The Navy’s strike range for hitting enemy targets has increased 20-fold after the successful test firing last week of the powerful Tomahawk missile, making Australia’s fleet now the most lethal in its history.

With the Indo-Pacific locked in a regional arms race fuelled by alarm over China’s military rise, the Navy has defied the tendency for military acquisitions to be bogged down by delays and test-fired three kinds of missiles from Australia’s fleet of destroyers over the past six months.