Australia has canceled a multi-billion-dollar military satellite project with the US company Lockheed Martin, and the Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Monday that the army will instead shift its focus to a multi-orbit system.
Lockheed Martin was selected last year as the preferred bidder for a satellite communications system in geostationary orbit, in a project that was scheduled to provide Australia’s first sovereign-controlled satellite communications system over the Indo-Pacific regions.
The Australian Department of Defense said in a statement on Monday that the project to place a satellite in one orbit with Lockheed Martin has been cancelled.
“With the acceleration of space technologies and evolving threats in space since the project began, the Department of Defense has assessed that a satellite communications system in geostationary orbit will not meet strategic priorities,” the statement added.
Australia will instead prioritize establishing a multi-orbit capability with the aim of increasing the flexibility of the Australian Defense Forces, the statement said.
For its part, Lockheed Martin said it will continue to support the Commonwealth to meet its strategic needs and is proud to partner with the Australian Defense Forces in many other programs.
Strategic priorities
Eighteen months ago, US defense giant Lockheed Martin was selected to deliver an enhanced network of three to five satellites to provide high-level protection against electronic and cyber warfare attacks, in what was to be Australia’s largest space defense contract ever.
The project, known as JP9102, was expected to include communications satellites that would be controlled and operated locally, in addition to multiple ground stations, but, on Monday, the Australian Department of Defense confirmed that it no longer met “strategic priorities.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that while the size of Australia’s defense budget is growing, his government is prioritizing its procurement, he was quoted as saying. Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
When the Lockheed Martin project was announced last year, authorities said it was a “billion-dollar” deal, but the Defense Department’s latest statement did not indicate a specific value for the canceled project.
The authority indicated that the project would have cost the Australian state $7 billion. The Ministry of Defense said in the statement that, despite the cancellation of the deal, it will still allocate about $13.87 billion to space capabilities programs.
Cheaper options
Shadow Defense Secretary Andrew Hastie criticized the decision to cancel the JP9102 programme, describing it as a shameful decision, but some industry experts considered that the government was right to look for other cheaper and more viable options.
“The program appears to have been canceled because Labor did not incorporate it into the defense budget,” Hastie said, adding in a written statement that “cancellation of this project destroys our strategic surveillance capabilities and our ability to coordinate our future defense forces.”
Defense industry experts believe there are cheaper options available, which include placing Australian space assets on existing satellites operated by US companies, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
But defense analyst Malcolm Davis, of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, described canceling JP9102 as a “stunningly stupid move” that would undermine the country’s credibility.
“Without communications, you are not in the fight – Australia cannot have a sovereign defense force without sovereign satellite communications,” he said. He noted that the defense industry “cannot (..) invest in Australia if the government is a fickle customer.”
Last year, Defense Minister Richard Marles announced that the government was “confident in our continued presence in space” after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation revealed that China had deployed hundreds of satellites over Australia to monitor military exercises.
In the same year, the ruling Labor Party also canceled a program by the previous Morrison government to develop new Australian satellites to collect data on natural disasters, agriculture and marine surveillance as part of a budget saving.
