During one of the biggest military exercises ever held in the country, Australia quietly proved that it can now hit hostile aircraft and missiles at 15,000 metres, using a home-integrated air defence system built with Norway and the United States.
A modest-looking system with high-altitude teeth
The star of the exercise was not a stealth jet or a hypersonic weapon, but NASAMS – the Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System, now fielded by the Australian Army. At first glance, it looks like a boxy launcher on a truck. The performance is another story.
NASAMS uses the AIM-120 AMRAAM, a combat-tested air-to-air missile adapted for ground launch. Fired from the surface, it can hit targets out to roughly 30 kilometres and at altitudes up to 15,000 metres, putting most tactical aircraft and many cruise missiles inside its engagement envelope.
This Australian-operated NASAMS battery can engage drones, cruise missiles and crewed aircraft at up to 15,000 metres, locking down a large slice of national airspace.
For Australia, that matters. The country’s land-based air defences have long been limited in range and tied closely to allied forces. With NASAMS, Canberra steps into a small group of states able to close their own upper airspace against fast, manoeuvring threats.
A network built for fast reactions
What sets NASAMS apart is less the missile, and more the way the system is architected. Rather than a single, heavy battery, it is built as a modular network that can be scattered across key locations and then tied together digitally.
Australian batteries pair launchers with AESA CEAFAR radar, a homegrown sensor originally designed for the Navy. These electronically scanned radars sweep the sky rapidly, while optical and passive sensors listen for emissions and track heat signatures. Together, they feed a fire control system designed to handle several threats at once.
Operators can shift fire from a high-flying jet to a low-level cruise missile in seconds. If one radar is jammed or destroyed, others can continue to feed data into the network. Command vehicles can sit well away from launchers, reducing vulnerability to counterstrikes.
- Radars and sensors detect and classify threats.
- Command posts assign targets to the best-positioned launcher.
- Launchers fire AMRAAM missiles, guided via networked radar data.
- Additional batteries can plug in to extend coverage.
Talisman Sabre 2025: a live-fire stress test
The real demonstration came at Talisman Sabre 2025, a massive Australian‑US exercise held each two years. On 15 July 2025, in the harsh conditions of the Outback, NASAMS was pushed through realistic attack scenarios rather than screen-based simulations.
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More than 35,000 personnel from 19 allied nations took part, from infantry units to cyber operators. Within this complex environment, Australian gunners used NASAMS in concert with US forces, including the American 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force, a unit that blends long-range fires, cyber, space and electronic warfare.
During Talisman Sabre 2025, NASAMS was integrated into a live, multi-domain fight, showing that it can plug cleanly into US-led command networks and allied targeting data.
The exercise also featured the US Army’s Mid-Range Capability (MRC), a system built to strike ships and land targets at several hundred kilometres. The combination was deliberate: MRC reaching deep into enemy territory, NASAMS shielding allied airspace and ground forces from retaliatory air and missile strikes.
Built for modern air attacks, not Cold War raids
Air threats have changed. Instead of a small number of manned bombers or fighters, militaries now face swarms of drones, loitering munitions and mixed salvos designed to overwhelm defences. NASAMS was configured with that environment in mind.
Each battery can operate alone, protecting a specific base or coastal strip, or join a wider grid to defend a whole region. If a dozen small drones and a cruise missile arrive together, the system can prioritise which to hit first, assigning different launchers to different threats.
That flexibility is particularly relevant in the Indo‑Pacific, where states are investing heavily in long-range missiles and uncrewed systems to challenge air superiority close to their shores.
Industrial partnership and political intent
The Australian variant of NASAMS rests on a tight partnership between Raytheon Australia and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace of Norway. Norway brings decades of experience fielding NASAMS for NATO allies. Australia brings sovereign radar technology, integration work and a growing domestic defence industry.
The same core system already protects key sites such as the area around the White House and several European capitals. Canberra is not experimenting with a prototype: it is buying into a family of systems already in operational use across the United States, Europe and Asia.
For Australian planners, that has two advantages: shared logistics and training with close allies, and a path to more local control over software, sensors and future missile options.
Technical snapshot of Australia’s NASAMS
| Missile | AIM‑120 AMRAAM (surface-launched) |
| Engagement range | Approximately 24–32 km |
| Maximum engagement altitude | Up to 15,000 metres |
| Target types | Drones, crewed aircraft, cruise missiles, guided munitions |
| Core sensors | CEAFAR AESA radar plus optical and passive sensors |
| Australian deployment | Two batteries currently in service, with expansion planned |
| Key partners | United States, Norway, Japan, United Kingdom, several European users |
| Latest major trial | Talisman Sabre, 15 July 2025 |
Strategic message in a tense Indo‑Pacific
Australia’s investment in NASAMS sits against a backdrop of sharpening competition in the Indo‑Pacific, especially around China’s military expansion and missile build‑up. Long held assumptions that the vast ocean would shield the country are fading.
By fielding a modern, medium‑range air defence network, Canberra signals that it intends to protect critical ports, air bases and logistics hubs even under sustained attack. It also reassures partners such as Japan and the United States that Australia can hold its own segment of any shared defence plan, rather than relying entirely on allied air power.
NASAMS forms a building block for Australian air defence autonomy, giving Canberra more control over who flies and what passes through its airspace during a crisis.
Australian officers involved in the programme have openly framed the system as “young but already attracting allied attention,” a hint that more integration and possibly exports of Australian-developed elements could follow.
How a real crisis might look
Defence planners often model scenarios before spending billions. One likely case for NASAMS is a short-notice crisis across the archipelagos to Australia’s north.
Imagine rising tensions in the South China Sea spilling into cyberattacks and aggressive air patrols. As Australian aircraft reinforce northern bases, an adversary could try to keep runways under threat with cruise missiles or long-range drones launched from hundreds of kilometres away.
In that scenario, NASAMS batteries along the coast and near key airfields would form a last local shield. Long-range sensors and allied satellites would provide early warning. Fighter jets might thin out the incoming raid at distance. NASAMS would clean up whatever slipped through, protecting fuel stores, radar sites and transport aircraft from the final wave of weapons.
Key terms and risks worth watching
Several technical points sit behind the headlines. “Multi-domain” warfare means combining land, sea, air, cyber and space tools in one coordinated operation, as seen with NASAMS feeding on data from land radars, aircraft and potentially satellites. “AESA” radar refers to active electronically scanned arrays, which steer radar beams electronically rather than physically moving an antenna, enabling fast target updates and resistance to jamming.
There are trade‑offs. Medium‑range systems like NASAMS are not designed to counter ballistic missiles that descend from near space at extreme speeds. They also rely on solid communications links; a determined adversary will try to jam, hack or physically destroy the network’s key nodes. Ammunition stockpiles can also become a limiting factor during prolonged operations, especially if drones and cheap munitions force defenders to fire expensive interceptors.
Despite these constraints, combining NASAMS with shorter‑range anti‑drone weapons, long‑range strike systems and resilient communications offers Australia a far more layered defence than it had a decade ago. The ability to hit a hostile aircraft at 15,000 metres is only one piece of that puzzle, but it is a piece that potential adversaries now have to factor into their own calculations.