US Considers Naval Missile Sale To Malaysia

THE United States will consider the sale of naval surface-to-surface missiles (SSM) to Malaysia as an alternative to the Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) produced by Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA).

This was confirmed by the Malaysian defence minister Khaled Nordin after a bilateral meeting with the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth during the 23rd Shangri-La Dialogue organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

The minister briefed his US counterpart on Malaysia’s recent difficulty in acquiring the NSMs after Norway revoked certain licences related to the export of specific defence technology to Malaysia.

“We have asked the US for its views to help find a solution to the issue at hand because, there is indeed an American company that manufactures the same missile as Norway. We also asked whether the US is willing to allow the sale of the missiles to us in order to address the problem at hand,” Khaled said.

Malaysia was due to take delivery of the NSMs for the Royal Malaysian Navy’s (RMN) Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) but the deal was axed by Norway’s last-minute decision.

The deal with Kongsberg was signed in 2018 for the purchase of NSMs to be equipped onboard the RMN LCS ships being built. In addition to that, Malaysia had previously planned to procure more NSMs for use on other RMN warships.

Additionally, the minister stated that the US had also proposed information sharing on maritime domain awareness (MDA) between the two countries, with the matter to be considered by Malaysia.–-shp/adj/dl (Pix:DVIDS)