Australia’s recent Defence Strategic Review (DSR) has placed the development of a sovereign Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise as one of its top priorities.
The ability to build and maintain large stocks of precision weapons and other munitions in any future high-intensity conflict is seen as essential to delivering the offensive and defensive capabilities needed to protect the country. Both the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukraine War have reinforced how vulnerable supply chains are and how the world’s production capacity for GWEO has been under pressure.
Released to the public on 24 April 2023, the DSR marked a shift in strategic focus that will change the shape of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to better defend the maritime approaches to Australia using forward-positioned units and long-range weapons to establish an anti-access area denial (A2AD) zone.
The DSR stated: “Long-range strikes and other guided weapons are fundamental to the ADF’s ability to hold an adversary at risk in Australia’s northern approaches. To do this, the ADF must hold sufficient stocks of GWEO and have the ability to manufacture certain lines.”
It added: “The realisation of the GWEO Enterprise is central to achieving this objective.”
However, the DSR was highly critical of the progress in developing the GWEO Enterprise to date citing a lack of financial resources granted so far and the funding plans for the next decade. It also highlighted concerns about a lack of workforce to sustain it and that a strategy for the delivery of the desired outcomes had yet to be produced.
This is an excerpt from APDR. To read the full story, click here.
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I can see the GWEO project ending in much the same way as so many other projects, years of pouring money into evaluating how it can be done, more years of pouring money into developing strategies of which weapons to build only to decide its all to hard, scrap the idea and redirect the money to fund an investigation into underwater basket weaving. The obsession with Departments and Senior Military on pinning their hopes on Congressional approval for technology transfer is mind boggling. The U.S. is NEVER going to prioritise Australian Sovereignty over U.S. industries. Unless the relevant Departments start prioritising Australian interest over other countries interests and start shopping around for the best deals the ADF is doomed