Thread by @eamonhamilton

Exercise #PitchBlack24 wrapped up yesterday.

Here are five things that have almost nothing to do with fast jets, but everything to do with the success of this exercise, and how they make Australia a better security partner in the region.

The first is the accommodation.

DAP-D, or Defence Accommodation Precinct - Darwin, a 3400-bed facility at Howard Springs (about 30min drive from Darwin CBD). This was the first year we used DAP-D, and without it, a Pitch Black of this size would not have been possible.

Historically, visiting nations have stayed on base accommodation at RAAF Darwin; or in hotels in the city, making the cost-to-entry expensive and driving competition with Northern Territory’s peak tourism season.

Pitch Black occurs during most of our school holiday periods, and exercise personnel staying in hotels means local tourist operators lose business.

In 2012, Inpex built an accommodation facility for construction of its Icthys natural gas project. It was later handed over to the Territory govt and became the quarantine centre during COVID-19.

In July 2023, it became DAP-D under a 5-year lease agreement with Defence, and managed by Ventia. It was used for 1300 personnel at Talisman Sabre 23, but Pitch Black was its biggest test.

During Pitch Black 24, DAP-D housed 4000 personnel, from overnight stays to members staying for the full exercise. Another 300 US Marines were accommodated during the ex as part of MRF-D.

Across Darwin during July, Defence accommodation was at capacity for other Exs including Austral Shield and Predators Run. DAP-D provided 3000+ beds that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

What’s more - DAP-D is probably the best defence accommodation I’ve stayed in. You get your own room and en suite. The mess and tavern were great. There are a tonne of rec facilities. I joked that the only thing DAP-D is missing is a runway.

One of the objectives of Pitch Black is to encourage international engagement, and having all nations stay together in one camp also makes engagement and bonding so much easier/fun.

If you’re travelling across the globe - or even from nearer in the region - you want to know your accommodation will be affordable and provide all their essential needs in the one location.

(For the record; yes, everyone staying at DAP-D still had the opportunity to go to Litchfield/Jumping Crocs/Mindil/Shenanigans).

DAP-D enabled the exercise to be as big as it was. The standard of accommodation was the best I’ve seen.

The second big difference at Pitch Black 24 was communication.

This is a little self-indulgent, but I’m going to talk about Public Affairs, and how Starlink SATCOM and a bunch of accessories allowed us to talk to the world during Exercise Pitch Black 24

Secure communications is obviously a necessity of exercises and operations; but a significant amount of public affairs comms in exercises like Pitch Black can be done over unclassified systems, especially if the customer is a civilian media organisation.

Historically, we’ve been reliant on existing Defence IT, local 4G/5G networks, and other broadband access points. Live broadcasting was really only possible through civilian media on site, or in a conference room, both of which bring significant limitations.

In early 2024, RAAF 464SQN acquired two Starlink sets, and our own ‘Skunkworks’ Cell set about how we could build necessary support accessories to enable live cross interviews with civilian media.

For 464, Pitch Black 24 was the first time we could enable high quality live interviews, in almost any location. No more webcams in a conference room. The interview talent was broadcasting from the flightline.

The “so what?” for other countries at Pitch Black is, you can now reach audiences in real-time back home, or engage local audiences within your region, about what it is you’re doing; our Starlink set & imagery team was there to support anyone, & I hope there’s more uptake in 2026

The third thing was the response to an aircraft crash.

Did you know the loss of an Italian Air Force Typhoon on July 24 was the first aircraft loss in Pitch Black’s 43-year history?

That’s a pretty remarkable record, and needs to be considered in light of other accidents in the region - a USMC Osprey in July 2023, and a USMC Hornet in 2004. And Pitch Black has experienced several minor incidents.

During the morning mission on July 24, Italian Air Force pilot ejected from his Typhoon in the exercise airspace.

Having travelled across the world, consider for a moment the risk and challenges for a debuting Air Force to have a downed pilot in a remote and foreign country.

(Indeed, other countries who have been to this exercise before - from Europe, the sub continent, and Asia alike - would find the prospect of coming down in the Australian outback quite intimidating)

The emergency response in this contingency is well rehearsed and essential, but this effectively marked the first time it was played out in real time at a modern Pitch Black.

A pilot who came down in a remote corner of the airspace was found and brought back over 120km - or 100 miles - to Darwin a little over 2hrs of their ejection. Relatively small distance in Australian terms, but not easy country to reach.

A RAAF KC30 and EA18G remained overhead throughout the response effort. An Army NORFORCE patrol nearby helped secure the site. NT Police and land holders were essential in this as well.

The response worked so well that the only thing that went wrong was the aircraft crash.

Countries visiting Pitch Black fly in one of the biggest areas of military airspace in the world; it needs a well-practiced emergency response, and after 2024, they can see it works.

Thread break: Here is the Harrier at Mindil.

The fourth thing is our Country Liaison Officers, or CLO Network.

We had 20 countries at Pitch Black, 16 of which brought aircraft.

Of the 20, four nations were joining Pitch Black for the first time, with little-or-no experience deploying people and aircraft to Australia.

One of them even brought an aircraft carrier.

Surprise surprise, not everything about this exercise runs on rails, which is kind of the point of this training - you learn the lessons during execution, and build the experience now to inform future cooperation.

A key part of how we support visiting nations in Pitch Black is our Country Liaison Officer network. We had approximately 40 RAAF members assigned to the visiting nations to ensure they could do business in Australia.

They’re a mix of enlisted and officers, they have different mustering and roles, some are immigrants (or children of), and others no ancestral connection. Almost all were linguists, and could also comprehend the cultural/organisational barriers to doing business at Pitch Black.

Many personnel from visiting countries could speak English, and even had their own linguists.

The CLO network’s strength was helping these nations plan, execute, and resolve problems within the construct of Pitch Black.

It wasn’t uncommon to see a CLO and ask them how it felt to be the busiest person in the exercise. There was always a short-notice issue keeping them on their toes.

Dangerous goods. Customs requirements. Accommodation. Base access. VIP programs. They juggled it all.

Those issues are not a reflection of poor planning or blatant cultural misunderstanding, but rather, the sheer complexity of bringing 4400 people from 20 nations together for an extremely complicated exercise program in a short space of time.

(In Public Affairs CJIB, we even had to fight to keep our A1, because she was too useful as a Japanese linguist for engaging with JASDF PA).

Pitch Black might aim to get countries working together in the air, but without the CLO network at Pitch Black, those countries would have a harder time getting on the ground in Darwin.

I’d argue there’s a tendency to question Australia’s capacity to independently manage multilateral relationships in the Indo-Pacific, especially without leaning other regional powers. The CLOs - & Pitch Black - signals that we are invested in how they support regional security.

⚠️ Warning: The fifth thing involves fighter jets ⚠️

We had greater and more meaningful security participation from a wider variety of nations at Pitch Black 24

If you liked jets, Pitch Black 24 had it all. Our biggest exercise for fifth generation combat platforms (US, AUS, and Italy). All four original Eurofighter nations; and a host of other capabilities including Rafales, Gripens, Flankers, F16/15/18s.

What’s easy to overlook however is the involvement of nations like PNG, NZ, and Philippines; the value of their participation shouldn’t be downplayed, much less ignored.

The Philippine Air Force bringing FA-50PHs to this exercise is a massive security development for the region. A nation that has never deployed combat aircraft abroad chose a massive multilateral exercise to make their debut.

The involvement of another ASEAN nation at this exercise serves to reinforce the benefit of Pitch Black - and Australia’s security commitments - to the region.

What’s more, Australia has a significant Filipino population. It was immediately like having old friends here.

What’s more, they brought FA50s, a small but incredibly capable light fighter that was integrated on day and night-time Pitch Black missions alike. Despite its size, it could plug into the missions and allowed Philippine pilots to build experience in complex air operations.

Philippines is determined to develop its sovereign security capability, and it was an incredible honour to see them choose Pitch Black to take those next steps.

PNG brought two PAC750s to Darwin to provide a light tactical airlift capability at the exercise.

Do you know how hard it is to conduct an exercise as geographically big as Pitch Black 24 without any light tactical airlift to get from A to B?

PAC750s obviously aren’t frontline combat aircraft, but the airlift support they provided at the exercise was something no other country brought. The benefit to PNG aviators was experience flying away from home in unfamiliar (and busy!) airspace.

Even in spite of Pitch Black’s focus on air combat, there’s no barrier to countries like PNG providing by essential support and meeting international counterparts; the experience in flying airlift missions plants the seeds for increased sovereign aviation capability in future.

What about NZ?

The NZDF provided approximately 65 combat support and other ground-based personnel for Pitch Black 24.

They worked in integrated teams with their Aussie counterparts at Darwin and Amberley.

It’s worth pointing out: NZ is experiencing some significant recapitalisation and operational/training demand on its aircraft atm. The lack of kiwi aircraft at Pitch Black does not reflect disinterest in this exercise. Far from it.

65 NZDF personnel at Pitch Black 24 means aircraft are being refuelled and secured, personnel are being fed, space comms managed, and other essential exercise functions are being provided so that aircraft can keep flying.

Without those 65 personnel, there’d be greater stress on RAAF/other workforces to deliver the same effect; or, less capacity to conduct the exercise at this scale.

It’s like the parking spaces or the beds at DAP-D - without these people, the exercise wouldn’t be possible.

One of the things I love about this exercise is everyone who comes here has a role to play, regardless of their nation’s size or GDP; and the experience of that role will make them better operators when they go home. Nobody is made to feel like a minor party.

Those are my five points. While I go away and form some closing thoughts, here is a Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon refuelling from a RAAF KC30A MRTT over the outback.

It’s hard to draw a circle around the way in which Exercise Pitch Black has grown. It’s not just a three-week exercise in the Northern Territory (especially seeing as how Amberley is effectively a base in the exercise now).

The act of getting forces to Australia for the exercise is as important as the flying in the exercise for itself. Most of the countries will make the trip as part of a larger regional deployment.

Indo-Pacific Jump for Italy. Pacific Skies for Germany and Spain. Griffin Strike for UK. Pegase for France. Even for those closer to our shores, the job of getting to Australia is a useful way to test their logistics and airlift reach.

From an Australian perspective, few domestic exercises attract other nations here on this same scale (which is not to say that they should all aspire to).

Global participation in Pitch Black however is a massive endorsement of Australia’s relevance as a security partner.

From the success of Pitch Black 24, it will be interesting to see how this experience will be reinvested in 2026. We always say the exercise will never grow bigger, and are constantly proven wrong. Nobody will be surprised to see another aircraft carrier sail through in 2 years.

There’s more concrete being poured at Darwin and Tindal; more infrastructure to support aircraft. While accommodation might hit a cap, the only other limiting factor quickly becomes “how many aircraft can you get airborne in an hour?”

And therein lies a key takeaway. Exercise Pitch Black 24 demonstrated the rest of the world wants to work with our people, share our airspace, & use our facilities.

The platforms are an incredibly important part of this Ex. But they are not the only thing our partners value.

Anyway. Enjoy this pic of two Royal Brunei Air Force officers watching an F-35 take off at RAAF Darwin.

I had to delete this tweet earlier; Many of the base locations at Pitch Black are located in 4G/5G zones (including the training ranges!), but networks can become congested. Starlink allowed us to overcome that, even allowing us to broadcast from a 23,000+ event at Mindil Beach.

And here are memes