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Canada and Australia have committed to collaborative research and development to counter advanced missiles and hypersonic weapons.
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Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence of Canada, and Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence of Australia, have released a joint statement on a new agreement to collaborate on research on emerging missile threat defence.
As potential adversaries continue to develop more advanced missiles, including advanced cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons that combine high speed, increasing range, and manoeuvrability, new solutions are required to defeat these threats.
Under a new project arrangement, Canada and Australia commit to collaborative research and development in support of next-generation defensive solutions to defeat these threats.
Under this agreement, Defence Research and Development Canada and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group will collaborate on research to understand emerging missile threats as well as develop detection, monitoring, targeting and counter-measure technologies.
Through this collaboration, Canada and Australia will benefit from access to expertise, experience, unique facilities and cost-effective joint research trials, which will fast-track understanding of advanced missile technologies and inform next-generation defence solutions.
Canada and Australia are each contributing up to CA$237 million over five years towards the total project arrangement value of CA$474 million (cash and in-kind contributions).
Canada and Australia enjoy a partnership based on shared history, values and friendship. Both have a long history of working together on defence science and technology, including through Five Eyes Science and Technology, under the auspices of the Technical Co-operation Program, since 1965.
This collaboration on integrated air and missile defence research and development is mutually beneficial, contributing directly to their shared objective of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond, as identified in Canada’s renewed defence policy, Our North, Strong and Free, in April 2024.
Defence against hypersonic weapons has also been identified as a priority for science and technology under Canada’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) modernisation plan, announced in June 2022. Missile defence has been identified by Australia as a capability investment priority in Australia’s National Defence Strategy and the Integrated Investment Program.
