Page 66 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2023

66 DEFENCE BUSINESS VIEW FROM CANBERRA
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For at least five years, Defence and successive governments have talked about standing up a sovereign capability to manufacture precision guided munitions (PGMs).
A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | CANBERRA
THE July 2020 Defence Strategic Update announced a very substantial investment in lifting PGM inventory, acquiring longer-range munitions and making our own.
How many PGMs have we manufactured since then, you might wonder? The answer of course is none at all.
Last April, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon were named as strategic partners for the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise.
Further, the Australian Missile Corporation, Sovereign Missile Alliance and Aurecon Advisory were named as sover- eign industry partners.
That ticked a lot of boxes but the actual construction of mis- siles remains a depressing zero. That’s fine if we had all the time in the world, maybe the decade of warning of emerging threats anticipated in past Defence White Papers.
of FMS buys of US-made PGMs logged at the end of some financial years. The takeout was that this was a useful way of spending surplus budget.
Realistically, FMS buys of munitions will provide the ma- jority of ADF PGM stocks for the indefinite future. That comes with its own issues as US manufacturers are churning out missiles as fast as they can to top up US military stocks and to make good on materiel supplied to Ukraine.
FMS announcements, courtesy of the US Defense Secu- rity Cooperation Agency, give some indication of our priori- ties, though these are essentially just notices of US official approval of what we’d like to buy.
For example, on 7 March, DSCA announced a proposed sale of 255 Javelin missiles (cost US$60.18 million).
This is curious given the ADF’s commitment to Spike but it may be that Javelins will arrive sooner than we can make Spike, or even buy ready made from Israel. Or will they? One industry insider suggested a five-year wait on new Javelin orders.
At the Land Forces conference last October, Lockheed Martin said they were flat out producing 175 Javelins per month and were looking to double production to meet de- mand.
So, standing up Australian production seems a reasonable plan, albeit one that might need some years.
Here’s a couple of reality checks. As great as the need is, we won’t be starting out making ultra-sophisticated missiles like AMRAAM or SM-2. We still need to overcome ITAR restric- tions on export of US tech, though under AUKUS that seems to be moving along.
In a report in April 2021, ASPI analyst Marcus Hellyer suggested some possible priorities for local production, start- ing with Spike and locally-developed loitering drones.
Then there’s JDAM kits which are relatively cheap and can convert dumb bomb into PGMs; and ESSM which our warships need and with which local industry is familiar. Finally, perhaps Australia should take a long-odds bet and invest in development of hypersonic weapons? ■
ABOVE: In March the US DSCA announced a proposed sale of 255 Javelin missiles to Australia
“SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT
Should the government and Defence give the go-ahead today, the soonest we could have a domestically manufac- tured PGM is two years. That would be
AND DEFENCE GIVE THE the Israeli Rafael Spike LR2 anti-tank
GO-AHEAD TODAY, THE SOONEST WE COULD HAVE A DOMESTICALLY
guided missile, manufactured by VRA, a joint venture of Rafael and Newcas- tle-based Varley.
Spike is a state-of-the-art and widely MANUFACTURED PGM IS used ATGM, chosen to equip the Army’s
TWO YEARS”
new Boxer Combat Reconnaissance Ve- hicle and infantry fighting vehicles.
But is Spike really the missile we need most? If we end fighting China over Taiwan alongside the US, as analysts are tipping maybe within three years, the ADF would really need different missiles - and plenty of them. Assuming our warships operate within a US Naval task group, we would need SM-2s and ESSMs, plus maybe SM-6,
along with the new Kongsberg NSM for strike.
It would be helpful if Defence indicated their PGM priori- ties but it’s quite likely we’ll never know, as that would tell an
adversary stuff we’d rather they didn’t know.
The GWEO enterprise is about more than standing up
production of our PGMs. It’s also about increasing inventory. Some years back, one analyst noted the curious number
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