Reach for the strategic blue-sky possibility

R&D that’s relevant now is important, but so is the basic work that may lead to breakthrough capabilities down the track

MQ-28 Ghost Bat is the first military combat aircraft to be designed, engineered and manufactured in Australia in more than 50 years. Picture: Boeing

Australia is at an inflection point for defence research, defence experts say. The conflict in Ukraine – particularly the breakneck development of drone technology and tactics – coupled with rapid civilian ad­vances in fields such as artificial intel­ligence and quantum computing, has brought a new perspective and fresh urgency to research priorities. Experts The Australian has spoken to express confidence that Defence’s objectives are broadly correct and its nominated priorities are important, but they also raise questions about the Australian Defence Force’s overall commitment to research, particularly in terms of budget, and its capacity to innovate at pace.

The Defence Department has identified nine “fundamental capabilities” that will sustain Australia’s future defence, including organisation, collective training and industry, but research and development are not among them.

The ADF has groundbreaking research initiatives under way, such as its work with Boeing on the MQ-28 Ghost Bat, an uncrewed multi-role combat aircraft that can fly alongside crewed aircraft.

Other research is under way on portable optical atomic clocks that can provide navigational assistance if GPS systems are sabotaged; and on air-launched delivery drones.

But University of NSW Defence Research Institute director Chris Mills says the program needs to be broader and deeper.

“Research and development doesn’t just support the realisation of capability building, it has to be part of the capability,” he says.

In September 2024 Australia published its latest Defence Innovation, Science and Technology Strategy, outlining strategic objectives and research priorities.

Its four strategic objectives are: to contribute to the strategy of denial; generate asymmetric advantage; accelerate innovative solutions into capability; and grow the Defence innovation, science and technology ecosystem through strategic partnerships.

Chris Mills, director, NSW Defence Research Institute.

“(Strategic objective) No.2 should probably be ‘generate and sustain an asymmetric advantage’,” Mills says.

“If you just go buy a product right now, you might generate asymmetric advantage at a significant cost, but then you might lose it very, very quickly.

“I think you generate and sustain asymmetric advantage when you buy a capability and also invest in and have the R&D that underpins it, so that R&D is constantly evolving.”

According to Mills’s calculations, Australia spent 2.7 per cent of its $54.7bn defence budget, or about $1.5bn, on research in 2024, significantly less than comparable countries. Britain is working towards allocating 7 per cent of its defence budget towards research; Japan 5.8 per cent. The US, always an outlier, expects to spend $US228bn ($380bn) – or a little more than 10 per cent of its overall defence budget – on R&D in 2025.

Mills says Australia needs to cast its research net more widely.

“You’re gambling on where the next technological breakthrough is or isn’t going to be, and we’ve been very bad at that throughout history,” he says.

“Rather than prioritise, I’d say balance: there needs to be a balance between applied research that’s relevant right here and now and foundational basic research that’s broader and could potentially realise the breakthrough capabilities in 10 to 15 years.”

“The reality is the capabilities that we’re seeing on the Ukrainian battlefield today were researched and developed five and 10 years ago.

“Deeper, longer research will shape capabilities long after the current conflict. They might be more the same, but I think they’ll be fundamentally more profound.”

Mills says some of the advances in defence technology were self-driven, in fields such as hypersonics, for example, but mostly they were offshoots of advances in civilian technology such as faster chips, artificial intelligence or quantum computing.

The spectacular pace of technical development by the combatants in Ukraine, the first conflict between equivalent-tech countries in three-quarters of a century, has sprung some surprises.

Before Moscow decided to invade Ukraine in February 2022, neither Ukraine nor Russia had a significant drone industry. Today they have the most advanced and dynamic drone industries on the planet.

Defence Science and Technology Group scientist Dr Ben Sparkes (left), and a team at the University of Adelaide working with Australian-built quantum clocks.

The starting gun for the race was Ukraine’s decision, in extremis, to use small commercial first-person visual drones to deliver munitions on the frontline and it escalated from there: Russia followed suit, so the two sides developed technologies that would block the radio guidance signals. The signal blockers were circumvented by drones controlled using ultra-light fibre-optic cables. The fibre-optic drones were countered by drone interceptors.

Navy veteran and Australian National University National Security College expert associate Jennifer Parker says it is tempting, but misleading, to think that Ukraine’s drones are changing the face of warfare.

“I think that the character of warfare always evolves in response to technology, but the nature does not fundamentally change,” she says.

The real lesson from Ukraine is more general, she says.

Parker says as the pace of change accelerates and technology travels in new and unpredictable directions, defence forces need to develop flexible and agnostic management architectures that encourage adaptation and tactical flexibility.

“The one thing I would change about Defence is its structure,” Parker says. “Militaries have this tendency to become overly bureaucratic during peacetime, and those bureaucratic boundaries are what really impede the ability to be quick in terms of evolving capabilities and responding to changes.

“What we’ve seen in Ukraine is a kind of abandonment of that bureaucratic oversight and that risk-adverse culture, and now that investment has allowed them to be able to accelerate change, and respond to things.”

Jennifer Parker.

Nigel McGinty.

Defence Science and Technology Group human and decision sciences division chief Nigel McGinty says Defence is working to ensure the human, organisational and tactical elements are keeping pace with the hardware and software developments.

“I think human capability is a priority that we work towards in the department because it is the underpinning across many capabilities; it’s foundational,” McGinty says.

“It’s a combination of ongoing work where we look at the way in which we can support decision-making from the most strategic levels all the way down to the tactical level; and the way in which we can also quickly bring in technology to help support that.”

McGinty says flexibility is mostly down to good leadership.

“I genuinely think that we’re really very well-structured as a department to be able to respond quickly and adapt because of the way we train our leaders and the way we do learn the lessons,” McGinty says.

Australia’s defence research stands at a crossroads. The rapid evolution of warfare – exemplified by Ukraine’s drone revolution – demands greater investment in innovation, but that investment will be of little use unless it is accompanied by an ADF architecture that not only tolerates technical and tactical change but also embraces it.