News

Australia defers HALE UAS to after 2019

July 01, 2009

Australia has deferred its planned acquisition of a multirole high altitude unmanned air system until after 2019 as part of its revised defence capability plan (DCP) issued 1 July.

The acquisition slide represents a decade long deferral over plans that would have originally seen Australia sign up this year to buy the Northrop Grumman RQ-4N Global Hawk in a deal linked to the United States navy broad area maritime surveillance (BAMS) program.

The Australian government announced in March this year that it was withdrawing from BAMS after funding two years of active participation in the source selection phase of that project. In May the new Australian Defence White Paper foreshadowed a continuation of plans for a fleet of up to seven maritime HALE UAS but provided no timeframes.

The new DCP says the planned acquisition, which retains the formal designation of Air 7000 phase 1B, will effectively be going back to square one: “Defence will commence working on developing this phase for government consideration beyond 2019”

The DCP also flags an expansion of the mission roles, advising the system is now intended to support “maritime and overland intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance roles and electronic support”.

It forecasts the project to cost between AUD$500 million and AUD$1.5 billion.

By Peter La Franchi, Adelaide