SYDNEY - Australia's defense minister said on Tuesday a defense satellite program was scrapped because of the threat of new technology that can "shoot satellites out of the sky", and Canberra instead wants to use a mesh of micro satellites for defense communications.

Australia's Department of Defence said on Monday it cancelled a multi-billion dollar Geostationary Earth Orbit satellite project with Lockheed Martin that was to deliver Australia's first sovereign-controlled satellite communication system over the Indo-Pacific ocean regions.

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Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Tuesday the government had abandoned the plan to have two or three geosynchronous satellites above Australia to deliver defense communications because the system designed eight years ago was out of date.

"Since then, we've seen technologies develop which can literally shoot satellites out of the sky. But we've also seen technologies develop where you have thousands of micro satellites in a much more distributed way providing the same effect," he said in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Defense personnel minister Matt Keogh said in a radio interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Australia wanted to develop "a mesh type arrangement of satellites, which provides greater resilience".