Australia — Air Warfare Destroyer gun mounts have arrived

The Min­is­ter for Defence Materiel Jason Clare announced in Ade­laide today that the $8 bil­lion Air War­fare Destroy­er project has tak­en deliv­ery of three main gun mounts of the Air War­fare Destroy­ers.

The gun mounts, man­u­fac­tured by BAE Sys­tems in the Unit­ed States, are val­ued at $80 mil­lion and will be placed into a con­trolled stor­age facil­i­ty in Ade­laide until they are installed on HMA Ships Hobart, Bris­bane and Sydney. 

“The guns will be able to hit tar­gets on land, air and at sea. They are capa­ble of fir­ing both Roy­al Aus­tralian Navy stan­dard muni­tions and future extend­ed range muni­tions,” Mr Clare said. 

Sim­i­lar gun mounts are installed on the Roy­al Aus­tralian Navy’s ANZAC Class frigates, the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke Class destroy­ers, the Span­ish F‑100 frigates and on ships with­in the South Kore­an, Japan­ese and Dan­ish navies. 

More than 1,000 peo­ple are cur­rent­ly work­ing on the con­struc­tion of the ships across three ship­yards in Aus­tralia; at ASC in South Aus­tralia, For­gacs in New South Wales and BAE Sys­tems in Victoria. 

“This is an impor­tant project for the Aus­tralian Defence Force. These destroy­ers will be among the most advanced and capa­ble war­ships in the world,” Mr Clare said. 

Media con­tact: Tim Quadrio – (02) 9790 2466 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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