Australia, belatedly recognising that China represents a grave security threat, created the Guided Weapons and Explosives Ordnance (GWEO) Enterprise to oversee a more comprehensive sovereign weapons production capacity on home shores. GWEO was created on 8 May 2023.
Eighteen months on, questions spring to mind. Is GWEO giving Australia a genuine sovereign manufacturing base, one that benefits Australian national interests, and is the government moving quickly enough?
Initially there was little evidence of GWEO’s progress, but momentum has been growing in the past few months. On 16 September, Canberra announced investment of A$22 million (US$15 million) in a solid rocket motor factory, with plans to be producing motors for both Australia and others by 2030. Simultaneously, Australia announced A$60 million over five years to “develop the next generation of guided-weapons subsystems and components, such as hypersonic and long-range strike”.
In January, Lockheed Martin Australia was granted an A$37.4 million contract to begin assembling Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS), and this will occur in 2025. GMLRS is one of four weapons GWEO has prioritised so far – the others being the Evolved SeaSparrow Missile, 155mm artillery ammunition and Naval Strike Missile (NSM).
Speaking of the latter, Kongsberg Defence Australia will establish a new missile production facility in Newcastle, with the government contributing up to A$850 million. Factory construction will commence before year’s end, and it will produce and service both NSMs and Joint Strike Missiles. Production for Australia and regional customers will commence in 2027.
The company told Asian Military Review: “This is a significant military and industrial capability that’s being delivered to Australia. Strategic partnership provides a platform for active engagement and ongoing collaboration for the manufacture and maintenance of these weapons, increased supply chain involvement, and the ongoing development and upgrade of these capabilities.”
As alluded to here, Kongsberg was admitted as a third strategic partner for GWEO, alongside Lockheed Martin Australia and Raytheon Australia. Kongsberg’s inclusion goes some way to countering criticism that GWEO is just benefitting large American conglomerates.
Nonetheless, there is synergy between Australia and the USA. To use a favoured Chinese expression, it is “win-win”. American companies recognised after the COVID-19 pandemic that they needed to diversify global supply chains. Plus the protracted Ukraine war created a seismic shift, as the USA attempts to de-risk its supply chain by adding capacity elsewhere. Apart from meeting its own domestic demands, Australia can export weapons back to the USA and elsewhere.
Is everything rosy then? Travis Reddy, CEO of DefendTex, asked: “In the event of high-intensity conflict, will Australia as a nation have the ability to manufacture the ordnance that it needs to keep the Australian Defence Force capable of conducting its mission? The overwhelming answer is no.”
In wartime the USA will clearly not be able to supply Australia with all that it needs. Reddy pondered: “If push comes to shove, can America supply Australia? That requires that air and sea lanes are open so that seekers can reach us. It requires a supply chain in America, which ultimately relies on electronic components out of Taiwan, and requires America to have enough spare ordnance that it doesn’t need for itself, and that it deems our needs to be the next highest priority.”
Reddy called such thinking naïve, and described such dependence as certainly not being sovereign.
Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, also raised concerns. “At the moment, it seems to be moving very much at a snail’s pace on a small scale, a very hesitant approach on the part of government, which I don’t understand given the very adverse strategic outlook we’re facing.”
Davis advocated local production of longer-range weapons like LRASM anti-ship, JASSM-ER air-to-surface and Tomahawk cruise missiles. He added, “There’s a tendency by government to default to the primes. Everything must go through Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Thales or whatever. Let’s see what SMEs can do in terms of things like long-range missiles. Give them a chance to actually demonstrate their capabilities.”
There is a peacetime mindset to overcome too. Whilst Russian and Chinese industry is on a wartime footing, Australia is behaving as though it still has one or two decades to sort things out. In fact, analysts predict that the coming few years represent the highest risk of Chinese aggression against Taiwan.
by Gordon Arthur
