Australia has quietly changed the arithmetic of its air force. On 11 September 2026 the Royal Australian Air Force declared initial operational capability for two long-range missiles on the F/A-18F Super Hornet: the AGM-158C LRASM against ships, and the AGM-158B JASSM-ER against targets on land.

Neither weapon is new. What is new is that an Australian crew can now be tasked with them, and that changes the geometry of any problem the RAAF might be handed in its own region.

A Super Hornet with LRASM does not have to fly towards a well-defended warship. It has to fly towards a release point several hundred kilometres away from one.

Two missiles, one family

LRASM and JASSM-ER share the AGM-158 designation because they share a lineage. Both are stealthy, subsonic, turbofan-powered cruise missiles with low-observable shaping, and both are designed to be released well outside the reach of the defences around the target.

The difference is in the seeker and the brain. JASSM-ER flies to coordinates and needs to know where the target is before launch. LRASM was built on the assumption that it will not be told precisely, and that the satellite navigation it would like to use may not be available.

So LRASM carries its own sensors, works out which contact in a group of ships is the one worth hitting, and routes itself accordingly. That autonomy is the entire reason it exists, because a modern surface action group is a networked air-defence system, not a target.

Why the Poseidon matters more than the Super Hornet

The headline is the fighter. The more interesting line is the one about the P-8A.

Australia’s Super Hornet fleet is small and its combat radius is what it is. A Poseidon is a converted airliner: it can stay up for many hours, it can range enormous distances across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and it already spends its working life finding ships.

Giving that aircraft an anti-ship missile it can fire from hundreds of kilometres away converts a surveillance platform into a strike platform without buying a single new airframe. For a country responsible for an area of ocean as large as Australia’s, that is the cheapest capability on the table.

Deterrence by denial, in plain English

The phrase in Australia’s National Defence Strategy is deterrence by denial. Stripped of the policy language it means: do not try to persuade an adversary that you will punish them afterwards, persuade them that the thing they want to do will not work.

An air force that can hold ships at risk from beyond 370 km and fixed targets from 900 km makes an approach across open water considerably less attractive. That is the calculation, and it is why the announcement is written the way it is.

Initial operational capability is not full capability. It means the weapon has been integrated, crews have been trained and the system has been fired successfully, not that stocks are deep or that every squadron is equipped. The magazine depth question — how many missiles Australia actually owns — is the one nobody answers in public, and it is the one that would matter most.

How LRASM is designed to find and select its own target among a group of ships.

Sources: Royal Australian Air Force, Australian Department of Defence, FlightGlobal, Defence Industry Europe, Lockheed Martin, Australia’s National Defence Strategy.