New Cutting Edge Missile Defence System for Anzac Class Ships

Min­is­ter for Defence Stephen Smith and Min­is­ter for Defence Materiel Jason Clare today announced that the Gov­ern­ment has approved the upgrade of all eight of the Roy­al Aus­tralian Navy’s Anzac Class frigates with an advanced Anti-Ship Mis­sile Defence system.

HMAS Perth at sea fol­low­ing her recent ASMD upgrade. Source: Min­istry of Defence, AU Click to enlarge

The total project cost is in excess of $650 mil­lion, includ­ing the funds already spent upgrad­ing HMAS Perth.

The Anzac Class Anti-Ship Mis­sile Defence (ASMD) project has also been removed from the Projects of Con­cern list.

The 2009 Defence White Paper out­lined the Government’s intent to put all of the Anzac Class ships through an ASMD upgrade pro­gram, sub­ject to the suc­cess­ful out­come of at-sea tri­als on the first ship.

The upgrade of HMAS Perth as the lead ship for the ASMD pro­gram was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed ear­li­er this year.

Fol­low­ing exhaus­tive test­ing, includ­ing in the Unit­ed States, the Chief of Navy agreed to the oper­a­tional release of the sys­tem in July 2011.

Gov­ern­ment has now approved the instal­la­tion of the sys­tem on the remain­ing sev­en ships of the Anzac Class by 2017.

Min­is­ter Smith said this was the lat­est weapon in Navy’s arse­nal and meant the Navy’s Anzac frigates would be a lot more capable.

At the moment our Anzac frigates can track and destroy one tar­get at a time.

The new sys­tem is able to iden­ti­fy, track and guide mis­siles to mul­ti­ple tar­gets at the same time.

Min­is­ter Clare said the project was a great Aus­tralian suc­cess sto­ry – cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped right here in Aus­tralia by CEA Technologies.

The remain­ing upgrade instal­la­tion and inte­gra­tion work will be under­tak­en by the Anzac Ship Inte­grat­ed Materiel Sup­port Pro­gram Alliance, com­pris­ing SAAB Sys­tems, BAE Sys­tems and the Defence Materiel Organisation.

Min­is­ter Clare said that the ASMD upgrade pro­gram is a good demon­stra­tion of how the Projects of Con­cern process can effec­tive­ly man­age dif­fi­cult projects and deliv­er suc­cess­ful nation­al secu­ri­ty out­comes for Australia.