Australia has taken a major step towards the development of a sovereign hypersonic missile capability following the official opening of a dedicated Australian Hypersonics Research Precinct at Eagle Farm in Brisbane by the Minister for Defence the Hon Peter Dutton MP.

The $14 million Precinct will be home to over 60 staff representing industry, academia, international partners, and government teams working on hypersonic research and the technologies associated with high-speed flight.

“It’s a complex technological challenge to build vehicles capable of flying at five times the speed of sound, that skim the stratosphere, to target any location on the planet,” Minister Dutton said.

“The technology that is developed here will help us to better defend against the malign use of this technology and give us the ability to strike any potential adversaries from a distance and deter aggression against Australia’s national interests.”

“It enables Defence researchers to develop and characterise sovereign hypersonic technologies and generate ‘true’ hypersonic flight conditions at large scale in a classified laboratory,” the Minister said.

The Precinct builds on Government announcements in late 2020 concerning the development of high-speed long-range strike capabilities which included a new collaborative agreement between Australia and the United States to develop and test hypersonic cruise missile prototypes under the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE).

At the time, Chief of Air Force AIRMSHL Mel Hupfeld AO DSC described SCIFiRE’s potential in supporting the development of leading edge capabilities. “The SCIFiRE initiative is another opportunity to advance the capabilities in our Air Combat Capability Program to support joint force effects to advance Australia’s security and prosperity,” he said.

“Working with our Defence scientists here in Australia and our partners in the US Air Force and across the US Department of Defense on leading edge capabilities brings out the best in our Air Force team,” he added. “We are maximising our learning during development to better define the capabilities and needs as the system matures, and we are gaining insights as we go that will help us integrate it into the future Joint Force.”