More than 700 Australian troops are embedded with the United States and its allies as Washington and Tehran trade blows over the Strait of Hormuz, a Senate estimates hearing has been told. Australia’s Chief of Defence, Admiral David Johnston, told the hearing on Wednesday there were 729 ADF personnel embedded with the United States and United Kingdom armed forces. He said there were likely to be more significantly embedded with American troops. A further 96 personnel were Australian public servants, he said.
Of those forces, only a small number “might find themselves in a tactical unit”, Admiral Johnston said. However, with war in the Middle East on the precipice of reigniting, Admiral Johnston said a number of troops had “a very clear understanding of that remit that limits a number of them to defensive roles only, as authorised by the Australian government”, such as the deployment of the E-7A Wedgetail to the United Arab Emirates.
“The directive, and there are role specific elements of it, but the clear purpose is that Australia is not involved in offensive operations against Iran,” he said. “A number of people may have the ability to, depending on their task around defensive missions, and the government has used the E7 aircraft as an example of how that type of role would be performed in a defensive mission sent to support UAE and the Gulf states.”
The hearing was later told reconnaissance information obtained by the Wedgetail was also being provided to US allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. The information included “airbase threats to those countries”, including the source of those threats, Admiral Johnson said.
Admiral Johnston faced a repeated grilling over the roles and decision-making of Australia troops from Greens Senator David Shoebridge. Senator Shoebridge questioned how troops could respond to directives while embedded on US submarines. It was previously revealed Australian personnel were on-board a submarine which sunk an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean.
“I am confident that our people have clarity on what they are authorised to do,” he said. “I’m not aware of any circumstance, as you would describe, of individuals finding it uncertain the manner in which they are to respond.” Asked if it was “in Australia’s interest” to be involved in the sinking of the Iranian vessel, Admiral Johnston said it was “in our national interest to have our people on board US Virginia Class submarines training, learning, understanding and building their competencies so that as our Virginias enter service, we have people who are safe and proficient at operating those platforms.”
Admiral Johnston went on to defend the deployment of 200 troops to the US base at Pearl Harbour as part of the US Pacific and Indian Ocean Command.
$14.4m for Palantir
The use of technology belonging to the United States and Israel – cobelligerents in the war with Iran – was in the spotlight on Wednesday. Under further questioning from Senator Shoebridge, officials stated about $14.4m had been paid to US spyware giant Palantir. Australian Army Head of Land Capability Major-General Richard Vagg said the software allowed the ADF to “aggregate a whole range of data to inform targeting solutions”.
“That application is being used in a closed environment, so it’s not plugged into the defence networks, which is called the sandbox,” he said. Major-General Vagg confirmed it was the same suite of products used by Israel to identify targets in Lebanon and Gaza, and by the United States in Iran. “Those systems that you refer to, they have the AI function initiated in those,” he said. “We don’t, we’re using it to understand how you would collate all the data to give commanders the right situational awareness, and ability to select targets on the battlefield.”
