Bradley Perrett | Urgent base upgrades? It turns out nothing has been done

And are we lining up American taxpayers to help cover the cost again?

It sure looks like it.

Meanwhile, we see that a program to build guided missiles here may not get to the point of actually making something until 2025, half a decade after the idea was announced.

All this comes from the latest AUSMIN meeting between the defence and foreign ministers of Australia and the US.

At the end of the meeting last week, the two governments said they'd continue with improvements that are under way at the Royal Australian Air Force's Darwin and Tindal bases in the Northern Territory.

There would also be "site surveys to scope additional upgrades" at RAAF Scherger, a base on Cape York Peninsula, and RAAF Curtin, near Derby, WA, they said.

But the need to upgrade almost all our front-line air bases was officially declared 11 years ago.

The airfields were and are mostly basic facilities with modest ability to sustain intense operations and even less to cope with Chinese missiles slamming into them.

The urgency of upgrades became increasingly evident last decade as we saw strengthening Chinese capacity to attack distant targets.

So no one was surprised when the most pressing recommendation of this year's Defence Strategic Review was the "imperative" requirement for northern bases to be "urgently and comprehensively remediated."

But from AUSMIN we hear that only now are there plans for someone to head out to those remote places (when?), look over the terrain and write a topographical report that someone else will use in assessing the extent of desired improvements.

Then, at the appropriate juncture, in the fullness of time, when the moment is ripe, expect the Department of Defence and RAAF to design the upgrades. Nothing precipitate, of course.

A year or so will pass as contractors are sought, then we'll hear of a timetable for the work.

It will, I guess, aim to complete the new facilities no earlier than the end of the decade, assuming nothing runs late.

Judging from the work at Tindal, which is being upgraded far more than the Darwin base, the results will still be inadequate, lacking thick-concrete aircraft shelters and extra runways and taxiways that would make the airfields more robust.

Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping has told his armed forces to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027.

As for our two other front-line air bases - RAAF Townsville and, at the far western point of WA, Learmonth - it seems our defence establishment hasn't yet even thought of running a theodolite over them.

The second point to notice from the AUSMIN statement is the implication that base upgrades will continue to be Australian-US combined projects.

It's already a national disgrace that we're making the US pay part of the cost of upgrading Tindal.

The US is willing to do so because, if war with China broke out, its aircraft should spread out to airfields away from their current, concentrated bases on Okinawa and Guam.

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But such preparations to resist China benefit Australia more than the US.

Preventing Chinese domination of this side of the world is far more important for us than it is for Americans. And our bases - our assets - are fundamentally our responsibility. We should pay.

The US is already overburdened in helping its mostly lazy allies. It's spending 3.1 per cent of gross domestic product on defence and struggling to provide enough military strength simultaneously in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. Australia spends 2 per cent.

Bludging by allies gets up noses in Washington, especially Republican noses. If American politics tend towards isolationism over the next few years, as could well happen, we had better look like we're pulling our weight.

The missile manufacturing project, on the other hand, does seem more beneficial to the US than to us, at least at first.

Making guided weapons here has been greatly exaggerated as improving our ability to fight a war independently.

In fact, we won't be able to make all the missile types we'd need in a war and, for any one type, we probably still have to import some parts.

The project has been moving very slowly - of course - but we're now told that there will be "an initial focus on the potential for co-production" of GMLRS missiles here by 2025.

Note "potential". Things aren't quite in the bag yet.

"Co-production" means we'll make only some parts, and there's no doubt that at first they will be the missile motor (which works much like a fireworks rocket), the cylindrical missile shell, or both.

Trickier bits - such as the warhead and guidance system - will presumably come later, though the department did not immediately respond to this column's questions on the subject.

For Australia, the initial activity is hardly useful except to get the ball rolling (oh, so slowly) towards complete or nearly complete local manufacturing of some weapon type that we'd need in large numbers in a war with China.

GMLRS isn't such a weapon. It's just a missile for ground battles, flying about 70 kilometres to hit stationary objects such as ammunition dumps. It has little relevance to the long-distance air and maritime scenario we have to prepare for.

But the US does need more GMLRS rounds, in part because it's supplying so many to Ukraine. Throughout the democratic world, ammunition factories are straining to cope with orders.

So if we can help the US make GMLRS parts, let's do it.