Two of NATO’s main European partners, France and Germany, have made long-range deployments to Australia to present a united front to China.
The Pitch Black 2022 exercise will take place in northern Australia between August 19 and September 8, involving some one hundred aircraft and 2,500 military personnel from 17 countries, several of them NATO members, including the US, Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, France and Germany.
To participate in Pitch Black 2022, Germany and France made some of the most important deployments of strategic scope in their history.
The French deployment
The French Air and Space Force launched the first phase of the deployment – dubbed Henri Brown – which began in France on August 10 and ended in New Caledonia on August 12. An air force composed of three Rafale fighters, two A330 MRTT Phénix air-to-air refueling aircraft and two A400M transport aircraft carried out the force projection mission in less than 72 hours.
The second phase of the deployment will be the participation of the fighters and an A330 MRTT in the Pitch Black 2022 multinational exercise, organized biannually by the Royal Australian Air Force. These units will soon be joined by a CN-235-200 and two French Joint Forces aircrews deployed in New Caledonia, a French overseas territory.
The third phase of the deployment, called Pegase, will run from September 11 to 18, 2022. The joint force, which will depart from Darwin, Australia, will return to France with stops in Indonesia and Singapore to conduct air diplomacy missions and carry out operational cooperation with local air forces.
See also: Indonesia prepares first batch of pilots to be sent to Rafale conversion course
German deployment
On August 15, 2022, six Eurofighters took off from their base in southern Germany for a deployment flight to Singapore within 24 hours over some 10,000 kilometers.
In addition to the fighters, this first German deployment in the Indo-Pacific region involves some 250 air force troops; it is supported by four A400M transport aircraft, as well as three A330s from the multi-purpose MRTT unit in Eindhoven to refuel the fighters in the air. The project, which represents an unprecedented logistical challenge for the Luftwaffe, was named «Rapid Pacific 2022».
Noch 05:22:22 – Wir tanken gerade ein letztes Mal auf. Nächster Halt Singapur. Fast geschafft! (Archiv) @A330_MMU @EATC_ #RapidPacific2022 pic.twitter.com/zxd3jAGEBj
— Team Luftwaffe (@Team_Luftwaffe) August 16, 2022
«Rapid Pacific is the largest and most challenging deployment the German Air Force has ever seen,» said the Chief of the German Air Force, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, emphasizing the special significance of the project. «With this deployment, our participation in the exercises in Australia, and the further joint projects with our partners in Singapore, Japan and South Korea, we are sending a clear message: the Air Force can be deployed quickly and over global distances – even with several missions to be fulfilled in parallel.»
The Airbus A330MRTTs that accompanied the German Eurofighters to Australia are from the joint European unit Multinational MRTT Fleet (or MMF), of which NATO member countries such as Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the Netherlands participate.
The contending sides are being defined
The effort that these global deployments represent for France and, particularly, Germany, can only find justification in the new posture assumed by NATO after the recent (June) Madrid summit, where this military alliance, originally created during the Cold War to counterbalance the now defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in Europe, identified China as a new challenge to «Euro-Atlantic security».
The world is reconfiguring itself into a new Cold War state, which could lead to an eventual «clash of civilizations» that will impose on European nations the need to become much more actively involved in areas far removed from their historical areas of influence, such as the Pacific and/or Indian Oceans.
