U.S. Marines participate in joint military drills in Australia. CBS News

Townsville Field Training Area, Queensland, Australia — The U.S. is expanding its military presence in northern Australia as it looks to project power and provide a deterrence against the increasing threat of China in the Asia-Pacific. China's President Xi Jinping is thought to have ordered his armed forces to be ready to invade the island of Taiwan by 2027, if necessary, raising fears of a conflict that could draw in American forces.

In response to Beijing's expanding footprint in the region, the U.S. has seen Australia, a country located around two-and-a-half-thousand miles south of China, as a key strategic partner.

In 2012, the first deployment of roughly 200 U.S. Marines rotated through the country's Northern Territory. Now it's close to 2,500 each year. The U.S. military presence is now at its biggest since 1945 at the end of the Second World War.

CBS News gained access to a U.S. Marine Corps exercise, including Australian and Japanese allies in the rugged outback, as preparations against Chinese aggression ramps up.

The exercise involved Australian troops playing the role of enemy combatants who attack a platoon of U.S. Marines. The drill was conducted by more than 500 U.S. Marines and over 2,000 troops in total, across an area bigger than the state of Maryland.

"Knowing how one another works is of the utmost importance and being ready to respond is something critical," Major Nicholas Foust, the officer commanding the exercise with U.S. Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, told CBS News.

Military experts say a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is not inevitable and that China may want to avoid war, especially with the U.S. But China's armed forces are going through an unprecedented modernization — from aircraft carriers to hypersonic missiles.

While the key goal for the U.S. and its allies in the region is to deter any potential Chinese aggression, Brigadier Ben McLennan, commander of the Australian Defence Force's 3rd Brigade, told CBS News that they are preparing for the worst possible outcome.

"Every time you commit to an exercise like this, it is a rehearsal — and you treat it as your last opportunity to do so before war arrives," he said. "A rehearsal for a war the likes of which we haven't seen since the Second World War."

Source