Strike missiles: the key to deterring an enemy

Even people who normally took very little interest in defence were pretty sure that the age of guided missiles had arrived decades ago. (In fact, the first operational ones appeared in 1943.)

What the authors of the review were really trying to talk about was the rise of precision strike missiles, weapons that fly hundreds or even thousands of kilometres and impact surface targets within a metre or so of the aim points.

The review demands greater strike-missile capability from the armed forces and preparations for Australia coming under attack by such weapons.

Range is a crucial factor. The farther strike missiles can fly, the more targets they can reach and the more defensive problems they create for an enemy, dissuading it from starting a war. Its air bases far from the front line are not safe, nor are ammunition stores, radar installations, ports or command posts.

But the cost of weapons generally rises with their range. All strike missiles cost at least several million dollars each.

Because long-range hitting power is so strong in deterring war, for more than 40 years Australia spent a big chunk of its defence budget on buying and operating two squadrons of F-111 strike bombers. They could attack targets at least 1500 kilometres away with bombs.

After they were retired in 2010, we preserved strike capability in two ways. One was by equipping Hornet fighters with Lockheed Martin JASSM strike missiles, which had a range exceeding 370 kilometres. New tanker aircraft could help the short-legged Hornets haul JASSMs towards far-away targets.

Since the stealthy, low-flying missiles, not the fighters, would fly the final and most dangerous section of the mission, they made land attacks safer for the air force and harder for an opponent to defend against.

Our other way to sustain strike capability since 2010 has been operating 24 Super Hornet fighters as direct F-111 replacements. With tanker help, our Super Hornets can fly more than 1000 kilometres from base, but to attack well-defended land targets they can use only JSOW gliding bombs or Harpoon missiles that are designed mainly to hit ships.

Because the Hornets left service in 2021 and our Super Hornets do not carry JASSMs, the air force's ability to strike distant targets safely with stand-off ammunition has actually declined lately. The navy, meanwhile, has only Harpoons, and the army has never had strike missiles of any kind.

But this is the low point. Hundreds of strike missiles of several models are now on the way, and the defence review has decided that we need even more.

The first reinforcement will probably be a batch of LRASM missiles for the Super Hornets. Based on the JASSM, the LRASM is designed to attack ships, but its technical details suggest it can hit land targets, too. (Merger of land-attack and anti-ship functions is a trend in strike missile development.)

The defence review requires us to go further by also equipping our 72 F-35A Lightnings with LRASMs.

Importantly, LRASMs will not fit inside F-35As; they must instead be carried under the wings. In those positions, they ruin the fighters' stealthiness, increase drag and reduce range, penalties that have evidently been accepted because the weapons themselves can fly far, probably well beyond 500 kilometres.

JASSMs of a new extended-range version, JASSM-ER, are on the way, too, initially for the Super Hornets but later for F-35As. Tailored for land attack (and possibly useful against ships), they will be able to fly about 1,000 kilometres.

The review adds a requirement for yet another type of strike missile for the F-35As, the JSM from Kongsberg and Raytheon. Although JSMs probably can't reach as far as LRASMs, they will fit inside F-35As, enabling the fighters to preserve their range and stealth on strike missions.

The navy, meanwhile, will be equipped with weapons of the famous Tomahawk family. Raytheon Tomahawks will be our farthest-flying missiles, capable of reaching at least 1600 kilometres from the three Hobart-class destroyers that will carry them.

But those ships are already criticised as having too little missile capacity even for their main function, air defence. They can hardly allocate many weapon storage cells to the strike mission, and the nine forthcoming Hunter class frigates will carry even fewer missiles.

That's probably a key reason for the review also requiring acquisition of a class of small warships. It seems to intend that they will often accompany larger, stronger ships as missile-carrying pack horses.

MORE DEFENCE REVIEW:

There's no announced plan for Collins class submarines to carry Tomahawks, but the navy has looked at the possibility. Because submarines can safely go close to an enemy, putting Tomahawks on them would create an extremely long-range strike capability.

To replace Harpoons, the navy is also getting Kongsberg NSM missiles, which are smaller than Tomahawks and don't fly nearly as far. They will also be available for land-attack missions, though a ship may be unable to get close enough to a strongly defended target to use them.

In a huge change to defence policy, the army, too, will be getting into the strike business.

After gaining experience with GMLRS and ATACMS battlefield missiles, it will get Lockheed Martin PrSM strike weapons capable of flying at least 500 kilometres. The review hints that we will later buy PrSMs in a version that will reach 1000 kilometres.

Carried around in HIMARS launcher trucks, PrSMs will be a critical part of the review's strategy of denial - persuading an enemy to keep out of our continental approaches.

The government has been planning to make missiles in Australia. According to the review, that policy must apply especially to "long-range guided weapons", which should be a reference to strike missiles.

The aim may be to put the PrSM into local production, because it will have a solid-propellant rocket motor - the simple concept used for centuries in fireworks. All the strike-missile designs to be used by the navy and air force, on the other hand, have little jet turbine engines, which would be difficult and expensive to make here.

Another candidate for local production may be the GMLRS, which is also a kind of rocket but not a strike weapon.

MORE DEFENCE REVIEW:

Missile industry executives expect Australia to make missile parts of progressively increasing complexity; the parts we don't make will be imported and kept in stock.

So we're likely to start by making the metal bodies for each chosen design, including the case that holds the solid propellant, the plastic-like stuff that burns to produce thrust. Maybe we will make the propellant at the beginning, too.

The next step should be to make the warhead. Last of all will be the guidance and control system, the complex gear that works out where the target is and steers the missile accordingly.

These programs, acquiring strike missiles in multifarious types, some made at least partly here, will transform Australian defence. With them, we'll be giving a hostile power a lot more to consider before coming our way.