$1.3 billion defence drone mission canned as Finances spends $10 billion on boosting offensive cybersecurity capabilities

The federal government’s REDSPICE cyber safety program – a $9.9 billion centrepiece to final week’s finances – has come at the price of a $1.3 billion Sky Guardian drone mission which has already set taxpayers again $10 million, senate estimates revealed on Friday.

Regardless of the $9.9 billion headline determine championed by the Treasurer in his finances speech, a take a look at the finances papers confirmed funding for REDSPICE – a 10-year initiative that can supposedly create 1,900 authorities cyber safety jobs – was largely re-allocated from elsewhere inside Defence, and that lower than $600 million was new cash.

Precisely how Defence would reallocate this funding was a thriller till Senator Penny Wong requested the query to Affiliate Defence Secretary Matt Yannopolous final week.

A part of the cash was from offsets inside the Australian Alerts Directorate (ASD) from tasks whose “scope has been subsumed within the REDSPICE”, Yannopolous mentioned.

However there was additionally a “mission cancellation” which the Defence Secretary – who shortly glanced across the room to see if he might announce it publicly – confirmed was the $1.3 billion Sky Guardian mission first announced in November 2019.

An unmanned drone, the General Atomics MQ-9B Sky Guardian was set to be procured for its airborne surveillance and precision strike capabilities.

Round $10 million of taxpayer cash had already been spent on the mission.

Division of Defence CFO Steven Groves mentioned an extra $236 million for REDSPICE got here from an “ICT remediation mission, round modernisation and mobility”.

A lot of the rest of the REDSPICE funding has been provisioned in opposition to “authorised and unapproved” cash from the SEA 1000 Assault class submarine program which was famously cancelled final 12 months in favour of nuclear-powered submarines.

The ultimate price of the canned submarine program is anticipated to exceed $5.5 billion.

The REDSPICE cyber safety spend was largely welcomed by business when it was introduced final week with native safety corporations and advocates welcoming the eye to cyber.

However Labor has warned an ongoing cyber safety abilities scarcity might make it close to inconceivable to fill the claimed 1,900 roles created by REDSPICE over the approaching years.

Shadow Defence Minister Brendan O’Connor described the pool of cyber safety expertise as “closely contested” and mentioned there was already a “huge backlog in safety clearances” exacerbating the issue.

“Given the quickly escalating cyber threats going through the nation, Australians can’t afford for REDSPICE to develop into the most recent main defence functionality mission that by no means makes it from announcement to supply,” he mentioned.