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Defence contractor, Electronics, Engineering · Edinburgh Parks, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia · 1953–present

BAE Systems Australia

Australia's largest defence company, headquartered at Edinburgh Parks in Adelaide, with roots in the Woomera guided-missile trials of 1953. It inherited the Army's Parakeet battlefield communications system when it bought AWA Defence Industries in 1996, and delivered the later Parakeet 4.3 satellite and trunk assemblage carried on Perentie 6x6 Land Rovers.

History

The company's Australian lineage begins in 1953, when support teams from the Bristol Aeroplane Company and the English Electric Company arrived in Adelaide for guided-missile trials at the Woomera range. The two combined as the British Aircraft Corporation in 1960, and after the 1977 nationalisation of Britain's aircraft industry the Australian operation became British Aerospace Australia, continuing trials work at Woomera on the Rapier low-level air defence system and the Seawolf ship-to-air missile.

In April 1996 British Aerospace Australia doubled in size by buying AWA Defence Industries, the country's leading defence electronics house, for a reported A$50 million. That purchase brought in Parakeet, the Australian Defence Force's deployable trunk communications system developed under project JP65, whose shelters were designed to be carried on the tray of a standard Army Land Rover 6x6 Perentie. Phases 4.1 and 4.2 had been AWADI's work; the Parakeet 4.3 secure tactical satellite and trunk assemblage was delivered under the new ownership, for both the Australian Army and the RAAF, whose No. 1 Combat Communications Squadron ran Parakeet vehicles of its own.

BAE Systems was formed on 30 November 1999 by the merger of British Aerospace with Marconi Electronic Systems, and the Australian arm took the group's name. It expanded further with the acquisitions of Armor Holdings in 2007 and Tenix Defence in June 2008, which again doubled its size. Today BAE Systems Australia employs around 4,000 people nationwide from its Edinburgh Parks headquarters in Adelaide, working across fast jet support, military flight training, autonomous systems, guided weapons and communications, command and support. Parakeet outlived the Land Rovers that carried it — the Perentie fleet was retired from about 2012 — and its modernisation was established as project JP2072 in 2017.

Vehicles in this registry (1)

Sources & citations

Maker record updated 2026-09-10T05:40:28.274Z · status: researched