Canberra: The Labour government of Anthony Albanese cancelled Australia’s largest space program ever, almost 18 months after killing the main civil space program, drawing sharp criticism from analysts and industry experts.
The satellite communications program, known in typical Australian military fashion as JP 9102, was projected to be worth at least $7 billion Australian dollars ($5.3 billion US).
The government began the project in 2021 and eventually chose Lockheed Martin’s Australian arm to see it through, but the Department of Defence said in an announcement that due to the “acceleration in space technologies and evolving threats in space, Defence has assessed that a single orbit GEO-based satellite communications system would not meet strategic priorities.”
“Instead of a single orbit solution, defence must instead prioritise a multi-orbit capability increasing resilience for the Australian Defence Force,” the department said. “Defence’s current satellite communications capabilities support the immediate needs of the organisation. This decision allows Defence to prioritise emerging needs, mitigate capability gaps and continue to support our transition to an integrated, focused force.”
“We’re busy prioritising all of our purchases when it comes to defence assets. We’ve got a considerable increase in our defence budget and we’ll make sure all of the decisions that we make are in our national interest,” the prime minister said.
“We are not only seeing advances with the AUKUS arrangements being on track and on time and on budget, we’re seeing our capabilities increased with increased asset purchases. We are also very much interested in this being part of our ‘Future Made in Australia’ agenda.”
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