John Fry: building Australia's first missile factory in the Hunter

Australia has never built a guided missile — until now. In the first episode of Engineering in the Hunter, host James MacDonald sits down with John Fry, Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia, who is standing up the company's first missile factory outside Norway at Williamtown, in the heart of the Hunter.

John traces the whole arc: how a 210-year-old Norwegian defence company came to Australia on the back of the NASAMS win, why sovereign weapons manufacturing became a national priority after COVID and Ukraine, and how the Commonwealth's $850 million commitment landed the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile production lines here.

He explains why the Hunter won out over 40 candidate sites, what it takes to build a factory and workforce from scratch on the other side of the world, and the roughly 100 roles across engineering, planning, supply chain, quality, IT and trades the factory will create.

About the guest

John Fry is Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia. A former Australian Army air-defence officer with a chemistry background and a Master of Science in Guided Weapon Systems, he spent nine years at Raytheon, where he was capture lead on the NASAMS program, before joining Kongsberg in 2019 as its inaugural general manager in Australia.

About the show

Engineering in the Hunter is hosted by Melinda Sietsma with NTP Talent founder James MacDonald. James hosts this episode.

Engineering in the Hunter is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts.