The Australian Army's new HIMARS vehicles will deliver a capability to strike distant targets far from our shores at a cost substantially less than a nuclear submarine or jet fighter.
With new types of longer range precision missiles, targets could include hostile warships 1000 kilometres or more out to sea.
Here's a potential scenario, cited by Wayne Harrison, International Business Manager for Lockheed Martin's Missiles and Fire Control division.
A RAAF C-130 transport aircraft lands on one of the numerous C-130 capable strips on Australia’s northern approaches, unloads a HIMARS vehicle which sets up on the end of the airstrip and fires a mission.
The HIMARS then loads back up onto the C-130 which promptly takes off. Total mission duration - two and a half minutes.
HIMARS - the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System - is a wheeled vehicle which carries a pod of six Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) rockets or two of the longer range Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM).
HIMARS systems delivered to Ukraine have proven highly effective.
Australia has just taken a delivery of the first two of the 42 HIMARS vehicles, on display at the Avalon Air Show in Victoria.
The basic GMLRS missile, which Australia plans to start assembling this year, has a range of 84 kilometres, more than double traditional artillery. GMLRS Extended Range goes 150 kilometres, PrSM more than 400 kilometres and the new PrSM Increment 4 more than 1000 kilometres.
This is a game changer, says Paula Hartley, Lockheed Martin vice-president for tactical missiles.
“Two years ago I was here and we had brought in one of the HIMARS from the US to showcase and we committed at the time that the next time we were here in Avalon you would have your own HIMARS,” she told reporters.
Another six will arrive shortly, followed by 12 more next year. The rest will arrive in 2027 and 2028.
“It is the most battle proven launcher on the world. We have also increased production capability for HIM ARS. At the beginning of the Ukraine war we were at about 48 a year. At the end of last year we hit a production capability of 96, double the capacity over two years,” she said.
Harrison, a former US Marine Corps HIMARS battalion commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he was once in the same position as the Australian Army with this new capability.
“I was the first operational HIMARS commander in the US Marines. I transitioned from cannons to rocket artillery, the same thing the Australian Army is doing right now,” he said.
“It is a journey. It is generational leap of fire power. “
Since these missiles fly high, far higher than conventional artillery, one issue is deconfliction with passing aircraft.
Under project LAND 8113 Phase 2, Defence will raise a second long range fires regiment, equipped with either HIMARS or the locally made Thales/Kongsberg StrikeMaster vehicles.
Josh Woodward, Lockheed Martin Australia business development manager for missiles and fire control, said the combination of high flying missiles such as PrSM and air-launched sea skimming missiles such as LRASM presented a really difficult problem for an adversary.
“You start drawing out 500-1000 kilometres range rings from the northern approaches, you can very quickly see that entire area is totally denied to anyone who would seek to penetrate that area,” he said.