RI asks clarification over Australia's new cruise missile plan
Agencies, Jakarta
Indonesia expressed on Thursday its concern over neighboring Australia's plan to beef up its offensive capability by acquiring long-range cruise missiles able to hit targets up to 400 kilometers away.
"We are talking here of an offensive capability, no longer defensive capability, and we have to ask ourselves against whom will these long-range cruise missiles be aimed," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Marty Natalegawa told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
"We have no doubts about the sovereign and legitimate right of any country to pursue its own defense policy. At the same time, one should be mindful that there are facts, and there are perceptions.
"Unless properly understood, the decision has a potential to raise certain questions about Australia's intentions," he said, and that transparency on the rationale for the offensive capability was essential.
In Canberra, Defense Minister Robert Hill said on Thursday that Australia planned to acquire air-to-surface missiles able to destroy air and sea targets up to 400 kilometers away.
Australia's F/A-18 Hornet fighters and AP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft would be equipped with the air-to-surface missiles, chosen from among three new long-range cruise missiles produced by Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and Taurus Systems GmbH. Taurus is owned in part by carmaker Saab.
The three types of missiles under consideration are: Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile (JASSM), which has the longest range; a variant of the cruise missile KEPD 350; and the Stand- off Land Attack Missile Expanded Response (SLAM-ER), based on the Harpoon antiship missile.
The Hornets, which have a combat flight radius of 740 km and can be refueled in flight, will also be equipped with Advanced Short-Range Air-to-Air Missiles. The Hornets' new long-range missiles will be installed between 2007 and 2009.
"Combined with the new air-to-air missiles and upgraded precision-guided bombs, Australia's fighter jets will have the region's most lethal capacity for air combat and strike operations," Hill said in a statement.
The range of the new US$319 million missiles are up to four times the range of any missile now available to the Air Force, The Australian newspaper reported.
The plan comes amid mixed relations with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
A study by an Australian think tank revealed on Wednesday that the Australian public ranked Indonesia as the country's greatest security threat.
Neil James, executive director of security strategy think tank the Australian Defense Association, said the missiles would give Australia a technical edge in the region that had eroded over the past 15 years.
"There are other aircraft in the region that are at the moment better than our F/A-18s, so what this is, is a technological catch-up to give us the capability edge again," James said. "They will achieve it partly."
Australian Prime Minister John Howard tried to tone down regional concerns.
"We have no hostile designs on any of our neighbors and they won't be concerned about this, because we don't have any hostile designs on them," Howard told reporters.
Meanwhile, the opposition Labor Party said it did not oppose the new missiles, but warned they could create friction with Indonesia if the government did not carefully explain the reasons for their procurement.
"It's obviously something that needs to be carefully explained and the government has never been very good at this," Labor lawmaker Kim Beazley, who oversees defense policy, told ABC radio.
Last month, Australia pledged to work with the United States on its ballistic missile shield plan and to establish joint defense training centers in northern Australia.