Page 56 - Australian Defence Mag Jul-Aug 2020
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   56 FROM THE SOURCE   GABBY COSTIGAN CONTINUED FROM PAGE 55
capability development, as I said, supporting the develop- ment of the Commonwealth identified sovereign industry capabilities.
It's a long term commitment that will also help increase Australian industry’s ability to compete for and then win domestic and international work in decades to come.
It’s a key aim of our government right now, to further de- velop the export opportunities for defence industry. It will also mean securing employment and obviously strengthen- ing our economy.
So with Boeing, our plan is to deliver a true Australian sovereign capability that will maximise existing invest- ment in the HF technologies and, we believe, generate significant economic benefit through our trusted supply chain of almost 30 Australian SMEs in that program.
ADM: You mentioned defence industry exports quite a bit there. How would you characterise defence industry ex- ports from Australia at the moment? Are they growing? Are they contracting? What are the challenges there? COSTIGAN: I would say they’re definitely growing. BAE Sys- tems has long been one of the leading defence companies in terms of defence exports from Australia.
We as a business have a number of different products that are being developed. We’ve talked to you in the past around Mantlet (miniature digital Electronic Support
JULY/AUGUST 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
Measures (ESM) system providing Radio Frequency [RF] situational awareness), the work that we’re doing on some of our autonomous technologies. We see that there are some real opportunities to export those Australian ca- pabilities into the region and specifically to some of our trusted partners around the world. I would say exports are certainly growing.
I still believe that we have a great opportunity to ad- vance our manufacturing capabilities in Australia and spe- cifically around some of the niche advanced manufactur- ing capabilities that we have. Our facilities in Adelaide to support the F-35 for example. The opportunities for us to continue to build vertical tails, to support the global F-35 program there is exciting, and we’ll continue to do that. We’ve still got more than 700 F-35 ship sets still to be ex- ported from Australia, so I think that’s important to note.
We’ve also had some of our key suppliers, Australian companies, as you know, achieve success through our global access program. Just recently we’ve announced our work with APV on seat-belt restraints. APV is going to be working on the amphibious combat vehicles that BAE Systems in the US build for the US government and they’ve just been awarded a great program there to export their technology.
ADM: Can you comment on Hawk lead in fighter ser- viceability levels in RAAF service at the present time? What is/are the problem(s) and what are you doing to rectify it/them?
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