Page 29 - Australian Defence Magazine Dec21-Jan22

DECEMBER 2021-JANUARY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
DEFENCE BUSINESS
BMS 29
the furore over Army’s shock decision in mid-May to remove ELSA-supplied BMS software from service after fail- ing to achieve ADF ICT accreditation, had quietened.
The ELSA command and control BMS, baselined on the Israeli Torch system but heavily modified and de- risked to meet Australian battlegroup and below requirements, has been in service with the ADF since 2011 un- der Project Land 200, which compris- es three major tranches that include an associated tactical communica- tions program.
Tranche one of the BMS reached final
operational capability in the first quar-
ter of 2015, two years behind schedule,
at a cost of $330 million. As of August
2020, Elbit had been paid $294 million
for meeting 11 of 18 Tranche 2 mile-
stones, with a further $118 million in play. The competitive tender schedule for Tranche 3 has yet to be disclosed al- though the cost was forecast at between $1 billion-$2 billion by a 2019 ANAO report that was less than complimentary about aspects of Army’s project management.
SECURITY CONCERNS
Chief of Army Rick Burr told Senate Estimates in June the decision to withdraw ELSA’s BMS software was due, not to security issues, but to the looming expiry at the end of that month of provisional accreditation on the Defence network for Version 7.1 software, which was to have been replaced by ELSA with Version 9.1.
However, Version 9.1 had not met contractual specifica- tions and therefore had not been presented for ICT accredi- tation, he said, while Defence was unable to continue using Version 7.1 since patching had not met its expectations, in part because ELSA had expected it would be superceded by Version 9.1.
This explanation and two other official responses at Esti- mates helped redress Defence’s lack of communication fol- lowing earlier media reports, vigorously denied by ELSA’s Managing Director, Major-General (Ret.) Paul McLachlan, quoting anonymous military insiders that Israelis could use the Australian system as a back door for information, pos- sibly from highly-classified US systems.
In Senate Estimates, no such back door had been found, Defence’s Chief Information Officer stated, while the Aus- tralian Signals Directorate confirmed it had not been asked to conduct an accreditation assessment, nor had it provided any advice regarding Defence’s decision to pause and then withdraw the software.
Furthermore, although payments to ELSA had been withheld in the previous 12 months because contractual acquisition milestones had not been achieved, none were security-related, Defence responded to an Estimates Ques- tion on Notice.
cal commentary about back doors and claims levelled by people “who weren’t ready to come forward and attach their names to them.”
“However, we understand as a company we have to ensure we have the confidence of the Commonwealth and the cus- tomer and that’s why we’re well along the way of our gover- nance, sovereignty and security transformation,” he stated.
Numerous questions remain unanswered about the with- drawal and issues leading to it. Neither party will comment on an independent technical review jointly funded by De- fence and ELSA, although the ABC has reported that the review in part singles out Defence’s CASG for mishandling the overall Land 200 project.
McLachlan was adamant, however, that patching of Ver- sion 7.1 was the Commonwealth’s responsibility, not ELSA’s. “The Commonwealth made a decision not to do the patching because there was an expectation that Version 9.1 was coming out,” he told ADM. “That’s an issue we’re
discussing.”
MILESTONES
So far as schedule was concerned, “there are a whole lot of reasons why organisations fall behind schedule. I’ll just make this point, it’s on public record that the Common- wealth is the prime systems integrator on this program,” McLachan said.
Whether milestones were missed because requirements were over-specified or whether development was under- resourced was “a very simple question with a whole lot of conflicted opinion, which is why we’re fully engaged in the independent technical review.”
LEFT: Version 9.1 of the ELSA BMS was on display at the Land Forces 2021 exhibition in Brisbabe
ABOVE: The ELSA BMS has been in service with the ADF since 2011 under Project Land 200
Meanwhile McLachlan slammed what he termed hysteri-
DEFENCE