Australia scrapped satellite because new tech could ‘shoot it out of sky’, says defence minister

By Kirsty Needham

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s defence minister said on Tuesday a defence satellite program was scrapped because of the threat of new technology that can “shoot satellites out of the sky”, and Canberra instead wants to use a mesh of micro satellites for defence communications.

Australia’s Department of Defence said on Monday it cancelled a multi-billion dollar Geostationary Earth Orbit satellite project with Lockheed Martin that was to deliver Australia’s first sovereign-controlled satellite communication system over the Indo-Pacific ocean regions.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Tuesday the government had abandoned the plan to have two or three geosynchronous satellites above Australia to deliver defence communications because the system designed eight years ago was out of date.

“Since then, we’ve seen technologies develop which can literally shoot satellites out of the sky. But we’ve also seen technologies develop where you have thousands of micro satellites in a much more distributed way providing the same effect,” he said in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Marles cited the use of Starlink above Ukraine and said Australia needs to develop defence communications that are distributed, more resilient and cost effective.

Russian and Ukrainian forces have used Starlink terminals sold by Elon Musk’s SpaceX Aerospace company for communications during the Ukraine conflict.

Defence personnel minister Matt Keogh said in a radio interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Australia wanted to develop “a mesh type arrangement of satellites, which provides greater resilience”.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Christopher Cushing)