Australia is boosting its missile defense capability amid “significant concerns” about the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the South Pacific, and also will bolster its weapons stockpiles and exports to security partners.
Australia will increase its missile defense and long-range strike capabilities, and will cooperate with security partners Japan, South Korea and the United States to support regional stability, Pat Conroy, Australia’s defense industry minister, said in late October 2024.
The PRC in September 2024 test-fired an ICBM that traveled about 11,000 kilometers, landing in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia.
“We expressed significant concern about that ballistic missile test, especially its entry into the South Pacific given the Treaty of Rarotonga that says the Pacific should be a nuclear weapons free zone,” Conroy said.
He said the Indo-Pacific is on the cusp of a new “missile age,” where missiles are also “tools of coercion.”
Australia deploys SM-6 missiles on its destroyer fleet to provide ballistic missile defense, he said. In October 2024, Canberra announced a $4.7 billion deal with the U.S. to acquire SM-2 IIIC and SM-6 long-range missiles for the Royal Australian Navy.
Australia has said it will spend $49 billion on missile acquisition and missile defense over the next decade, almost half of which will fund the Australian Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise, a new domestic manufacturing capability.
“We must show potential adversaries that hostile acts against Australia would not succeed and could not be sustained if conflict were protracted,” Conroy said.
Australia will spend $209 million to locally manufacture Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) in partnership with the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin. The facility will be capable of producing 4,000 GMLRS a year, or a quarter of current global production, Conroy said.
French company Thales will manufacture 155 mm M795 ammunition, used in howitzers, at a government-owned munitions facility in southeast Australia. It will be the first dedicated forge outside the U.S., with production starting in 2028 and capacity for 100,000 rounds a year.
The war in Ukraine was accounting for 10,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery shells a day in 2023, outstripping European production, Conroy said.
“In a world marked by supply chain disruption and strategic fragility, Australia needs not only to acquire more missiles but to make more here at home,” he said.
In August 2024, Australia said it will jointly manufacture long-range Naval Strike Missiles and Joint Strike Missiles with Norwegian firm Kongsberg Defence in Newcastle on Australia’s east coast, the only site outside Norway.
The Royal Australian Navy will also have U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles, with a range of 2,500 kilometers, by the end of 2024, a tenfold increase in the fleet’s weapons range.
