Page 41 - Australian Defence Magazine February 2022

FEBRUARY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
GUIDED WEAPONS 41
– was not immediately clear, although in the first instance it will presumably confirm the commercial model for the enterprise and allocate priorities.
These will be linked to the seven core capability elements of manufacturing, research and development, education and training, test and evaluation, maintenance and repair, storage and distribution, and disposal.
MAJGEN Bottrell had stated earlier that Defence was likely to recommend more than one strategic partner for the enterprise given the number of extant guided weapons with IP owned by different entities, plus Defence’s ‘con- cerns’ about the ability of any one company to deliver across the whole scope of the enterprise.
Those concerns were not necessarily shared.
AUSTRALIAN MISSILE CORPORATION
As confirmed by NIOA’S Gus McLachlan, the AMC re- sponded to last July’s Request for Information (RfI) with an innovative program management proposal in which the AMC would run and coordinate the future enterprise on behalf of the Commonwealth.
This capability would draw on a core of AMC staff and the more than 300 companies and organisations that had signalled they were ready and willing to work with NIOA.
“As an example, whoever handles weapons storage and logistics will be a government decision but a number of
companies have already said they are comfortable that they can operate with us in that role,” McLachlan explained.
“If government allocated the work we would mobilise that capacity from our organisational design, setting up a mod- ern business operations centre for the government to help them coordinate.
“Some enterprise contracts would be direct to govern- ment, where they had chosen to specify requirements at the Commonwealth level, and some would be internal AMC – if we had a contract to advise government on how to build a cutting edge rocket motor production facility we would identify the best companies in the world who were capable of doing that work, and get on with it.
“Our commitment is to use the CASG acquisition prin- ciples and be transparent around margins issues – we see this as a long-term partnership opportunity.”
AMC announced on 30 November that QinetiQ , which employs about 600 people through its Australian sub- sidiary, would seek to leverage its testing and evaluation (T&E), certification and systems assurance capabilities in Australia by supporting the AMC’s growing number of in- dustry alliances.
ABOVE: Soldiers from 16 Regiment engage a threat with the RBS-70 MPADS the Shoalwater Bay Training Area.
DEFENCE