A group of Australian SME technology companies and manufacturers has challenged the big global defence companies vying for a share of $1 billion in federal funding to develop a sovereign guided weapons industry.
While the likes of Lockheed Martin, Thales and BAE Systems have lined up offering their global weapons systems, the group has ambitious plans including locally-developed hypersonic weapons.
Today Shoal Group, Black Sky Aerospace, REDARC Defence Systems, and Silentium Defence announced their HISPEX venture – a genuine and unique sovereign high-speed weapons collaboration.
HISPEX will pursue development of high-speed – including hypersonic – weapons and related systems and services to provide Australia with a locally-owned and controlled capability.
In the short-term, HISPEX will provide:
The collaboration will support research and development of high-speed weapon technologies while growing the community of expertise in Australia.
HISPEX will provide accelerated technology maturation through an ongoing design effort supported by a series of flight tests, the first of which occurred earlier this year and can be seen in the video here.
HISPEX will be conducting a hypersonic launch later this year with further launches planned for 2022.
Picture: HISPEX
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