Page 40 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2019

BUDGET OVERVIEW
2019
BUDGET THOUGHT BUBBLES
KATHERINE ZIESING | CANBERRA
• The Budget figures as they relate to the Attack class were a victim of the government’s move to push the Bud- get forward by a month. While the • Budget shows total spending for de- sign and construction of $2.2 billion, the real figure is closer to $6 billion according to Defence officials, with • spending this year closer to $750 mil- lion than the published $289 million.
A/B Hornets have no flying hours scheduled for 2022-2023; end of an era.
RAAF’s EW platform, a modified G550 to be known as MC-55A Pere- grine is officially on the books, sched- uled to fly 300 hours in 2022-2023. JSF flying hours are ramping up quickly: 2,200 hours this year, 4,564, 8,204, 11,831 and 14,519 year on year as the fleet expands.
• The Hunter class will spend $492 this
year on the design and mobilisation •
aspect. JSF, Defence is scheduled to spend
• Between all the major current ship- building programs (Attack, Hunter, • Arafura, and Hobart, Guardian Pa- cific Patrol Boat classes) Defence
is committed to spending a shade over $2 billion THIS YEAR on ship- building. •
• Unit available days for all elements of Navy are on the up except for hydro- graphic which will be managed under
the Australian Hydrographic Office as • part of the Australian Geospatial Intel- ligence Organisation (AGO) in Strat- egy and Policy Group, New ships are being acquired under Sea 2400 (HIPP
– HydroScheme Industry Partnership •
Program) to continue this work.
• Army’s Blackhawks and RAAF’s
$2.4 billion this year alone. Acknowledgement that Hawkei is still in the process of achieving design maturity and ‘resolve re- liability issues’ to reach full rate production.
Land 400 Phase 2 is only on track to spend $200 million this year of their $5.8 billion, delivering the first 25 of the 211 vehicles.
Between Land 121 Phase 3B and Phase 5, Defence has spent $4.6 bil- lion on new trucks. Mind you, the fleet they are replacing was manufac- tured before I was!
The first two Special Forces Tai- pans were delivered to Holsworthy in February.
Of the $16.5 billion budgeted for
The ongoing support of maritime programs in the Budget will be in the billions range for years to come.
Singapore Military Training Initiative (AMS- TI) will see a significant investment in facilities in Queensland over that period, with funds al- ready beginning to flow. The US Marine force in the NT under the $2 billion 25-year Force Posture Initiative has also seen much work be- ing done to improve facilities, particularly on training ranges in the Top End.
DST Group
Now under new Chief Defence Scientist Pro- fessor Tanya Monro, funding for Defence Science Technology Group remains steady, varying between $420-475 million annually across the forward estimates. Defence finance officials also confirmed that this figure is sub- ject to substantial movement as individual programs working their way through the sys- tem transfer funds to DST Group for S&T advice during the life of the program.
Conclusions
The Defence Budget contains very few sur- prises for those in this space. Big programs are hitting milestones, mid size programs are moving along and minors are progress- ing. There are of course, pockets where those outside Russell or Parliament House have very little insight into how the vast ma- jority of programs are performing.
As the ANAO noted in a recent report,
the Projects of Concern framework has all but been neglected to the point of atrophy.
As I have opined with alacrity for liter- ally years now, the IIP does not provide the level of detail that the old Defence Capabil- ity Plans did, making it hard to measure performance on a number of fronts. It was also a bible for project numbers. The Budget Portfolio Statements are now the only pub- lic document that provide a list of the Top 30 Acquisition and Sustainment projects, complete with these numbers. But there are many more projects on the books than those listed in this document.
One of the big holes in the Budget papers is related to ICT programs. Chief Informa- tion Officer Group spending under the ICT Investment Plan is due to hit the $2 billion mark annually in the outer years of the for- ward estimates, combining acquisition and sustainment. But on what? How? Why? So many questions and not enough answers.
When asked on the hole and why no ICT programs appear in either Top 30
list, Defence Finance officials commented that the ICT programs are usually short in nature, not materiel related unlike the other major Defence programs, and it’s not core business.
That argument rings hollow to me. Take Centralised Processing (CP) for example; running for well over five years, over $1 bil- lion in spending, and is a key enabler to De- fence’s core business. Next Generation Desk- top also springs to mind in this space plus all the systems that run the backend of Defence. Given the increasingly 5th Gen nature of the ADF, ICT is a weapons systems in itself, not just a key enabler any more.
With some big ICT programs in the pipe- line it would be good to see this oversight addressed in future Defence Budget Portfo- lio Statements. With so much money going into this space, more detail needs to be pro- vided. Less money is spent on infrastruc- ture and estate but the information and the granularity available is beyond sufficient for all but the most economically minded.
40 | May 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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