Australia’s missile ambitions are the key to our future defence

The Albanese government has now launched its guided weapons and explosive ordnance (GWEO) enterprise plan.

Though GWEO is a term little known and seldom used outside the halls of Department of Defence and industry boardrooms, it is more essential to Australia’s future security than any other single initiative.

In fact, GWEO should be understood as the lynch pin of Australia’s national defence strategy.

As the government’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review observed, in a fraught regional security environment a sovereign GWEO enterprise is the key to achieving regional balancing and to deterrence.

Without the missile enterprise, Australia’s ability to generate long-range combat power for the army, navy and air force, and to provide the nation with missile defence, is seriously degraded.

Australia’s defence strategy could survive delays or even a faltering in the implementation of the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines partnership, but it falls apart if GWEO fails to deliver.

The project has, however, had a slow and inauspicious start. Despite the fanfare of its announcement in 2021, it was not provided with requisite resourcing or strategic direction at the outset.

By the time of Angus Houston and Stephen Smith’s defence review, little had been done to translate Australia’s ambitions for sovereign missile production into reality.

Now, after a limping start, the government appears on much firmer footing on its so-called “crawl-walk-run” approach towards a missile capability. A plan for the enterprise has now been unveiled to turn intent into action.

This plan provides for a coherent enterprise framework and builds on the major strides made in the project over the past 18 months. Intended funding has increased from an initial $1 billion to $24 billion over the decade.

In partnership with the United States, the government has pursued local production of guided multiple launch rocket system (GMLRS) missiles and, most recently, an additional $7 billion acquisition of US long-range surface-to-air missiles for the Royal Australian Navy.

In addition, Kongsberg’s future manufacturing of anti-ship missiles in Newcastle is an important step towards sovereign long-range missile capability for a maritime nation.

Commitments to domestic production sit at the critical intersection of Australian strategic interests, US requirements and global demand.

This confluence of need for Australia and its partners provides a business case for Australian industry and, importantly, a rationale for an expanded sovereign defence industrial base that complements, rather than competes, with our partners’ production lines.

This flood of recent announcements represents significant progress for Australia’s missile ambitions, but they do not guarantee success. The realisation of an Australian missile enterprise is, in some part, out of our hands – it relies principally upon our US ally.

Like AUKUS, GWEO depends on the complicated task of transferring advanced technology and manufacturing techniques from the US to Australia.

Partnering on missiles will push our co-operation into uncharted territory. It will enable Australia to leverage US technology and defence industrial heft to rapidly grow Australia’s capability.

Such an approach has paid dividends for Australian defence capability in the past, on everything from the F35 fighter aircraft program to Australia’s current fleet of Collins-class submarines.

Our officials have made plain that, like for AUKUS, Australia is embracing short-term dependence on the US to enable Australia to realise self-reliance in the long term.

At the same time, Australia will supplement an exhausted US industrial base – most notably by locally producing and exporting solid-fuel rocket motors, a component in short supply in the US.

US strategies and policies recognise that industrial partnerships are instrumental to derisking supply chains and meet US national strategic requirements. Working with Australia on GWEO is a way to lend substance to this rhetoric.

However, fraught US budget cycles, unresolved regulatory constraints and a cultural reticence in the US bureaucracy may pose unwelcome handbrakes on Australian efforts to develop a sovereign GWEO industry.

Intensifying fiscal pressures, stilted progress on multi-year funding and the strangling effect of successive short-term budget resolutions in the US create an unstable business environment for missiles and munitions.

Taken together, these pressures increase the challenges facing missile co-production.

With annual appropriations resting in the hands of Congress, US officials can make few long-term commitments to their Australian counterparts. For Australia, inspiring awareness of and champions for GWEO among US representatives and, importantly, the US armed services must be a major priority.

Despite sweeping AUKUS-inspired reforms to US defence trade with Australia, enduring regulatory barriers still impede our efforts.

The US missile technology control regime (MTCR) captures most capabilities slated for co-operation. Sales of MTCR-captured articles, while possible, involve lengthy wait times and extensive red tape.

The MTCR is widely recognised as outdated by experts and officials, but it is exceptionally difficult to change. Without its reform, Australia’s ability to embrace co-production and contribute to global supply chains remains handicapped.

A final major barrier lies embedded within the US bureaucracy writ large. Complexity means that policy ambitions are not always shared or enacted across the political system.

At times, our ambitious agenda on GWEO will grate against hard limits on US political willingness. While co-operation on rocket motors and GMLRS lie in the realm of the possible, other technologies will be difficult to unlock.

With many officials and service members wary of information-sharing and industrial competition, strategic need must be reconciled with political and bureaucratic realities.

Partnership with the US on co-production, co-development and co-sustainment in guided weapons and munitions forms the foundation of Australia’s pathway to realising its missile ambitions. For the new enterprise plan to succeed, this is the ball game.

A sustainable and sophisticated US alliance has rightly been identified as the key to unlocking sovereign capability.

Both countries decisively removing barriers to that co-operation could not be more important, because, as the US Deputy Secretary of Defence Kathleen Hicks noted earlier this year: “Production is deterrence.”