"We're not winding down," Chief of Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Greg Bilton, told The Canberra Times in an exclusive interview for The Defence Review.

"We are a really busy ADF but our areas of focus are shifting, and have been for a while."

ADF members have completed more than 90,000 tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 11. More than 34,000 individual men and women served in Afghanistan alone.

"Afghanistan and Iraq have definitely reduced over time and there are further changes to come," General Bilton said. This is as a result of peace talks with the Taliban and the changing nature of the fight against Islamic State in Iraq.

"These are things that will change how we arrange ourselves and what we commit (in those areas). But it is then coming back to where the government has said to us "hey, we'd like you to gear up to work more actively and deeply with our partners in the south west Pacific" and then also finding there are more activities in south east Asia and right up into north east Asia."

Today's ADF has many jobs on its "to do" list that weren't on the horizon just a few years ago.

"We peaked last year at having 7000 people offshore [over the course of 2018]. A vast majority of the navy ships were deployed; we had the operational deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, our Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) obligations and a whole series of exercises and training activities across all three services at sea. That included 1200 people in Indo-Pacific Endeavour alone."

All this activity, which touched almost every continent on earth including Antarctica, had a serious purpose.

"To put it in its simplest terms, we're working and trying to avoid getting into a shooting match," General Bilton said. This means working with regional and strategic partners, deepening relationships with south west Pacific island nations, many of whom are being actively wooed by China, and relationship building in south east Asia in order to avoid potential security flare-ups and crises.

A key part of the ADF's role, and one with which CJOPS is intimately involved, is disaster response. This is expected to become even more important over time with the Chief of the Australian Defence Force (CDF), General Angus Campbell, reported in September as suggesting increasingly frequent natural disasters caused by climate change could stretch existing military capability.

A speech reportedly prepared for General Campbell said: "The number of troops deployed on disaster relief missions can, at times, be a significant commitment for Defence. Deploying troops on numerous disaster relief missions, at the same time, may stretch our capability and capacity... Defence may also be increasingly called upon to support stabilisation, governance or peacekeeping activities".

Operation Fiji Assist, Australia's response to Tropical Cyclone Winston on February 20, 2016, eclipsed the ADF's response to the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. It even came close to rivalling the military's epic relief operation in the wake of Cyclone Tracy in 1974 which included 13 ships, including the HMAS Melbourne, 11 aircraft and 3000 personnel.

The first real test of many new capabilities, including the amphibious assault ship, HMAS Canberra, and the use of C-17A Globemasters for long range relief and assistance, the operation remains something the ADF is justifiably proud of.

More than 140 tonnes of aid, including food, shelter kits, construction materials and medical supplies were sent ashore from HMAS Canberra by helicopter. Another 114 tonnes was dispatched by landing craft. About 1000 ADF members took part.

General Bilton said foresight, preparedness and operational readiness were all vital to responding to disasters in a timely fashion.

"My job is to advise the CDF, and through him the government, how we will respond [to a Winston or a tsunami]. I'm in a good situation in that we have a highly effective preparedness system inside the ADF where capabilities are held at a certain notice to move... people are prepared to move at either an hour's notice or a day's notice, depending on the capability."

This preparedness also has a direct military application in that rapid response capabilities can be deployed for purposes other than disaster relief.

"I have an amazing array of capabilities provided by the service chiefs to apply to any range of contingencies... Our airforce, while modest by comparison with some, is arguably one of the most modern in the world. We've retired a lot of older airframes [in recent years] and the last part of the puzzle is the arrival of the F-35 and what it brings."

The Royal Australian Navy has also moved on from the dark days of the "valley of death" when governments were refusing to sign off on orders for new ships just over a decade ago.

"The air warfare destroyers are coming into service - HMAS Hobart is at sea now and HMAS Brisbane is going through its trials and the LHD's, the HMAS Canberra and the HMAS Adelaide, arrived around 2013 and 2014."

General Bilton said the two massive LHD's, which are each 230 metres long, displace 27,000 tonnes and can cruise at almost 20 knots, were the keystone of the ADF's ability to conduct expeditionary and amphibious operations across the region and along the Australian coast.

"If things happen on the north west coast of Australia these sorts of capabilities are critical to responding and helping the community there," he said.

Regional disaster response, like much the ADF finds itself involved in, is more complex and nuanced than it may at first appear.

"It's important to highlight that responding to these natural disasters does have a very important security effect....," General Bilton said. "While there is a humanitarian aspect to it, it is also about maintaining the rule of law and supporting the government [of the affected nation]...It's obviously in Australia's interest to have a secure and stable South West Pacific... It's also in the interest of the region and those nation states. The more effectively we respond the more we mitigate against instability and insecurity."

That desire for stability drove one of Australia's longest running responses to a Pacific crisis. Operation RAMSI, also known as Operation Helpem Fren, in the Solomon Islands ran from 2003 to June 30, 2017.

Australian was answering a call for assistance by the Solomon's Governor General to quell civil disorder and resolve long running disputes. Law and order had broken down, officials and private citizens were subject to intimidation and violence, and, according to Australia's High Commissioner, Roderick Brazier, "corruption was unfettered".

Soldiers and police from New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu also took part.

"In times of crisis I've seen the whole of government approach work really effectively," General Bilton said. "The Solomon Islands was a great example. It was a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade-led mission and Defence provided the security element in support of DFAT's leadership."

General Bilton, like many officers with 30 years of more of service, is aware of the striking differences between today's ADF and the immediate post-Vietnam era and the 1980s and 1990s.

"East Timor was a very important strategic wake-up call for us in the sense that we were being confronted with a world where the strategic circumstances were starting to change rapidly and you had to maintain a defence force that was going to give government a greater range of options to deal with the broader range of contingencies that might arise," he said.

"The chief of army has talked about "accelerated warfare". That is a reflection of how quickly the strategic environment is shifting at the moment. Some of this is driven by technology and militarisation; some of it is about the challenges in liberal western democracies; there is the rise of autocratic leaders in different countries. These all contribute to creating that dynamic strategic environment".

This environment demands the creation of a "balanced force"; a military with "the ability to respond to a whole range of contingencies; be it a coalition, high intensity war fight, or dealing with an insurgency being undertaken by a non-state actor".

General Bilton, a former Victorian school cadet who cites as his inspiration to join the army his grandfather, Captain John Honybun, who rose from the ranks to serve on Brigadier George Langley's staff during World War II, said there is no such thing as a "normal" deployment and that training and preparedness would always be the key to success in the field.

"I feel I was less well prepared [for service overseas] than our current general officers," the former 1990s Sinai-peacekeeper said.

He said that while the world is changing rapidly the ADF was changing with it. Significant investments in enhancing capability made over the past decade are starting to pay off.

This, in turn, is underpinned by the fact the ADF's men and women are the best educated, the most highly trained and the best equipped they have ever been in the nation's history.