Defence minister Richard Marles has defended the work of the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator after reports emerged that the design phase on its first mission had been mismanaged.
But he says the accelerator set up to fast-track the adoption of critical technologies within Defence should be progressing missions and contracting with companies faster.
Defence wrapped up co-design with industry under the first phase of its Mission 1 program last Wednesday, roughly five months later than originally expected.
ASCA released two “Mission 1 Problem Statements” in December to find capabilities that “penetrate and degrade advanced integrated air defence systems” or improve processing of large amounts of intelligence data.
Successful respondents were then expected to co-design, with Defence and other participants, a methodology and program of work to deliver and implement a solution to the problem statements.
But industry sources told the ABC that the co-design process has been a “disaster”, with local companies that didn’t make it to phase two “strung along for months”, putting some firms at risk of bankruptcy.
Addressing the concerns on Tuesday morning, Mr Marles said “it has taken too long for those companies that have failed” to be rejected by ASCA, but that it is fundamentally “doing what it’s meant to do” by being selective in the move to phase two.
“That’s the way this works, not every company succeeds and we do have competitive processes in place. [But] I think it has taken too long for those companies that have failed,” he told ABC News Breakfast.
“When you’re a company, obviously the thing you want to hear when you’re trying to get a contract is a yes, but the next best thing to hear is a fast no. And I think we need to be making sure that those noes happen faster.”
Mr Marles stressed that given that the process is competitive, not every company that engaged with the opportunity would be successful.
“That’s in fact how we get value for money and get the best capabilities possible, and ASCA, really, has been going about the process that it would normally do,” he said.
Later on Tuesday, Defence Industry minister Pat Conroy said ASCA is progressing bids with two companies and that all nine companies involved in the co-design phase received $300,000 to support their participation.
“Contract negotiations are now underway with two companies selected for the mission delivery phase,” Mr Conroy said.
Mr Conroy confirmed the co-design process concluded on October 30, but it was initially meant to wrap up by May 2024 ahead of phase two.
Industry complaints about ASCA emerged a day after the government confirmed it had canned a multi-billion dollar geostationary satellite contract with Lockheed Martin, 18 months after it was downselected.
Mr Marles claimed the decision is “not a cancellation, it’s really a change of direction in terms of how we deliver the capability for our communications network in Defence”, ensuring it keeps up with technological innovation.
“This original plan goes back seven, eight years and it was about having two or three GEO-synchronous satellites above Australia to deliver that capability. Since then, we’ve seen technologies develop which can literally shoot satellites out of the sky,” he said.
“But we’ve also seen technologies develop where you have thousands of micro satellites in a much more distributed way providing the same effect. And we’re seeing that, for example, with Starlink above Ukraine.”
Defence Personnel minister Matt Keogh, who was also quizzed about the cancellation of the JP9102 on Tuesday morning, argued the delivery of “a small number of satellites” would have been a vulnerability.
“We’re looking at moving to more of a mesh type arrangement of satellites which provides greater resilience with a more up to date technology and we’ll be able to deliver that technology faster as well,” Mr Keogh said.
Defence has been contacted for comment.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.