The Future for U.S. Marines in Darwin | RealClearDefense

"Over the past six years, the US Marine presence in Darwin has grown incrementally to become part of the social as well as the strategic fabric of the Northern Territory. Exercise Crocodile Strike has stretched that skin a little further. It remains a modest-sized force, not yet optimally realized and to some extent still searching for its mission. But its continuation does not appear in doubt, despite the transition to a new political administration in the US. If the biggest threat overhanging MRF-D is the budgetary axe, then the training and locational advantages of Northern Australia will continue to make a persuasive case for its existence."