ORCHARD HILLS, Australia—At an Australian military base here on the outskirts of Sydney, an unassuming shed-like structure known as Building 215 is set to play an important role in Washington’s strategy for confronting rivals such as China and Russia.
Inside, officials plan to establish the first factory outside the U.S. to help make a type of missile that’s been pivotal in the Ukraine war: Lockheed Martin’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, or GMLRS. The U.S. has already sent Ukraine thousands of these missiles, which are fired out of vehicles known as Himars.
The rapid consumption of munitions in Ukraine and the Middle East—from missiles to artillery shells—has strained the ability of the U.S. industrial base to meet demand and replenish depleted stockpiles. The Biden administration is seeking to develop multiple production lines across allied nations for critical weapons, though that isn’t easy.
One initiative to provide more artillery shells to Ukraine by having Japan send them to Britain stalled, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year. European manufacturers say they need longer-term orders from governments to give them confidence to expand capacity.
In Australia, the effort to transform Building 215, most of which was empty on a recent visit, offers a look at how Washington’s weapons strategy might unfold around the world—and the difficulties the U.S. and its allies face in ramping up munitions production.
Lockheed and Australia will need to build new supply chains, train new workers and facilitate technology sharing with the U.S. Some say the plan is already moving too slowly, pointing out that it has been about four years since Australia floated the idea of making missiles.
“The initial idea was very good, but the implementation has been deeply unimpressive,” said Michael Shoebridge, a former Australian defense official who is now director at defense think tank Strategic Analysis Australia. “It’s been overtaken by events in the world, notably the war in Ukraine, and now in the Middle East.”
U.S. officials say they are pleased with the momentum and speed of Australia’s efforts. They say Australia recently moved forward quickly on producing much-needed artillery shells, and that it is participating in the development of Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSM—which can also be fired from Himars vehicles and have extended range.
“Given the pacing challenge in the Indo-Pacific and evolving competition with near-peer adversaries, precision munitions like GMLRS and PrSM are increasingly important,” said Pentagon spokesman Jeff Jurgensen, referring to strategic competition with China. “It’s imperative that we have hot production lines to deliver them at scale.”
The plan is for Lockheed, which currently makes GMLRS at just one factory in Camden, Ark., to hire six Australian engineers and embed them at that facility to learn about the manufacturing process. Lockheed will ship semi-assembled parts of the missiles from the U.S. to Australia, where they will undergo final assembly at a new production line in Building 215.
The first batch of about a dozen Australian-assembled GMLRS will be test-fired by the end of next year, Australian officials said. By the end of the decade, Australia aims to make thousands of missiles annually, expanding beyond Building 215.
“We don’t need to be making 300 GMLRS a year, we need to make 3,000 GMLRS a year,” Air Marshal Leon Phillips, an engineer and three-star Australian air-force officer tasked with overseeing the country’s missile-manufacturing efforts, said at his office in Australia’s defense headquarters in Canberra, the capital.
Although the GMLRS will at first be assembled from imported components, Australia later wants to focus on making key missile parts domestically, including rocket motors and warheads. At some point, other types of missiles aside from GMLRS could be produced.
But finding skilled workers could be a challenge given that Australia already has a shortage of engineers. Export rules have stifled some defense cooperation in the past. And developing new supply chains could be tough when certain systems such as rocket motors are already in short supply.
Even figuring out the best way to transport missile components overseas could take practice.
It is “very different handling a missile when it’s bolted together and all assembled as opposed to shipping components,” said James Heading, a former Australian air-force officer who is now in charge of Lockheed’s missile business in the country. “A warhead by itself, external to the weapon, is a very different beast to cart around.”
Lockheed is ramping up production of GMLRS at its Camden factory to 14,000 from 10,000 a year, but even there it’s been hard to hire more workers. The company’s order backlog in its missiles and fire control business, which includes GMLRS, has increased nearly 20% in recent years, to more than $32 billion.
The U.S. Army’s recent budget request for 2025 seeks funding for about 6,400 GMLRS, up from about 5,000 in the prior year’s request.
Phillips, the Australian air marshal, said the workforce issues were solvable. People can be trained to assemble missiles, he said, and Australia’s defense industry has existing skills for some missile parts. He pointed out that Australia already has munitions factories, where items like propellants, ammunition and other explosives are produced.
“Western nations have enjoyed a peace dividend that has led to an atrophying of the capacity of industry to produce,” Phillips said. “The challenge of weapons is you just go from a static peacetime usage, to an awfully accelerated volume of usage in war.”
When Australia first announced its missile production plans, “I don’t think there was the necessary finance and drive to get that going,” Phillips said. Since then, Australia has said it would spend $2.7 billion on the program, including acquiring ready-made weapons.
A possible second Trump administration could affect Washington’s willingness to send weapons overseas, and the former president recently said he would encourage Moscow to attack North Atlantic Treaty Organization members that “don’t pay.”
But the dynamic is different in Asia, given there is broad bipartisan consensus in Washington regarding the possible threat from China, some analysts say.
“If our allies in the Pacific can demonstrate that they share our concerns about Beijing, and are working to shoulder their share of the security burden and increase deterrence, that might reduce the chances for an unpleasant surprise in a Trump presidency,” said Bradley Bowman, a former national security adviser to Republican members of the Senate armed-services and foreign-relations committees, and who is now a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Australia has long been a close U.S. ally. In his office, Phillips himself has a picture of a jet fighter flying over St. Louis, a reminder of when he was posted there in the 2000s when Australia was upgrading its American planes. The relationship deepened even further in 2021 with the Aukus pact, a three-way security partnership that also involves the U.K.
Some former U.S. defense officials said Australia’s timeline for ramping up missile production isn’t too late to tip the strategic scales, but the clock is ticking. Russia and China are investing in their own missile capabilities.
“The United States and its allies need to produce as many munitions as they can, as soon as they can,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who worked at the National Security Council and the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration. “Production capacity during a conflict could also matter, which means that the more production sites, the better.”