Two Degrees of Interoperability Between the ADF and the IDF Could Soon Become One

Right now, a bill before the US House of Representatives contains a section that if it makes its way through both houses of congress will result in the integration of the United States Armed Forces (USAF) with the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), and this may seem like it has nothing to do with the Australian Defence Forces, yet it would mean that the ADF becomes interoperable with the IDF.

The potential shift towards full integration of Israel into the American war machine is contained in the National Defence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2027 bill (NDAA), which is annual legislation that updates USAF budgeting, policies and priorities. And if section 224 of the current NDAA is passed, it will be inserted into title 10 of the United States Code, and the relationship will be sealed.

Now looking towards integration with the USAF, the Israeli military commenced becoming interoperable with the US military in 1981, via the signing of the Strategic Cooperation Agreement, and while the Australian military has ties to the American going back to World War II, the 2004 US-Australia Statement on Interoperability marked this nation’s turn towards increasing collaboration.

In the military sense, interoperability means that lines of communication, the sharing of information and technologies and joint military exercises between the two forces are opened up, so that in times of peace and war these militaries can work together cohesively. Whereas integration goes a step further to involve structural changes so that two forces can act together as the one military.

Commentators are warning that integration is what section 224 would mean for the USAF and the IDF. And whilst both the ADF and the IDF are increasingly becoming interoperable with the USAF, if section 224 becomes law, the two degrees of separation between the ADF and IDF will become one, meaning the Australian military will be interoperable with Israeli forces, as well as those of America.

When two become one

Released on 26 May 2026, the House’s version of the NDAA 2027 contains section 224, which is titled “United States-Israel Defence Technology Cooperation Initiative”, and it explains that the US secretary of defence shall “designate an executive agent”, who will be responsible for synchronising cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel.

Section 224 adds that this will be in areas of “bilateral defence technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration and industrial cooperation”. And whilst this may sound like just another agreement between two forces, experts consider that the breadth and the depth of areas it incorporates will mean cooperation at every level of the US and Israeli military industrial complexes.

Further details set out in the NDAA in respect of section 224 include jointly developed technologies, Israeli-origin technologies integrated into US systems, collaborative government, private and academic research, coproduction, “jointly deployed technologies”, synchronised cooperation on defence technologies and AI, as well as “network integration”, “data fusion” and the long list goes on.

The US House Armed Services Committee produced the proposed law with support from both senior democratic and republican members. And whilst there is some congressional opposition to the move, there are a lot of pro-Israeli members of congress, and the shift would place a roadblock in the path of increasing domestic calls to end the unbridled support the US provides Israel militarily.

The agreement would further involve a shift away from the US providing military aid to Israel, which has comprised of  over $200 billion, that’s adjusted to inflation, since 1948, and towards institutional integration between the two militaries and defence industries, resulting in it being a structural feature of the USFA to defend Israel, alongside the IDF, as the forces would be one and the same.

Interoperability morphing into control

Australia turned to the US as a protector ally during World War II, after British forces pulled out of the Asia-Pacific following the 1942 fall of Singapore. The 1951 ANZUS treaty confirmed this alliance, but unlike NATO arrangements, the US does not guarantee to defend an Australia under attack, and Canberra has since followed Washington into multiple wars from Korea to Vietnam and onwards.

The US then established three bases in Australia in the late 1960s: global surveillance base Pine Gap on Arrernte land, naval intelligence base North West Cape on Yinigurdira land, as well as the now defunct US air force base Nurrungar on the land of the Kokatha people. These installations that later became known as “joint facilities” have and continue to make this continent a nuclear target.

Interoperability really kicked in with the 2014 Force Posture Agreement, which the Gillard government first agreed to in 2011, in line with the Obama administration’s ‘pivot to Asia’. This involves three force posture initiatives: 2,500 US marines stationed on rotation in Garramilla/Darwin, increasing interoperability between air forces and US access to local “agreed facilities and areas”.

Force posture is the ability to launch a war from a position. The list of agreed facilities and areas is classified. When the US determines to upgrade a site, it assumes control of it. The RAAF Base Tindall upgrade in the Northern Territory has included a facility for six nuclear capable B-52 bombers, but Australia won’t know if they hold nuclear arsenal, as it respects the US policy of warhead ambiguity.

The 2021 established AUKUS pact has further bound Australia to the US as a pending war on China awaits. The relationship is said to revolve around this country’s need for new submarines, and the promise of eight nuclear powered subs, with US and UK involvement in supply. But it actually seems to be more about the US establishing bases for its submarines on the west and east of the continent.

Interoperability with the IDF

The interoperability between the US and Australia blurs the lines between the USFA and ADF, but it does not distort the understanding that Washington is the greater power and indeed, the party that maintains the control in the relationship. The same can be said about the interoperability between the US and IDF, except that due to the strength of the Israel lobby, Tel Aviv can influence the States.

But if section 224 of the NDAA 2027 passes towards the end of the year, Australia then faces the prospect of having a military that is not only in an interoperable partnership with the US but with Israel as well. And this development would be most disturbing because apartheid Israel has been perpetrating an industrial-scale AI-assisted genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza for 32 months.

Since the second coming of the Trump administration in early 2025, discussions around the ongoing military alliance this country has with America have increasingly questioned its viability, as the MAGA White House has turned its domestic sphere into an authoritarian nightmare, and it’s also thrown out the international rulebook, so it could start attacking other nations without provocation.

Australia has been complicit in Gaza from the start, as it’s well understood that surveillance data from Pine Gap has been utilised by Israel in its mass murder. Yet, if the US and Israeli militaries do integrate, then not only will Tel Aviv have been utilising information captured by the US surveillance base in the middle of this continent, but it will come to be that Israel too has a stake in the facility.

This nation holds no sway over whether section 224 of the NDAA is passed and the USFA and IDF move towards integration. And while the Canberra might still have the power to remove Australia from its alliance with the US, the Albanese government doesn’t have the desire or the fortitude to act on that and, if an election were held today, neither would its more conservative successor.

So, Australians are simply going to have to stomach any potential interoperability that its defence force could soon have with the IDF.

Of course, that’s unless something is done to knock this ship off its current trajectory.