on their website,” she says.
That culture of reticence may have to change if ambitious industrial goals outlined in RSF and the trilateral AUKUS security pact are to be achieved.
Washington’s top American military officer in the Indo-Pacific recently went even further, calling for integration between the Washington and certain key allies in the hemisphere on some of this century’s most crucial sectors.
Speaking at the Honolulu Defense Forum in February, US Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Samuel Paparo said American policy makers should go beyond the use of local MRO capacity and embrace regional expertise in areas such as semiconductor production, rare earth minerals processing and shipbuilding.
“Japan, South Korea and Australia possess tremendous manufacturing capability,” Paparo noted. “By coordinating our efforts, we can achieve the surge production that the environment demands.”
Adversaries of the US-led bloc are already engaged in that type of industrial cooperation, Paparo added, noting 90% of semiconductors and 70% of machine tools supporting Russia’s wartime economy are coming from China.
In return, Beijing is receiving Russian military technology developed under the Soviet Union, including expertise in submarine and aerospace manufacturing.
Under the trilateral AUKUS security pact, Australia, the USA and the UK have agreed to cooperate on the development of critical new technologies, including hypersonic flight and artificial intelligence.
