US strength.2 Furthermore, the first US National Both the United States and Australia have made Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), released in Jan- deterring coercion in the Indo-Pacific the focus of uary 2024, calls for working with allies and partners their defence strategies and plan to do so by deny- to increase defence production and improve the 3 ing an aggressor the ability to achieve its. [...] For will help Australia and the United States meet the instance, during the July 2023 Australia-United current global demand for weapons and improve States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), the their ability to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific allies agreed that by 2025 the United States and Aus- region. [...] Thus industry with the assumption that buys will be made up in struggles to build and maintain stable and resilient the future.68 As a result of the unreliability of its pri- supply chains and is disincentivised from invest- mary customer, the Pentagon, the US missiles and ing in upgrading their manufacturing processes munitions industrial base struggles. [...] The US missiles and munitions case basis by the State Department and Congress industrial base needs significant expansion after and often take years to be finalised.71 3 decades of neglect if it is to meet the immediate demand of the wars in Europe and the Middle East, let alone if it is going to be able to support the Pen- tagon as it prepares for the ‘pacing challenge’ of China. [...] ised the need to rapidly acquire more missiles to Moreover, other factors such as the global demand deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific and recognised for a particular PGM and ways to improve the that cooperation is necessary to make this a real- capacity and resiliency of combined supply chains ity.
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- Australia
Table of Contents
- Aiming higher Accelerating US-Australia cooperation on precision-guided weapons 1
- Table of contents 3
- Executive summary 3
- Introduction 3
- The modern missile age 3
- Australias Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise 3
- US munitions ups and downs 3
- Cooperation is needed but on which weapons specifically 3
- What weapons should be included in GWEO from an alliance perspective 3
- US PGM requirements for the pacing challenge 3
- Australian requirements to defend its northern approaches 3
- Additional considerations for GWEO production and sustainment 3
- Conclusion and recommendations 3
- Endnotes 3
- About the author 3
- Executive summary 4
- Introduction 5
- The modern missile age 7
- Australias Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise 10
- US munitions ups and downs 12
- What weapons should be included in GWEO from an alliance perspective 14
- US PGM requirements for the pacing challenge 14
- Cooperation is needed but on which weapons specifically 14
- Australian requirements to defend its northern approaches 15
- Additional considerations for GWEO production and sustainment 18
- Washington should allow Canberra to sell the PGMs that are manufactured in Australia if it wants to create sustainable Australian production lines. 18
- Conclusion and recommendations 20
- Endnotes 22
- About the author 30
- Stacie Pettyjohn 30
