Picture: Matt Cardy/Getty Photographs
The Australian authorities has cancelled the SkyGuardian armed drone program for the Royal Australian Air Power. The funding is being redirected to the newly-announced REDSPICE cybersecurity and intelligence program.
REDSPICE, the Resilience, Results, Defence, Area, Intelligence, Cyber and Enablers program, is a flagship part of the federal Price range introduced on Tuesday.
This system goals to double the staffing ranges of the Australian Alerts Directorate (ASD) over the subsequent 4 years, creating some 1,900 new jobs. The whole program funds is AU$9.9 billion over the subsequent decade, boosting each offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.
“That is the largest ever funding in Australia’s cyber preparedness,” mentioned Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
Nevertheless in Senate Estimates on Friday, defence officers confirmed that little of that is new cash.
Of the AU$9.9 billion whole, solely AU$4.2 billion is budgeted to be spent over the four-year ahead estimates interval by means of to 2025–2026. And of that quantity, solely round AU$588.5 million is new funding.
An enormous chunk of the prevailing funding will come from the now-cancelled undertaking AIR 7003, a deliberate AU$1.3 billion program to develop an armed remotely piloted plane system.
In November 2019, the federal government had confirmed that defence’s most popular platform was the Normal Atomics MQ-9B SkyGuardian, a variant of the Predator B drone identified within the UK because the Protector.
AIR 7003 had been scheduled for presidency consideration within the present 2021-22 monetary 12 months.
Based on Asia Pacific Defence Reporter, Normal Atomics had proposed creating a multi-national service hub in Adelaide.
“The corporate has in all probability spent round $30 million on the undertaking over a decade and is unlikely to get well a single cent,” wrote editor Kym Bergmann.
“The scant info accessible signifies that Defence Minister Peter Dutton has requested the Division to establish tasks that have to be cancelled to release funds to rent extra personnel, notably in help of the cyber safety announcement.”
Based on defence officers, round AU$10 million had been spent on AIR 7003 earlier than its cancellation.
The rest of REDSPICE funding comes from different cancelled tasks. This contains about AU$3 billion of “each unapproved and accredited” funding which had been allotted to the now-cancelled Assault-class submarines, the SEA 1000 Future Submarine Program, and round AU$236 million for “an ICT remediation undertaking round modernisation and mobility”.
Funds additionally come from beforehand deliberate ASD tasks which have now change into a part of REDSPICE.
Witnesses earlier than Estimates on Friday morning have been unable to shed any mild on the place the title REDSPICE got here from.
