Australia — Projects of concern — Update

Min­is­ter for Defence Stephen Smith and Min­is­ter for Defence Materiel Jason Clare today released an update to the Projects of Con­cern list.
Project AIR 5418 Phase 1 – the acqui­si­tion of Joint Air to Sur­face Stand­off Mis­siles (JASSM) – has been added to this list.
This project, approved in 2004, is acquir­ing JASSM for deploy­ment on F/A‑18A/B air­craft to improve air­craft sur­viv­abil­i­ty and weapon effec­tive­ness.

The project is run­ning late and risks to capa­bil­i­ty remain. 

In a speech today to the Depart­ment of Defence Senior Lead­er­ship Group, Mr Smith drew atten­tion to con­cerns around AIR 5418 project management. 

“Gov­ern­ment has not been kept prop­er­ly and ful­ly informed as to the progress with respect to this major project” Mr Smith said. 

Mr Smith said “It is essen­tial for Gov­ern­ment to be appro­pri­ate­ly informed about the deliv­ery of com­plex and impor­tant capa­bil­i­ties so that appro­pri­ate steps can be tak­en to man­age issues that emerge in rela­tion to cost, capa­bil­i­ty or schedule.” 

The next major stage in this project is a live fir­ing from an Aus­tralian F/A‑18A/B in the Unit­ed States in late 2010 or ear­ly 2011. Defence will pro­vide the Gov­ern­ment with a full report on the effec­tive­ness of this test to inform the Government’s con­sid­er­a­tion on the way for­ward with respect to this project. 

Mr Smith said “Defence will ensure that this project now receives addi­tion­al scruti­ny and senior offi­cer over­sight in the lead up to the test fir­ing and in the devel­op­ment of sub­se­quent advice to Government.” 

This brings the total num­ber of projects placed on the list since 2008 to 18, with six removed – five due to reme­di­a­tion and one due to cancellation. 

The Projects of Con­cern list was estab­lished by the Gov­ern­ment in 2008 to focus the atten­tion of Defence and indus­try senior man­age­ment on reme­di­at­ing list­ed projects. 

This process has been suc­cess­ful in reme­di­at­ing a num­ber of key com­plex and chal­leng­ing projects. 

Projects are put on the list when, for exam­ple, there are sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges with sched­ul­ing, cost, capa­bil­i­ty deliv­ery or project management. 

The cur­rent com­plete list of projects is below. 

Project — Description

CN10 — Collins Class Sub­ma­rine Sus­tain­ment and Projects

AIR 5077
Phase 3 — ‘Wed­getail’ Air­borne Ear­ly Warn­ing and Con­trol aircraft

SEA 1448
Phase 2B — Anti-Ship Mis­sile Defence radar upgrades for ANZAC Class Frigates

JOINT 2043
Phase 3A — High Fre­quen­cy Mod­erni­sa­tion (HFMOD) – com­mu­ni­ca­tions and data exchange capa­bil­i­ty for sea, air and land forces

AIR 5333 ‘Vig­i­lare’ – Aero­space sur­veil­lance and com­mand and con­trol system

JOINT 129
Phase 2 — Tac­ti­cal Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles – air­borne sur­veil­lance for land forces

LAND 121
Phase 3 — ‘Over­lan­der’ replace­ment field vehi­cles, trail­ers and mod­ules for land forces (‘Medi­um Heavy’ class of vehi­cles only)

JOINT 2070 — Light­weight tor­pe­do replace­ment for ANZAC and ADELAIDE Class Frigates

AIR 5402 — Mul­ti-Role Tanker Trans­port air­craft – Air to Air Refu­elling Capability

JOINT 2048
Phase 1A — LCM2000 Water­craft for Land­ing Plat­form Amphibi­ous ships

AIR 5276
Phase 8B — Elec­tron­ic Sup­port Mea­sures upgrade for AP-3C Ori­on aircraft

AIR 5418
Phase 1 — Joint Air to Sur­face Stand­off Missiles 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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