Defence

Competitive Advantages, rationale

Armoured manoevresThe remote wide open spaces, easy access to Australia's continental rail and road network and established support services makes northern South Australia the ideal location for a range of defence and aerospace related training, test and evaluation and launch activities.  The region boasts two of the Defence Department's most important land based assets:

At 127,000 kmē the WPA is the largest land based rocket launching and testing range in the western world.  The advantages of the WPA are the vast land and air space, the extremely low population density, the favourable year round desert climate and the flat and easily accessible topography.  With few over flights per day, air space restrictions are minimal and electromagnetic interference is extremely low enhancing utility of the range for electronic warfare testing.  BAE SYSTEMS Australia has a contract with Defence to grow defence and commercial business at Woomera.  Among other things the contract covers the development of trial related business in the WPA in partnership with Defence.  A number of Australian and international rocket launch proponents continue to utilise Woomera.

The Cultana Training Area is used by Defence for year round Army training and equipment testing.  It comprises 470 kmē of rugged country suitable for both land and shore line operations between Port Augusta and Whyalla.  Cultana's location close to the main road and rail corridors connecting the north of Australia through to Darwin makes for an ideal location for major training exercises for Defence brigades based in the north that may be impacted by the northern wet season.  The use of Cultana by Army is growing significantly each year as it becomes more and more integrated into Army's training network. 

The value of the two ranges to the adjacent communities, in particular Port Augusta, Roxby Downs and Coober Pedy, is significant given the flow-on effects of the spending by Army and their personnel in these centres during their training.  By way of example over a six-week period in early 2004 over 900 people spent time at the Cultana range and expended substantial sums throughout the Port Augusta community.  This was repeated in 2006 with a further 600 training at the start of the year.

Army has committed to enhancing their force structure by establishing a new mechanised battalion in South Australia. Importantly for the region the majority of their training  is likely to be in northern South Australia.

Port Augusta's location at the crossroads of Australia's national road and rail freight distribution network makes it ideally placed to play a vital connection role between industry based on the southeastern seaboard with the northern Defence bases and operations.  This positioning gives the City strong claims to support the establishment of a significant distribution and logistics facility servicing Defence. 

Supporting the ongoing training activities particularly at Cultana will require new infrastructure to handle the intermodal shift of goods and equipment particularly army vehicles such as tanks and ASLAV's.  This brings an opportunity to match Defence's needs in this regard with the Board's broader Transport strategy by the establishment of a major multi-purpose intermodal transport hub in Port Augusta.

Board's Mission for the sector

Position northern South Australia as the Defence location of choice for year round land based training, test and evaluation, and distribution and logistics centre connecting northern Australia with the industrial centres of the south.

Performance objectives

In support of this Mission RDAFN seeks to:

Specific Performance objectives to achieve this are :

Significant Current Developments

Armoured exercises

Armoured exercises

Rocket testing

Rocket test firing

Unloading tanks

Unloading tanks