Backing emerging technology puts us on track for future proofing

Last year’s Defence Strategic Review stated that Defence must harness advanced and emerging technologies to provide asymmetric advantage for the Australian Defence Force.

Air Force Security, Aircraftman Joshua Church (left) and Airfield Defence Guard, Leading Aircraftman David Wilson, from No. 2 Security Forces Squadron operate the Sky Ranger R70 Unmanned Aerial System at RAAF Base Darwin in the Northern Territory.

Last year’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR) stated that the strategic demand for Defence’s capability innovation system has never been higher and that Defence must harness advanced and emerging technologies to provide asymmetric advantage for the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

The Defence Industry Development Strategy (DIDS) released by the Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy on February 29, reaffirms the critical role Defence Innovation Science and Technology (IS&T) will play in supporting the ADF of the future and providing it with a capability advantage.

“The Australian government encourages opportunities for Australian industry to benefit from dual-use applications of technology, recognising the potential application of innovative civilian technology in military contexts through rapid testing and adaption,” the DIDS report states.

Specifically, the strategy affirms the support Defence provides to the university and research ecosystem here in Australia, through the Defence Science and Technology Group’s Australian Defence Science and Universities Network (ADSUN).

The network, consisting of state-based “nodes” and including the Defence Science Institute (DSI) in Victoria and the Defence Innovation Network (DIN) in New South Wales, connects Defence with the wider innovation and research community across Australia. The DIDS document pledges a strengthening of ADSUN’s role in this process.

“Defence will provide universities and other research institutions with guidance on research directions for the development of new and disruptive technologies,” the DIDS states.

“This will aid the established research and development base to support Australian industry, particularly Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups that often lack internal capacity.”

Dr David Kershaw, Chief of Science Strategic Planning and Engagement at DSTG says the support provided will include access to specialised skills, training and infrastructure and provide the capacity to rapidly scale innovation activities.

“For ADSUN, it really is how we connect organisations during the early-stage research and innovation systems in each of the states,” Dr Kershaw says.

“ADSUN helps to provide the overall steerage coordination – we see our role as very much helping to provide guidance into the external ecosystem as to what Defence’s priorities are.”

Dr David Kershaw.

Dr Kershaw also says that the linkages provided through ADSUN provides DSTG with a better understanding of what innovative and emerging technologies are being developed in the university and SME sectors.

This, he says, is a “win-win” situation, whereby universities and industry form a better understanding of the priorities and Defence gains valuable insight into what is happening across the sectors.

“It is important that we give clear signals to industry of where our priorities are and how we plan to do things,” Dr Kershaw says.

“Current priorities for the Defence innovation, science and technology program include hypersonics, directed energy, trusted autonomy, quantum techology, information warfare and long-range fires.

“From an IS&T point of view, it’s really important for us that we have a chapter in the DIDS dedicated to innovative outcomes and their importance to Defence,” he explains.

“It really describes how we’re trying to partner with industry and pull innovation through into capability, and makes note in the DIDS that we’re updating our Defence IS&T strategy, which again is about helping to provide direction and a means of working together.”

An example of how this ecosystem can be harnessed to develop technology from a relatively low level of technical maturity, known as a low Technical Readiness Level (TRL), through to prototype form is the Navy’s Undersea Surveillance Minimum Viable Capability project.

The project’s goals are to develop new approaches to increase the accuracy, range, tracking and localisation of undersea threats that can be inserted into Australian undersea sensing systems.

“Australia has innovative defence industry and world-class researchers. We need to be smart about how we utilise our resources.”

– Dr David Kershaw, Chief of Science Strategic Planning and Engagement, Defence Sceince and Technology Group (DSTG)

The project is led by Adelaide-based software company, Acacia Systems, in collaboration with DSTG and the University of Adelaide, University of South Australia and Curtin University.

In January the project was selected to receive a $1.6m seed-funding boost under the inaugural round of the Defence Innovation Partnership Activator Fund, which was established to enable South Australia to join large-scale innovation activities in the defence industry and support the rapid transition of technology into defence capability.

“It will apply the latest research in the areas of multi-object tracking, reinforcement learning and large language models to improve the RAN’s persistent undersea surveillance capability,” Acacia Systems’ chief executive Horden Wiltshire explains.

For projects such as these, the ADSUN network, highlighted by the DIDS, is crucial to identifying and guiding technology during its development cycle, through to the point where it can be acquired for the warfighter.

“It’s about guiding and coordinating the external IS&T ecosystem, it’s about ensuring that effort is spent on things that will have impact and, at the end of the day, it’s really about optimising the use of the total ecosystem,” Dr Kershaw summarises.

“Australia has innovative defence industry and world-class researchers. We need to be smart about how we utilise our resources and the work we’re doing through the various nodes of ADSUN and with state governments. It’s about maximising the return on investment we make in IS&T for the benefit of Defence.”

Australian seed fund in Europe airports AI drone security

Harnessing the research capabilities of the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) with universities and innovative Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has resulted in a number of ongoing success stories, two of which will benefit Defence and civilian organisations alike.

In October last year, the Australian government aid package for Ukraine included counter-unmanned aerial systems developed by the company DroneShield to assist with defeating the large number of drones being used against Ukraine. Defence has been providing seed funding for DroneShield, including their teaming with the University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) Intelligent Drone Laboratory to apply recent advancements in computer vision, image processing and deep learning technology to develop a real-time vision system for optically detecting drones.

The NSW-based Defence Industrial Network (DIN), a node in DSTG’s Australian Defence Science Universities Network (ADSUN), seed-funded the project in 2021 with an investment of $50,000.

The project has since developed an artificial intelligence-based drone detection system – which features increased use of autonomy – into the DroneOptID solution.

The system has been released commercially by DroneShield’s UK partner British Telecom and has been deployed to help protect a number of airports across Europe.

“DroneOptID is a good example of a project that was seed-funded and is now developed through to a capability,” explains DSTG’s Chief of Science Strategic Planning and Engagement Dr David Kershaw.

Another example is a project that started as a partnership, the emerging technology between the Defence Innovation Partnerships (DIP– the South Australian node of ADSUN) and the Innovation, Launch, Automation, Novel Materials, Communications and Hypersonics Hub (ILAuNCH) Trailblazer.

The project is an innovative solution developed by the University of South Australia with VPG Engineering, and mirror and camera system specialists SMR Australia to mature and space-qualify the new optical manufacturing process and materials.

It uses the emerging technology of freeform optics, enabled by new additive manufacturing technology, to provide satellites with optical payloads capable of increasing their fields of view significantly over present glass optics systems.

The technology allows complex shapes to be manufactured that are free from any constraints of symmetry of form or shape. This means that complex optical shapes such as mirrors can be designed and manufactured by the additive process to take on more complex shapes, therefore providing an increased field of view within smaller packaging sizes.

“This project demonstrates what iLaunch is all about; taking a Defence Innovation Partnership concept demonstrator that investigated the viability of freeform optical components for small satellites – and moving into production using Australian technology for real world application,” explains iLaunch Trailblazer’s Executive Director Darin Lovett.

“Through iLaunch we are growing a trained Australian workforce for space hardware, and in this case, bedding down new manufacturing techniques for these novel freeform mirrors for satellites.”