Australia asks U.S. for $300M Tomahawk planning system

The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $300 million sale to Australia of the systems and support it needs to plan Tomahawk cruise missile strikes, adding mission-planning capability to the long-range missiles the Royal Australian Navy began acquiring in 2023.

The package covers a Theater Mission Planning Center with its associated communications systems, the Tomahawk Mission Planning System, and program management, engineering, training and logistics support for developing and delivering the planning system, according to the Oct. 8 notification to Congress. The approval does not mean the sale is final; the quantities, contract terms and timeline will be set if Australia moves ahead.

A Tomahawk does not simply fly in a straight line to its target. Before launch, planners build a route for the missile, with waypoints over land and sea, terrain and navigation data, and the aim point it is meant to hit. The Theater Mission Planning Center is the system the United States uses to prepare and distribute that data to launching ships and submarines, and the State Department said the sale would strengthen Australia’s Tomahawk capability and deepen its interoperability with U.S. maritime forces.

The principal contractors would be BAE Systems in San Diego, California; Tapestry Solutions, a Boeing subsidiary in St. Louis, Missouri; Peraton in San Jose, California; and Leidos in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The State Department said the sale would not require sending additional U.S. government or contractor personnel to Australia and would not affect U.S. readiness.

Australia announced in 2023 that it would buy Tomahawks for its Hobart-class destroyers and later its Hunter-class frigates, with more than 200 missiles planned. The missiles are also intended for the Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines Australia is set to receive under the AUKUS agreement in the early 2030s. Canberra says the Tomahawk has a range of up to 2,500 km (about 1,550 miles), making it the longest-reaching strike weapon in the Australian Defence Force.

In December 2024, the destroyer HMAS Brisbane fired a Tomahawk for the first time during a test off San Diego, making Australia the third country, after the United States and the United Kingdom, to acquire and fire the missile. That firing followed Australian Navy tests earlier that year of the Naval Strike Missile and Standard Missile-6 from another Hobart-class destroyer, HMAS Sydney.