Page 88 - Australian Defence Magazine Nov 2020
P. 88

                   88 DEFENCE BUSINESS   VIEW FROM CANBERRA
N OVEMBER 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
  ABOVE THE WILD BLUE YONDER
Australia is seriously considering spending up on some superbly capable, exquisitely expensive communications satellites able to deliver a sovereign capability independent of or potentially in addition to current services from commercial providers and allies, specifically the US.
A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | CANBERRA
THIS would be a national asset which could support the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and by extension civil authorities in time of peace, disaster or war.
Under Joint Project 9102, up to $3 billion will be spent out to 2029 to enhance SATCOM capability. This isn’t up there with new submarines but is still a vast outlay for a capability the vast majority of taxpayers won’t ever see or re- ally appreciate.
JP 9102 was launched last year, succeeding the three de- cade, multi-phase, multiple contractor JP 2008 which deliv- ered ground infrastructure and, in November 2007, the agree- ment with the US for access to the new Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) constellation. That agreement runs to 2029.
A number of companies are interested in JP9102, among them Boeing, which makes WGS and plenty of other satel- lites, and Airbus, which produced and operates the Skynet 5 satellite series for the UK Ministry of Defence.
In July, Airbus signed a contract UK for Skynet 6A, to be launched in 2025, as part of a GBP7.5 billion upgrade of UK armed forces satellite communications. The major component will be replacement of the four existing Skynet 5 satellites.
Knowledgeable readers will of course wonder – wasn’t Skynet the evil sentient computer system from the Termina- tor movies series? Well yes, but the satellites preceded the first movie (1984) by more than a decade.
   























































































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