Australia to buy US-made HIMARS missile system

• Australia will buy the Naval Strike Missile and HMARS.
• Both systems are land-based, therefore they won’t be on warships soon.
• Military specialists think Australia’s new left-leaning government is pro-defense.

Australia said on Thursday that it will buy two cutting-edge missile and rocket systems, including one that Ukraine used to devastate Russia, as a deterrent to possible regional security concerns.

The Naval Strike Missile (NSM) and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) have been on the shopping list since last spring, when Defense Minister Peter Dutton stated that Australia needed to upgrade its defensive weapons systems due to the conflict in the Ukraine and looming Chinese threats.

In a statement regarding the two purchases on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles reaffirmed that point and pegged the entire cost at $684 million ($1 billion Australian).

“The Albanese government is taking a proactive approach to keeping Australia safe – and the Naval Strike Missile and HIMARS launchers will give our defense force the ability to deter conflict and protect our interests,” Marles said.

“The level of technology involved in these acquisitions takes our forces to the cutting edge of modern military hardware,” said Pat Conroy, minister for defense industry.

Since the United States started supplying Kyiv with HIMARS launchers last summer, Ukraine has witnessed a significant improvement.

Numerous Russian conscripts living at a vocational school in the seized Donetsk region were killed in HIMARS strikes just last week, according to news reports.

Their sale to Australia was authorized by the US State Department in May of last year, with a $385 million price tag attached to a package that also contained related equipment.

The systems are land-based, though, and Australian defense forces may find the Norwegian-designed Naval Strike Missiles to be more useful in the short term.

The Australian navy’s destroyers and frigates will be equipped with the nimble sea-skimming missiles. The Australian Defense Ministry stated in a statement last April that the missiles will more than double the present range of the missiles on Australia’s ships with a range of 185 kilometers (115 miles).

In a statement released on Thursday, it was stated that HIMARS will be in the Australian arsenal by 2026–2027 and that Naval Strike Missiles would start replacing Harpoon missiles aboard Australian warships in 2024.

According to some Australian military analysts, the statement on Thursday was mostly made for political purposes because both had been made by a right-leaning government that had been overthrown in favor of a left-leaning one on May 21.

“I assume there’s a deeper political message to show that the new left-leaning government … is keen on defense spending,” said Peter Layton, a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and former Royal Australian Air Force officer.

As much of Australia’s defense focus has been on China, including with its plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS agreement with the United States and United Kingdom, the purchase of the HIMARS system, which is geared towards land-based warfare, may be a way to retain the votes of army supporters.

“The Australian Army is in search of a role now the Middle Eastern wars have finished,” said Layton. “They are unable to find a place for themselves given Australia’s current strategic circumstances which favor air and naval force.”

It was being discussed in the nation, according to Ian Hall, Griffith Asia’s deputy director of research, what the HIMARS should do.

“I imagine that HIMARS could be used in a contingency in Southeast Asia or even somewhere in the Pacific,” he said, pointing out that the US Marines have been exercising with HIMARS with the thought of deploying them to Pacific islands in the event of hostilities in the region.

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