The head of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) said May 11 that he has seen little change in his service’s relationship with the U.S. Air Force and Navy despite President Donald Trump’s tendency to be skeptical of military alliances.
“Since President Trump took office, I’ve not seen a dramatic shift, if any shift, in the way I am able to relate with [U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff] Gen. [David] Goldfein, with the way I am able to relate to the United States Navy,” said Air Marshall Leo Davies, who has been chief of the RAAF since July 2015. “There have been no changes that I can clearly identify. For me, that’s a good sign that our relationship at a military-to-military level has not shifted. And I do not see anywhere on the horizon any need to shift.”
Davies’ comments came a week after Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull met May 4 in New York City, where they commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, a major World War II naval battle in which U.S. and Australian forces fended off the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The two leaders also “discussed the enduring bonds, deep friendship, and close alliance between the United States and Australia that have been critically important to the maintenance of regional and global peace and security,” according to a White House statement.
To counter modern threats, the RAAF is acquiring many of the same weapon systems as the U.S. military, presenting opportunities for increased collaboration, said Davies, who spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
The RAAF is buying at least 72 Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35As, the same Joint Strike Fighter variant flown by the U.S. Air Force. It also is buying Boeing [BA] P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, Northrop Grumman [NOC] MQ-4C Triton unmanned surveillance planes and Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic-attack aircraft, all of which are U.S. Navy assets, too.
Davies believes these new systems will allow Australia to play a greater role in promoting international security.
“We think we have more to contribute than we currently do, and we’d like the opportunity to do that,” he told the CSIS audience.
While the F-35 is designed to allow increased information-sharing among allies, countries will still want to protect their “sovereign data,” according to Davies.
“I still hold the view that there are some technological steps still to come,” he said. “We are, at the moment, able to allow foreign nationals to sit at a secret terminal on the Australian defense network and give them access to 90 percent of what’s available on that network and not the other 10 percent. If that is a simple example of what we are able to do, that is expandable.”