Australia — Budget 2011-12 Defence Capability

Min­is­ter for Defence Stephen Smith — Bud­get 2011-12 Defence Capa­bil­i­ty
Over the next 12 to 18 months, Defence is devel­op­ing First and Sec­ond Pass approvals of Defence Capa­bil­i­ty Plan projects worth over $6 bil­lion.

In addi­tion to the recent deci­sions to acquire a fifth C‑17A Globe­mas­ter III heavy lift air­craft and the amphibi­ous ship Largs Bay, approvals will be sought for a range of key capa­bil­i­ty acqui­si­tions including: 

• Air 9000 Phase 8 Future Naval Avi­a­tion Com­bat Sys­tem
  This project will replace the cur­rent fleet of Sea­hawk and can­celled Super Sea­sprite heli­copters with mul­ti-role naval com­bat heli­copters, weapons and relat­ed train­ing, infra­struc­ture, logis­tics and sup­port arrangements.
• Land 121 Phase 3 Project Over­lan­der
  Phase 3 will deliv­er Light and Light­weight unpro­tect­ed Class vehi­cles and Medi­um and Medi­um Heavy pro­tect­ed and unpro­tect­ed vehi­cles for land forces. While this phase of Over­lan­der is post sec­ond pass, it will be recon­sid­ered by Gov­ern­ment when Defence com­pletes the cur­rent ten­der eval­u­a­tion activ­i­ties for Medi­um and Medi­um Heavy pro­tect­ed and unpro­tect­ed vehicles. 
• Land 121 Phase 5A Project Over­lan­der
  This phase of project Over­lan­der will deliv­er fur­ther Light and Light­weight unpro­tect­ed Class vehi­cles for ADF tac­ti­cal train­ing crit­i­cal for our per­son­nel in prepa­ra­tion for operations. 
• Joint Project 2072 Phase 2A Bat­tle­space com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems
  This project will roll­out the com­mu­ni­ca­tion infra­struc­ture to high readi­ness land for­ma­tions and units of the ADF. 
• JP 2048 Phase 3 — Replace­ment Water­craft
  This project will pro­vide ship to shore ves­sels to trans­port forces and equip­ment ashore and re-embark them back onto the Can­ber­ra Class Amphibi­ous Assault Ships. 

The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment is con­tin­u­ing its invest­ment in the pack­age of enhanced force pro­tec­tion capa­bil­i­ties for our troops in Afghanistan. 

Over the peri­od 2009-10 to 2012–13, the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment will invest $1.1 bil­lion for these force pro­tec­tion capa­bil­i­ties. This ini­tia­tive includes $480 mil­lion of expen­di­ture in 2011-12. This is in addi­tion to about half a bil­lion dol­lars of exist­ing force pro­tec­tion mea­sures for a total over the finan­cial peri­od 2009-10 to 2012 13 of $1.6 bil­lion of enhanced mea­sures for force protection. 

Our forces in Afghanistan are per­form­ing extreme­ly well in dan­ger­ous cir­cum­stances on a dai­ly basis and their sup­port and pro­tec­tion is, right­ly, our high­est priority. 

More broad­ly the Gov­ern­ment is con­tin­u­ing its invest­ment in Force 2030, as set out in the 2009 Defence White Paper, Defend­ing Aus­tralia in the Asia Pacif­ic Cen­tu­ry. A com­pre­hen­sive pack­age of air, land, mar­itime and net­worked infor­ma­tion capa­bil­i­ties is being pro­gressed to ensure the Aus­tralian Defence Force of the 21st Cen­tu­ry will have the capa­bil­i­ties required to meet future strate­gic challenges. 

For more infor­ma­tion and access to the Port­fo­lio Bud­get State­ment go to http://www.defence.gov.au/budget/11–12/index.htm
Mr Smith’s Office: Andrew Porter (02) 6277 7800 or 0419 474 392
Depart­ment of Defence: (02) 6127 1999 

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

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