Page 24 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2021

24 DEFENCE BUSINESS
JULY-AUGUST 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
Australia’s borders and offshore maritime interests; and a $66.1 million commitment to upgrade the RAAF Base Wil- liamtown runway to accommodate long-range aircraft.
Also announced in April was the $747 million upgrade package to ranges and training facilities in the NT.
Many of the COVID measures that cushioned the De- fence Industry base during 2020 were also critical in meet- ing the budget milestones set last year and many are going to be continued.
PROGRAM UPDATES
LEFT: Indigenous Liaison Officer and Kaurna Man, Flight Lieutenant Steve Warrior, greets the City of Adelaide Kaurna Custodian, Robert Taylor.
“MUCH OF THE FUNDING PROFILE IS LOCKED INTO LONG TERM PROGRAMS”
Minister Price said the Government has kept the wheels of defence indus- try turning over the past year by accel- erating the payment of $26.9 billion in invoices to defence companies.
There has also been a funding boost – to $39 million over three years – to the Skilling Australia Defence Indus- try (SADI) Grants Program.
Since the release of the late Budget last year in October, some headline programs have hit significant milestones. These include:
• for the Attack submarines, the Strategic Partnering
Agreement has been updated to include a minimum 60 per cent Australian Industry Capability in the acquisition program
• the Hunter class has cut steel on the first prototype blocks
• Boxer Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles from Rhein- metall Defence Australia are now in training
• Phase 3 of Land 400 has begun the Risk Mitigation Ac- tivity (RMA) between Rheinmetall’s Lynx and Hanwha Defense Australia’s Redback
• confirmation that the Tiger ARH will be retired from ADF service early and the Apache will take its place
• $1 billion missile enterprise
• new sustainment contracts for the Chinook and other he-
licopter fleets
• first flight of the Loyal Wingman ATS
• $800 million to acquire new fleets of Australian-built
amphibious vehicles and landing craft
The exact value of these milestones is hard to pin down in many cases for smaller programs (let alone project numbers), even with the release of the Budget papers, as a distinction between dollars committed and dollars spent is not clear.
Big announcements for the Budget are a thing of the past, with the government preferring a constant drip feed of decisions as they are made rather than saving them up.
Once again, a First and Second Pass approvals list was not included in the Budget papers, a sad omis- sion. Lining up the publicly available documents to as- sess whether the Integrated Investment Program (IIP), Budget papers, Defence Annual Report, ministerial an-
In March, the Prime Minister, Minister Dutton and Minister Price announced the ac- celeration of a $1 billion Sovereign Guided Weapons En- terprise. This is on top of the almost $100 billion worth of missile programs outlined in the 2016 Integrated Invest-
ment Program (IIP) and FSR.
Lastly, the Government will fund the implementation of
a government-wide Cyber Hubs pilot as part of the first step towards centralising the management and operations of se- cure Cyber Hubs across government.
OPERATIONAL FUNDING SLASHED
In line with direction from government, funding for opera- tions has taken a massive hit. The budget papers from Octo- ber last year saw $4.9 billion for operations over the forward estimates period. This budget sees that number fall to barely $1 billion. Operation Okra in Afghanistan make up the bulk of that figure, but all overseas operations have taken a hit.
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