Canberra queues up for more missiles to shoot down Chinese missiles

(Originally published Oct. 23 in “What in the World“) Australia will pay $4.7 billion for new American missiles.

The Aussies are buying SM-2 and SM-6 missiles from RTX, the company formerly known as Raytheon. The U.S. military has a knack for giving weapons catchy names: the “SM” in these missiles stands for “standard missile.” Their full names are actually RIM-66 and RIM-174, which in the logic of the U.S. military signifies that they are launched from a ship (“R”) to intercept missiles (“I”) and are guided (“M”). They’re guided by the sophisticated Aegis combat system, developed for the U.S. Navy but now also deployed at sites on land in places like Guam, Romania and Poland.

So that tells you what they do, even if it doesn’t tell you why. The why is so Australia can defend its navy against Chinese anti-ship missiles. It’s the first country outside the U.S. to fire the long-range SM-6 from a warship. The missiles work just fine being fired from land, too, which is why the U.S. Army has deployed some to the Philippines. In July, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said it would pay RTX $1.4 billion for SM-3 missiles for both the U.S. and Japan. The U.S. also plans to deploy SM-6 missiles in Germany in 2026.

For its part, China continues to rise to Washington’s bait. It announced it would conduct live-fire drills near the Chinese island closest to Taiwan, Niushan. Looking at a map, however, you have to wonder just how menacing this is: Niushan sits 115km or so from Taiwan’s coast, but only 25km from Mainland China. It’s not like the PLA is firing rockets near Taiwan’s Kinmen islands, which sit about 5km off the coast of China. Nevertheless, the drills are being interpreted as another warning by Beijing against Taiwan’s semantics: Taiwan is allowed to be self-ruled, but not to say it is independent of China. It must maintain the language that it is part of China, or risk being China forcing the “renegade province” into actual reunification.

Sales like the Australian missiles are helping RTX to a very good year. The company yesterday reported third quarter earnings that exceeded analysts’ estimates. Sales rose 49% year-on-year, to $20 billion, helping reverse a loss in the third quarter of 2023 to yield a $1.5 billion profit for the quarter. It has a $221 billion backlog of weapons orders to fill. Artillery giant General Dynamics is due to report its latest earnings later today.