Arms maker Kongsberg has just opened a new factory in Norway which hints at what is in store for Williamtown.
The federal government announced on Thursday that it would spend $850 million on a new missile production and maintenance program based at Newcastle Airport.
The Hunter's soon-to-be-built missile factory is part of the Norwegian company's efforts to ramp up supply in the face of growing global demand.
The government told the Newcastle Herald that Kongsberg's Williamtown plant would cost about $200 million to build and employ about 100 people.
Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace opened a plant in Norway in June to make the NSM and JSM strike missiles for armed forces across the world, including in the US, Poland, Malaysia, Germany, Japan, Romania, Canada, Australia and Spain.
The Newcastle plant will be the only other Kongsberg factory making the 400-kilogram anti-ship weapons.
Images from the Norwegian launch show a gleaming white workshop flanked by rows of robotic arms.
The plant is in the company's Arsenalet industrial park in the town of Kongsberg, 80 kilometres south-west of the capital, Oslo.
Kongsberg executives said at the opening of the Norwegian factory that it would build "several hundred" missiles a year.
"We are looking to increase our production," the company's head of defence and aerospace, Eirik Lie, said at the time.
"We are looking at the US and Australia as alternatives."
The US plans to spend $US848 million over the next four years on 268 of the Kongsberg missiles for its F-35 fighter jets, pricing each at $US3.16 million ($A4.7 million).
The Australian Defence Force's chief of guided weapons and explosive ordnance, Air Marshal Leon Phillips, said on Thursday that the missiles would cost Australia about $4 million each.
The Norwegian and Australian governments have been participating in the missile's development with Kongsberg since 2015.
The company is majority-owned by Norway's government.
It is likely the Williamtown plant will assemble the missiles largely from imported components, though Cardiff firm Nupress signed a contract in February to start making parts for the weapons and BAE Systems Australia is supplying miniature radio frequency sensors for the program.
The Australian government plans to develop a domestic supply chain to provide more components for the missiles and other defence technology under its National Defence Strategy and related investment and industry programs.
The Hunter factory is scheduled to open in 2026 and start making missiles in 2027.
