Inter-range NT launch a historic military first for Australia

The ADF has launched the first ever inter-range missile in the NT. WATCH THE VIDEO.

The Australian Army has successfully fired a ballistic missile between two Northern Territory Defence bases.

The launch was part of Exercise Talisman Sabre and a historic first for the Australian Defence Force.

Launched using a high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS), the ATACMS missile was flown to Dellamere rocket range on board a Hercules C130 from Shoalwater Bay training area in Central Queensland.

Head of Regiment Brigadier Damien Hill said the missile was “rolled out” the back of the C130 and fired 260km north-west into the Bradshaw field training area to demonstrate the Army’s capacity to undertake a range-to-range missile launch.

The moment the ATACMS left the HIMARS rocket system.

The launch builds on the ADF’s existing relationships with the United States military and previous missile launches between the two armies.

“This is just an evolution of that and the ability for us to protect Australia with systems such as these whether it be the distances we’re talking about, at least demonstrating we can defend Australia and it’s national interest, and it’s really important that we do so.

“Talisman Sabre gives us a glimpse of what we might seek to undertake as far as acquisitions we may consider in the future.

“The launch demonstrated for the first time our ability to undertake what we could call from-range-to-a-range-long-range-strike,” he said.

Airborne action from Exercise Talisman Sabre.

The launch was one of the two signature events from the biennial defence exercise.

The other was organising the logistics behind moving tens-of-thousands of military in, out and across Australia.

“It was 200 days of planning for seven minutes of flight for that missile,” Brigadier Hill said. That’s the kind of planning evolution that we took just to make sure it’s done safely,” he said.

“We needed to make sure we work with all the other government agencies such as Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Territory government, just to ensure that when we undertake this we understand what risk we’re applying and we can do so safely.

Head of Regiment Brigadier Damien Hill

“The irony isn’t lost on me that you have hundreds of people planning it and very few people executing it, but that’s what the whole long range strike capability is about.”

More than 30,000 military personnel from 13 nations participated in Talisman Sabre, with the focus primarily on Queensland with the NT, WA and NSW also participating.

Talisman Sabre is the largest Australia-US bilateral exercise and an opportunity to work with like-minded partners from across the region and around the world.

Defence forces from Fiji, France, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany are all participating in Talisman Sabre 2023, with the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand attending as observers.

The exercise concluded on Friday.