Defence-related businesses may be eligible for a grant of up to $1 million to invest in projects that build capabilities aligned with Defence’s stated Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities.
The Sovereign Industrial Capability Priority Grants aim to ensure Australian businesses have the capacity and resilience to support Defence’s most critical capabilities.
The Centre for Defence Industry Capability (CDIC) is inviting Australian small-to-medium sized businesses to apply for grants ranging from $50,000 to $1 million to fund capital equipment (including specialist software and security infrastructure), design and engineering, or workforce training and accreditations.
The grants are provided on a 50:50 matched funding basis. Decisions about investment will be driven by Defence capability needs.
Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities are industrial capabilities considered critical to Defence and for which Australia must have access to, or control over, the skills, technology, intellectual property, financial resources and infrastructure that underpin those capabilities.
The initial Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities are (in no particular order):
- Collins class submarine maintenance and technology upgrade
- continuous shipbuilding program (including rolling submarine acquisition)
- land combat vehicle and technology upgrade
- enhanced active and passive phased array radar capability
- combat clothing survivability and signature reduction technologies
- advanced signal processing capability in electronic warfare, cyber and information security, and signature management technologies and operations
- surveillance and intelligence data collection, analysis, dissemination and complex systems integration
- test, evaluation, certification and systems assurance
- munitions and small arms research, design, development and manufacture
- aerospace platform deep maintenance.
Defence and the CDIC will progressively map and gather detailed information for each Sovereign Industrial Capability Priority, with the aim of releasing an implementation plan for each Sovereign Industrial Capability Priority from mid-2019. These plans will outline the desired level of sovereignty and how each capability will be developed and supported across Defence planning to maintain capacity and resilience.