Jobs loom as SA eyes more defence contracts from $270 billion military budget
Defence SA has found several massive opportunities for the state from this week’s $270 billion military budget – among them, building technology that doesn’t exist yet.
SA News
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Engineers, scientists, tradies, and IT workers will be in high demand over the next decade as South Australia seeks to secure more defence contracts, including the $23.7 billion development of a high-speed missile defence system.
Small and medium-sized SA businesses also have a good chance to get more than $2 billion of work to build new watercrafts for the army.
Defence SA has identified several massive opportunities for the state from Scott Morrison’s $270 billion 10-year defence strategy.
One of the biggest is a $15.8 billion to $23.7 billion project to develop a high-speed missile defence system for Australia, which will include a pipeline of work from 2025 into the 2040s.
Defence SA chief executive Richard Price said SA’s focus on artificial intelligence, machine learning, electronic warfare, radar and space would give it an edge in competing for the work, which would be highly valuable to Australia and its allies.
“It is a massive program,” Mr Price said.
“A lot of that technology doesn’t yet exist; it’s still being developed.
“The best opportunity for Australia to be part of it is by getting in early.”
Engineers, scientists and cyber experts are just some of the key jobs needed for the opportunities available over the next two decades, and many would be trained through TAFE.
“There’s a false belief that you need a degree to be in cyber security and that’s just not true,” Mr Price said.
“The growth is not just in universities, the growth is in those higher vocational training areas as well.”
He urged South Australians looking to retrain or students picking a career path to consider the defence industry, saying it had been “incredibly resilient through COVID”.
Other major opportunities for SA contractors in the 2020 defence strategy were a $300-$500 million contract for replacing landing crafts and a $2.1 billion project to build new army watercraft.
Design and engineering work to extend the life of the Collins Class submarines would also likely be done in SA “regardless of the outcome of full-cycle docking”, Mr Price said. The project to upgrade as many as six subs is worth up to $6 billion.
“It is very hard to see how Western Australia could stand up an engineering and design capability in time to do that work,” Mr Price said.
Meanwhile, China has responded to Australia’s $270 billion defence step-up by saying “all countries should avoid an arms race and refrain from purchasing unnecessary military equipment”.