{"id":76269,"date":"2022-11-03T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T19:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=76269"},"modified":"2022-11-02T18:10:45","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T07:10:45","slug":"whats-the-plan-for-sovereign-munitions-for-the-adf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/whats-the-plan-for-sovereign-munitions-for-the-adf\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the plan for \u2018sovereign\u2019 munitions for the ADF?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought renewed focus on questions of munitions stockpiling and production capacity. Efforts to secure as many<\/a> modern<\/a> anti-armour<\/a> weapons from whoever can provide them have been a prominent feature of Ukrainian diplomacy, for example.<\/p>\n

The scramble has also been on for supplies of munitions of every conceivable nature. Recent footage suggests that Ukraine is using Iranian 122-millimetre<\/a>\u00a0artillery ammunition, and not old stuff, but shells apparently manufactured in 2022. More strikingly, Russia was recently reported<\/a> to be buying significant quantities of ammunition from North Korea.<\/p>\n

Given the high rates of ammunition consumption<\/a> being reported, there has been significant attention paid to the sustainability of this usage by both sides, as well as what it might tell other countries<\/a> about the robustness of their own arrangements.<\/p>\n

These are not new questions and, commendably, the Australian government had already decided to do something about concerns in this area before the events of \u00a0this year. The \u2018Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise<\/a>\u2019 (known as \u2018GWEO\u2019 or the \u2018GWEO Enterprise\u2019) was announced in March 2021. It is intended to be the \u2018enabling ecosystem to support Defence\u2019s inventory of guided weapons and explosive ordnance\u2019, with a long-term (beyond 10 years) goal that \u2018Australia will have achieved increased sovereign design, development, manufacture and support of selected weapons\u2019.<\/p>\n

There are two parts to this issue. Quite a bit has already been written about the first\u2014the \u2018guided weapons\u2019 component. ASPI senior analyst Marcus Hellyer\u2019s attempt to \u2018crack the missile matrix\u2019<\/a> is perhaps the most prominent public piece<\/a> of work<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In short, the GWEO Enterprise appears to remain some way off producing anything, and the two \u2018strategic partners\u2019 to the enterprise (Raytheon and Lockheed Martin) already produce most of Australia\u2019s guided munitions (both offshore and onshore). Defence is at pains to emphasise that in the first instance increasing stockpiles, from whatever supply chains are available, is the first priority.<\/p>\n

This initial priority for increasing stocks, not manufacturing, can creditably be seen as a tacit acknowledgement of how fraught the word \u2018sovereign\u2019 is in this area. Building anything that looks like domestically manufactured guided weapons at a relevant scale is an undeniably complex endeavour, and it is perhaps not surprising progress has been slow. This is not just true of the most exquisite missile systems.<\/p>\n

Currently, primers for small-arms ammunition are reportedly 100% imported from overseas. They are readily available and low cost under \u2018normal\u2019 conditions, and could be stockpiled to facilitate surge manufacturing of finished munitions in a crisis. But this would not represent a start-to-finish, independent manufacturing capability, if that were taken as the meaning of \u2018sovereign\u2019.<\/p>\n

This leads us to the second aspect and the other end of munitions spectrum: how healthy are our supply arrangements for more traditional, \u2018dumb\u2019 munitions, like artillery shells, unguided bombs and rockets and the myriad small-arms and medium-calibre ammunition?<\/p>\n

It bears noting that the \u2018EO\u2019 part of \u2018GWEO\u2019 itself appears to have been the product of some sort of evolution, at least of public framing. The previous government initially announced a \u2018Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise<\/a>\u2019, and Defence subsequently introduced the \u2018GWEO\u2019.<\/p>\n

Defence is, for understandable reasons, completely mum on the question of what Australia\u2019s existing stockpiles of any munitions type look like. You can glean snippets from select guided weapons purchases (see Appendix 1 of Hellyer\u2019s missile report<\/a>: at best we might get an \u2018up to\u2019 quantity associated with a sale), but the picture doesn\u2019t even exist to that extent for their \u2018dumb\u2019 cousins. We can assume that many of our extant stockpiles wouldn\u2019t last long, at least at anything approaching the consumption rates being observed in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Australian Munitions<\/a>, a Thales subsidiary, operates two manufacturing facilities abreast of the Murray River: one in Benalla, Victoria, and the other in Mulwala, New South Wales. The latter produces explosives and other inputs\u2014\u2018energetics\u2019, in industry parlance\u2014while the former is an ammunition factory. These facilities are \u2018government-owned, commercially operated\u2019.<\/p>\n

With the inking of the $1.1 billion \u2018Strategic Domestic Munitions Manufacturing\u2019 contract with Thales in 2020, it was also revealed<\/a> that another armament and munitions firm, NIOA, was to share the Benalla facility. NIOA is also building an artillery shell forging plant at Maryborough<\/a> in Queensland, which is expected to be completed this year. The company reportedly<\/a> \u2018has plans, subject to government approval to produce 155mm Assegai Projectiles, 30mm ammunition for the Boxer vehicle, hand grenades, aircraft bombs and artillery fuses\u2019. At this stage, NIOA is not delivering these munitions to Australian defence users and these plans are therefore, presumably, not part of the GWEO.<\/p>\n

The GWEO leadership team from Defence provided an \u2018industry update\u2019 at the Land Forces 2022<\/a> Expo in Brisbane last month. The report on \u2018progress to date\u2019 reflected the emphasis on guided weapons. Only two items were noted specifically in terms of \u2018dumb\u2019 natures. One was the \u2018BLU series\u2019<\/a> of bombs, for which Thales has established a local manufacturing capability.<\/p>\n

The second is the request for proposal<\/a> for large-calibre munitions issued by Defence. Defence reported that it has received responses for 81-millimetre (mortar), 155-millimetre (artillery) and 5-inch (naval) ammunition.<\/p>\n

What is interesting here is that Defence framed this development as a response to potential opportunities. It was not part of the original plan and remains unfunded in the GWEO portfolio. On the face of it, this is not a bad thing; however, it bears noting that this suggests that this component wasn\u2019t something that emerged as a targeted priority.<\/p>\n

In a second part to this piece, I\u2019ll pose some questions about whether this EO state of play adequately reflects the potential need for these supplies by Defence, and discuss some of the barriers to realising greater ambition in this area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought renewed focus on questions of munitions stockpiling and production capacity. Efforts to secure as many modern anti-armour weapons from whoever can provide them have been a prominent feature …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1519,"featured_media":76271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,126,268,435,67],"class_list":["post-76269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-defence-industry","tag-missile","tag-sovereignty","tag-weapons"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat\u2019s the plan for \u2018sovereign\u2019 munitions for the ADF? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/whats-the-plan-for-sovereign-munitions-for-the-adf\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What\u2019s the plan for \u2018sovereign\u2019 munitions for the ADF? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought renewed focus on questions of munitions stockpiling and production capacity. 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