Australia is strengthening its air defense and air attack capabilities by purchasing additional medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM). According to the Ministry of Defense in Canberra, additional AIM-120D-3 and AIM-120C-8 AMRAAMs from US manufacturer Raytheon are to be procured for a good 1.2 billion euros. The purchase is part of the United States’ Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
Just three months ago, the US State Department approved a request from Australia and authorized the sale of up to 200 AIM-120C-8 and 200 AIM-120D-3 missiles. The total value of the planned sale was stated at around 880 million euros at the time.
According to the Australian Department of Defense, the AIM-120D-3 missiles are to be used by the F/A-18F Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler and F-35A Lightning II of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in future. The AIM-120C-8 variant, on the other hand, is intended for the Australian Army’s ground-based NASAMS system (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System), which is being developed by Kongsberg and Raytheon.
„Vertrauen kann man nicht befehlen – man muss es sich erarbeiten”
The AIM-120D-3 is currently the most modern variant of the AMRAAM family with a range of around 160 kilometers. The rocket integrates the so-called System Improvement Program (SIP) Tape 3F, which is designed as a “Form-Fit-Function” (F3R) hardware update and modernizes the electronics in the control section in order to avoid obsolescence problems.
The AIM-120C-8 is technically similar to the D variant, but is intended exclusively for export. It is also based on the F3R architecture, but uses a different software configuration.
