OneSKY mega-delay remains ‘a concern’
Defence convened a Project of Concern Summit in Canberra this week to discuss the Civil Military Air Traffic Management System (CMATS) project.
FILE PHOTO (June 2020): New (right) air-traffic control tower construction at RAAF Base Darwin, adjacent to the old tower (left), which will eventually be demolished. Photo by Sergeant Ben Dempster.
Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy hosted senior Defence and Airservices Australia officials and industry representatives.
The Summit brought together stakeholders to share updates and strengthen collaboration in an effort to ensure ongoing work to deliver this important capability meets operational needs.
Minister Conroy said this summit was an important milestone that provided representatives the opportunity to discuss the status of the remediation plan, and progress made towards achieving the agreed exit criteria since the last Project of Concern Summit in September 2025.
“The Projects of Concern process is an effective way to ensure a high-quality of engagement at all levels on complex issues,” Minister Conroy said, without elaborating on expected outcomes for the project, which is already years late and billion of dollars over budget.
Then Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Warren Truss announced the OneSKY project at the Avalon Air Show in 2015, with an expected phased transition into service from 2018 to 2021.
“[This] shared approach will realise combined savings of several hundred million dollars,” Mr Truss said at the time.
The original 2018 contract target price for the CMATS acquisition was $1.22billion, but is currently running at just over $4billion – and still being discussed as a project of concern five years after its initial due delivery date.
Interestingly, while this project is a joint venture between Air Services Australia and Defence, there’s no project page on the Defence web site – but a glowing PR-spun page, devoid of any concern, on the Air Services web site.
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