Rotational deployments through northern Australia are often described as presence without permanence. The description flatters the politics and hides the engineering: aircraft still need fuel farms, ships still need wharf frontage, and the wet season does not care about communiqués.
The unglamorous ledger
Every rotation window is ultimately sized by storage — of fuel, munitions and parts — rather than by the number of visiting units. Watching the construction contracts around Darwin tells you more about the next decade than watching the exercises.