Why More American Guns Will Soon Be Made Outside America
On the grassy plains of Australia’s vast interior, an industrial evolution in the American war machine is gaining momentum. In munitions factories with room to grow, Australia is poised to produce heaps of artillery shells and thousands of guided missiles in partnership with US companies.
The weapons, made to Pentagon specifications, will be no different from those built in the United States, and only some of what rolls off the production line will remain in Australia. The rest is intended to replenish U.S. supplies or be sold to U.S. partners in an era of intense ground wars and threats from great powers.
It’s all part of Australia’s bid to effectively become the 51st defense manufacturing state, an ambitious vision now taking shape with a giant yellow explosives mixer and a lightning-protected missile assembly workshop known as GMLRS – or ‘gimmlers’.
“We are not buying a raw material, we are investing in a business,” said Brig. Andrew Langford, the Australian director-general responsible for domestic production of guided weapons and explosives. “And that’s where it’s really new.”
The embrace of joint production reflects a broader awakening in Washington and other capitals: The United States cannot make enough of the weapons needed for sustained warfare and deterrence on its own. Vulnerable partners like Taiwan are already being confronted delayed orders for American equipment, even as for China’s military capabilities continue growing.
So while the Pentagon waits changes in Cold War laws that prioritize protecting — not sharing — military technology, and as conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza push U.S. factories to their limits, officials are leading a global campaign to make more U.S. weapons with friendly countries.
Poland, Japan and India are among the countries in various stages of manufacturing partnerships. But Australia, America’s closest ally, which has fought alongside the Americans in every conflict since World War I, has gone further and faster with the Defense Department and American contractors like Lockheed Martin.
Together, they are testing a more collective approach that will require greater trust, billions of dollars in investment, and intercontinental sharing of sensitive technology for U.S. weapons systems, along with complex manufacturing and testing methods.
“We are very pleased with the momentum and speed we are generating with Australia,” said Bill LaPlante, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. “Efforts like these serve as a kind of blueprint for additional U.S. co-development, co-production, and co-sustainability agreements around the world.” For Australia, a distant island of 26 million people, going first adds opportunity and stress.
At a time when China’s military continues to leapfrog, with seemingly endless production lines for warships and missiles, Australia’s push for joint production could make the country more of a ‘porcupine’, with a sharper defense that can challenge China or any other adversary would deter. It could also create a much larger arms export industry with an American stamp of approval. Australian officials have lobbied for a broad exemption from military export laws, a status that only Canada now has.
“We are there to complement the American industrial base, not displace it,” said Pat Conroy, Australia’s defense industry minister, who recently returned from a trip to Washington. “They should see this as an opportunity for us to be a second supply line.”
The risk is that the United States will lose interest. Some Australian officials worry that their costly bet on US cooperation – which has accelerated in 2021 plans for nuclear-powered submarines — could be jeopardized by a new isolationist Trump presidency, or simply by an objection from a member of Congress who sees foreign factories as a threat to American jobs.
Analysts argue that weapons co-production will only deliver the benefit of greater deterrence if the production process in Australia and the rest of the region progresses with enthusiasm.
“There is strength in numbers,” said Charles Edel, chairman of Australia and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “but only if those numbers materialize quickly and in sufficient quantity to give Beijing pause.”
Mr. LaPlante emphasized that joint production agreements represent a long-term commitment, with multi-year contracts for ammunition. Australia is experiencing something of a revival: during World War II, the island hosted American troops and served as a military supply center.
That legacy can still be found in a factory in Mulwala, a small town a few hundred miles off the east coast of Australia, where the United States shipped weapons propellant-making machines in support of Allied operations in the 1940s in the Pacific Ocean.
In one of the original buildings, with the musty smell of a museum, photos from that time hang on the walls, but the rest of the complex points to the future.
Mulwala is a hub of Australia’s public-private explosives industry. It is where the volatile materials that fill artillery, bombs, and rifle bullets are made in heavy concrete buildings that are widely spaced and protected with hair-trigger alarms and wet floors to minimize static electricity.
Most of the 2,500 hectare site is managed by Thales, a multinational defense contractor, which also oversees ammunition production at a second site nearby in Benalla. Both are on government land with a large pastoral buffer that could allow expansion during what Australian officials describe as the ‘crawl, walk, run’ process of collaborative production.
First, the United States and Australia are completing joint production of 155-millimeter unguided artillery shells, which Pentagon officials described as “an early victory.”
Then, in the coming months, Lockheed Martin will begin assembling GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) with American components at a site where other rockets are maintained, increasing from a few units to a few hundred.
And as walking turns to running, Australia expects to produce about 3,000 GMLRS per year, with at least some local parts – most likely parts that rely on ‘energetics’, a term that also includes the explosives used to launch a rocket to control and blow up. his goal.
“The intellectual knowledge is here,” says Colonel Tony Watson, who is leading a program to upgrade government factories in Mulwala and Benalla. “So it’s easy to grow and expand.”
In any case, production will gradually increase. James Heading, director of programs for Lockheed Martin Australia’s missile and fire control division, said coordinating safety procedures for hazardous fluids, voltage differentials and other issues had already involved a lot of back and forth.
However, he added that Pentagon approvals for Australia now often take weeks instead of months or years – and that the hurdles are especially worth overcoming because the end products are in high demand.
GMLRS are launched from tubes on trucks known as HIMARS, and they can hit targets 50 miles away with 200 pounds of explosives using GPS for precision strikes.
Last year, the United States provided Ukraine with at least 20 HIMARS systems, along with GMLRS, and they quickly The momentum in the conflict has changed.
Taiwan has ordered at least 29 HIMARS launch vehicles since 2020, adding another potential customer for Australia. Israel makes its own missile systems, but U.S. and Australian officials have discussed potential sales to allies in Europe.
GMLRS, an established, relatively simple product, would be what the Australians call a ‘pipe cleaner’ – it will help solve joint production problems and pave the way for more missile and munition production.
In the Pentagon and Australia’s vision of the future, Australia and other U.S. partners will soon be the nodes of a global supply chain, producing interchangeable weapons with greater capacity in more places where additional firepower might be needed.
The weapons would be at least partly American. They just won’t all be from America — and that could make avoiding a war or waging one a lot easier.
“The West has a tremendous opportunity to leverage its collective industrial base to ensure we maintain a rules-based global order,” said Air Marshal Leon Phillips, Australia’s top military official in charge of guided weapons and explosives. “We are moving towards a just-in-case model and away from just-in-time.”