In an interview with Fairfax Media, he said he plans to maintain and “augment our readiness“ for future fights, which will most likely be in the unstable region stretching from Pakistan to the Levant, including even fresh trouble in Afghanistan.

“It will be Pakistan across to Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan. That‘s the area where there will be instability and that‘s the area that we might need to go back into at some point in the future.