{"id":13276,"date":"2025-07-14T08:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T08:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=13276"},"modified":"2025-07-14T08:46:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T08:46:22","slug":"a-military-exercise-drawing-together-19-nations-and-35000-forces-begins-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=13276","title":{"rendered":"A military exercise drawing together 19 nations and 35,000 forces begins in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

MELBOURNE, Australia — <\/span>The largest-ever war fighting drills in Australia, Exercise Talisman Sabre<\/a>, is underway and expected to attract the attention of Chinese spy ships.<\/p>\n

Talisman Sabre began in 2005 as a biennial joint exercise between the United States and Australia. This year, more than 35,000 military personnel from 19 nations, including Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, and the United Kingdom, will take part over three weeks, Australia\u2019s defense department said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Malaysia and Vietnam are also attending as observers.<\/p>\n

The exercise will also take part in Papua New Guinea<\/a>, Australia\u2019s nearest neighbor. It is the first time Talisman Sabre activities have been held outside Australia.<\/p>\n

Chinese surveillance ships have monitored naval exercises off the Australian coast during the last four Talisman Sabre exercises and were expected to surveil the current exercise, Defense Industry Minister Pat Conroy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese military have observed these exercises since 2017. It\u2019d be very unusual for them not to observe it,\u201d Conroy told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll adjust accordingly. We\u2019ll obviously observe their activities and monitor their presence around Australia, but we\u2019ll also adjust how we conduct those exercises,\u201d Conroy added.<\/p>\n

Conroy said the Chinese were not yet shadowing ships as of Sunday.<\/p>\n

The exercise officially started on Sunday with a ceremony in Sydney attended by Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific Lt. Gen. J.B. Vowell and Australia\u2019s Chief of Joint Operations Vice-Adm. Justin Jones.<\/p>\n

The exercise, showcasing Australia\u2019s defense alliance with the United States, started a day after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> began a six-day visit to China, where he is expected to hold his fourth face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping<\/a> in Beijing on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Albanese said Chinese surveillance of Talisman Sabre would not be an issue raised with Xi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be nothing unusual. That has happened in the past and I\u2019ll continue to assert Australia\u2019s national interest, as I do,\u201d Albanese told reporters in Shanghai Monday.<\/p>\n

Albanese also noted that while he had visited the United States as prime minister five times, he had only been to China twice.<\/p>\n

The Australian leader has been criticized at home for failing to secure a face-to-face meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI look forward to a constructive engagement with President Trump. We have had three constructive phone conversations,\u201d Albanese said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, Australia — The largest-ever war fighting drills in Australia, Exercise Talisman Sabre, is underway and expected to attract the attention of Chinese spy ships. Talisman Sabre began in 2005 as a biennial joint exercise between the United States and Australia. This year, more than 35,000 military personnel from 19 nations, including Canada, Fiji, France, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13278,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276\/revisions\/13278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}