The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced this week that the U.S. State Department recently approved the potential sale to Australia of more than $46 million worth of Javelin anti-tank guided missiles.
On October 30, the DSCA, the Pentagon’s top arms broker, has released a statement saying that the State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Australia of Javelin missiles and related equipment for an estimated cost of $46 million.
According to the DSCA, the complete package includes two hundred Javelin FGM-148E missiles with U.S. Government technical assistance and other related elements of logistics and program support.
In addition, its notice says that this proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States. Australia is one of our most important allies in the Western Pacific.
“The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is seeking to fill a short-term shortfall in its Javelin missile inventory in order to maintain the appropriate level of readiness. Australia will not have any difficulty absorbing these missiles into its armed forces,” DSCA noted.
Javelin is a lightweight, man-portable, shoulder-fired, fire-and-forget and fire-from-enclosure medium-range antitank weapon system design to provide high lethality against all known and projected threat armor.
Javelin was developed and produced for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps by the Javelin Joint Venture between Lockheed Martin in Orlando, Florida and Raytheon in Tucson, Arizona.