A Deed of Settlement, Release and Amendment has been signed with Boeing Australia that resolves long standing commercial issues associated with Project Air 5333 “Vigilare”.

It is well known that Project Air 5333 Vigilare has experienced a number of commercial issues associated with project delays and costs. The Deed that has been signed addresses these longstanding concerns and will allow all parties to now focus on delivering this important capability.
 
Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement, the Hon. Greg Combet MP said key points of the Deed include sharper commercial obligations between the parties for improved schedule and performance aspects, revised business rules to streamline future decision making, as well as providing for an incremental delivery regime for earlier capability acceptance by the RAAF and more efficient project execution by Boeing Australia.

“Vigilare is a $270 million project that will replace the ground based Air Defence Command & Control systems for the RAAF and will form a key component in the RAAF’s future Network Centric Warfare (NCW) capability,” said Mr Combet.

“The Project will fuse data from a myriad of sensors and sources, such as the Jindalee Operational Radar Network, Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C), microwave radars (both civil and military), tactical platforms such as fighter aircraft and ships, and intelligence products from both national and foreign sources.” 

“This project will help improve current command and control systems and will enable the ADF to enhance its ability to make decisions in the tactical theatre. To this end the project will provide a Recognised Air Picture (RAP), for use by both the RAAF and higher Defence headquarters”

“Vigilare is a software intensive endeavour that integrates over five million lines of code, sourced from a variety of sources.  The Critical Design Review was successfully completed in July 2008 and the project has now moved into the integration and test phase, with deployment of operational software to the first site, located at RAAF Base Tindal, due to occur during 2009,” Mr Combet said.

“The Government will continue to closely monitor the progress of Vigilare but is pleased that the project is now moving forward again. I would like to congratulate Boeing and the DMO on their constructive work over the last year in resolving these issues.”