Australian navy joins exclusive missile club with Tomahawk test
The navy has taken a massive leap forward in its long-range strike capability, firing a Tomahawk cruise missile for the first time.
The navy has taken a huge leap forward in its long-range strike capability, firing a Tomahawk cruise missile for the first time amid fears over China’s growing military might.
The test launch by an air warfare destroyers confirms the service’s ability to operate the US-made land attack missile that can hit targets at ranges of up to 2500km – more than 20 times further than the Harpoon missiles the Tomahawks will replace.
It caps off a trifecta of successful missile tests by the navy after maiden launches of the Naval Strike Missile (NSM) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) in the space of just six months.
HMAS Brisbane fired the Tomahawk at a US range off San Diego on December 6, but the achievement was kept quiet until Monday. The missile flew on a complex trajectory before hitting a shipping container.
The milestone puts Australia in an exclusive club, with just two other nations – the US and Britain – having fired the potent weapon.
Australia has purchased 200 Tomahawk missiles from the US Navy’s stocks for $1.3bn under a plan to hold adversaries at bay over longer distances.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said: “By enhancing our own Defence capabilities and by working with partners, we change the calculus for any potential aggressor so that no state will ever conclude the benefits of conflict outweigh the risks.”
Chief of Navy Mark Hammond said the service was doing “doing everything humanly and legally possible to optimise the Royal Australian Navy’s surface combatant fleet as quickly as possible”.
“For a three ocean island-trading nation, there is no national security or economic security without strong maritime security,” he said.
“Our nation has few existential issues, but access to the sea is one of them.”
The Brisbane was upgraded in the US to fire the missile from its Mk41 vertical launch system canisters. The capability will also be rolled out to its sister ships, HMAS Hobart and HMAS Sydney.
The Hobart-class destroyers will also be fitted with SM-6 missiles, offering cutting-edge protection against air and missile threats at ranges of up to 240km. The destroyers and the navy’s Anzac frigates will be equipped with NSMs, enabling them to take out enemy ships more than 185km away.
Former naval officer Jen Parker, an adjunct fellow in naval studies at UNSW, said the Tomahawks would give the navy’s destroyers a dramatic capability upgrade.
“Previously, our navy has had very limited ability to hit surface targets,” she said.
The rapid introduction of three different missile types on the warships was a “genuinely historic” achievement.
“The ability to achieve all three within 12 months, in terms of the amount of effort that would have taken, I think is pretty significant,” she said.
It has been a long year for the navy, with all three air warfare destroyers completing lengthy overseas deployments, and Anzac-class frigate crews stretched to the limit by personnel shortages.
BEN PACKHAM
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