Welcome to the era of the ‘affordable' cruise missile

The Age

18-05-2025

'We are manufacturing guided weapons, rocket assisted take-off for low-cost cruise missiles, and we have the capability to produce in-house and are able to deliver it within a couple of months, not in five years,' Johnson told this masthead.
The company, with a staff of 42, manufactures and produces solid rocket motors, as well as customised rocket-assisted take off assemblies, which can launch inexpensive cruise missiles vertically from the ground. Black Sky Industries regularly receives requests for proposals from democracies around the globe, Johnson says.
Australia's government understands a shift towards missiles is taking place.
The Albanese government is backing sovereign guided-weapon production, having landed a deal for Norway-based Kongsberg to assemble naval and joint strike missiles in Australia. A government deal with Lockheed Martin Australia will allow low-rate production of 300 GMLRS and a full-rate production of the 4000 GMLRS to Australia.
But as Johnson explains, in a modern war a few hundred rounds are 'one day of activity – not even a day, a couple of hours'.
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Black Sky Industries says it's delivering capability for the Australian Defence Force and its allies 'with a focus on scaling for...continued geopolitical instability', Johnson says.
Looking at what's happening in Ukraine and in the Red Sea, where Iranian-backed Houthis have launched inexpensive Tehran-supplied cruise missiles at passing ships, Johnson says arming for war won't be expensive in future.
Sydney-based defence analyst Chris Flaherty said the new crop of cruise missiles used cheaper, more autonomous guidance and no longer required the complex infrastructure for deployment as in the past.
'What we're actually seeing, which I think is causing surprise and shock strategically within the defence community, is how countries can actually come from nowhere and invent a weapon system that actually performs remarkably similar roles to cruise missiles.'
The lower cost means more cruise missiles can be produced and launched in swarms. The new strategy means 'mass-producing these weapons as quickly as possible and delivering onto the target to achieve overwhelming force', he said.
The trend lines of inexpensive hardware and cheaper, more powerful electronics were in place even before February 2022, when Russia expanded its low-boil war on Ukraine to a full-scale invasion.
Weapons-makers can now use off-the-shelf components, 3D printed, modular parts which reduce the complexity of the missile, and also lower labour costs. In turn, this lowers the overall production price, further enabling mass manufacturing of missiles.
The cheaper cost of the technology lowers the bar for entry to the cruise missile business, which used to be the domain of great powers which relied on specialised access to satellites, intelligence and complex supporting systems.
But Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Iran's supplying of the Houthis with cruise missiles and drones to harass ships in the Red Sea paved a new way.
Today, numerous companies are springing up or pivoting to these new cheaper cruise missiles.
Anduril Industries, Zone 5 Technologies, CoAspire, Ares Industries, and Ukraine's Trembita homemade cruise missile are examples. At the same time, Ukraine has ramped up its missile production since Russia's invasion in early 2022.
After struggling at the start of Russia's invasion to source cruise missiles, Ukraine's minister for strategic industries said last month missile production had expanded 'eightfold' over the previous year.
Ukraine's experience is instructive. Iran, China, North Korea have their own ambitious programs, which rely on mass quantities and low costs. It would be reckless for democracies to not follow suit.
Anduril Australia says its exploring opportunities to test and build low-cost cruise missiles in Australia.
'Manufacturing affordable cruise missiles at scale is central to achieving resilience and a deterrence effect for the ADF,' said Pete Quinn, vice president of strategy for Anduril Australia.
He notes that Australia is 'an ideal testing location because of its world-class ranges and talented Australian workforce'.
Affordable mass
Cheaper missiles mean more can be made and yet more required to win a battle. Lockheed Martin affordable mass director Scott Callaway says: 'With the strategic environment in the Pacific undergoing notable change, our customers are seeking a new class of low-cost missiles that can be manufactured fast and on demand, so their inventory never runs dry in combat.'
Callaway says the new class of missiles has been dubbed 'affordable mass', with the idea being 'they can put a lot more missiles (mass) on target'.
The company's common multi-mission truck, or CMMT missile, can be launched by fighters, bombers, airlifters and other air- and ground-launch platforms.
The CMMT, also pronounced 'Comet', uses 'modular airframes' that can be sized to accommodate a variety of payloads and engines - employing 3D printed or commercial parts 'to lower cost'.
'Convergence'
The modular design, aided by cheaper electronics and 3D-printed parts, enables 'rapid modification' in which new 'seekers, payloads and engines' can be swapped in for whatever the mission requirements, Callaway said.
The Iranian Shahed drone, which demonstrated the ease with which unmanned vehicles, inexpensive guidance systems and explosives could be brought together, helped revolutionise the trend of affordable drones and missiles, a difference which has increasingly blurred.
Flaherty says there has been a 'convergence' between the concept of cruise missiles and the concept of drones in the past few years.
'If you think in traditional terms, a cruise missile is a particular weapon system arising from a certain date in history,' he said, pointing to the complex launch systems used for Tomahawk missiles.
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'If you look now at what's happening in Ukraine, we're starting to see rocket-powered drones that have considerable range capabilities with cruise missile-type qualities.'
Such weapons can navigate over terrain, lock on to targets and deliver warheads with precision – the entire original concept behind the cruise missile.
Now that these changes are afoot, they could trigger a repricing of whole swaths of weaponry.
These shifts toward more information-driven manufacturing allow production itself to be spread across networks that can respond to needs of the war effort.
Distributed production
Callaway says Lockheed Martin 'can accelerate production and meet combat surge requests by duplicating production cells and standing up multiple production lines in the US and partner nations'.
Tapping multiple suppliers, missile assemblies can be built and assembled rapidly. 'We call this distributed production,' said Callaway.
The customer can buy a basic kit designed for rapid production that a specialised missile can be built around, Callaway says of the 'Comet'.
Changes for Australia
As the economics of conflict change, so will threats for Australia. Last year, Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Pat Conroy gave a speech which outlined the altered world.
In World War II, Nazi Germany used V-1 and V-2 guided rockets against Britain. Missiles soon became the subject of strategic thinking during the Cold War, he said, but they have evolved much further since.
'Analysts believe we are now on the cusp of a new Indo-Pacific missile age,' Conroy said. China, North Korea, Russia (also a Pacific power), the US, South Korea are all investing in missile technology.