IN DETAIL: Defence’s new Innovation, Science & Technology Strategy

Unless you actually read it properly, it’s easy to dismiss Defence’s new Innovation Science and Technology strategy as a DSTG-only thing, and therefore of only marginal relevance to the ‘real world’. Read the Strategy carefully – it’s a genuine whole-of-Defence document and it marks the start of a permanent change process.

Gregor Ferguson

At the start of the ADSTAR Summit in Canberra in mid-September the Chief Defence Scientist, Professor Tanya Monro AC, launched Defence’s new Innovation, Science and Technology Strategy, ‘Accelerating Asymmetric Advantage: Delivering More, Together’.

It’s clear when you read it that the gap which many believed separated Defence’s Science and Technology Group (DSTG) and the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has disappeared. The new IS&T Strategy is a complete break with DSTG’s past and marks the start of a permanent and irreversible change process that will affect Defence innovation, R&D and acquisition.

Twenty years ago the author was told by a former Chief Defence Scientist that DSTO (as it was then known) does not do R&D, except in a few narrowly defined areas. Its role basically was to use its vast technical knowledge and experience to perform sanity checks on other people’s technology. Some of the basic research its people were doing might not see a practical application for 20 or more years.

Today DSTG is in the process of re-allocating some 25% of its workforce to developing (or co-developing) capability for the ADF and getting that capability into service quickly – within a couple of years. The buzz words and phrases used by the Chief Defence Scientist (and which predate their use in both the National Defence Strategy, or NDS, and Defence Strategic Review, or DSR) are Asymmetry; Speed to Capability; and Minimum Viable Capability, or MVC.

Basically, DSTG is a party to the reimagining and overhaul of Defence’s notoriously sclerotic capability development and acquisition processes.

Why? Because, as seemingly everybody now knows, Australia no longer has the cushion of ten year’s warning that something bad might happen to it. The government’s rhetoric over the past three years has been consistent: Australia faces the most complex and challenging strategic circumstances it has encountered since World War 2. The regional threat (its source not spelled out in any official documents but recognised to be China) is high and Australia could be forced to defend itself or its interests at very short notice.

Oh, and technology is developing fast, too: Australia has had the luxury of watching events unfold in Ukraine and the Middle East and acknowledges that technological change has brought with it changes in how wars are fought and won.

So DSTG is trying to establish two nested bodies: at the core is a Defence IS&T Enterprise consisting of DSTG, the new Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, ASCA, and the Innovation teams of the ADF’s three services and of various other groups within Defence.

Around that core is the Defence IS&T Ecosystem, consisting of all of the other stakeholders in national security and defence innovation: the publicly funded research agencies, such as CSIRO; the universities; other government agencies and partners; the prime contractors; the Small and Medium Enterprises, or SMEs, Defence’s International partners; and non-traditional industry.

The Enterprise is shaped and directed by Defence and Government’s strategic priorities while the wider Ecosystem, tasked by the Enterprise, harnesses all of Australia’s IS&T assets (and they are genuinely formidable, though not well enough recognised) to meet them.

Echoing the NDS, Defence’s IS&T Ecosystem has four strategic objectives:

• Contribute to the strategy of denial – or, in layman’s terms, the fundamental shift in Australian defence policy from ‘Do it and you’ll be sorry,’ to ‘Don’t even think about it.’
• Generating asymmetric advantage
• Accelerating the fielding of innovative solutions
• Growing the Defence IS&T Ecosystem though strategic partnerships

Asymmetry can be defined in this context as pitting strength against weakness, using weapons in an unconventional or non-traditional manner and, importantly, disrupting a potential adversary’s decision calculus. Asymmetry is a key component of Deterrence: if an adversary knows or suspects, or even just fears, that you have a certain capability then you have introduced uncertainty into his planning processes. At worst you will have completely scrambled his brain.

To achieve these the NDS and associated Integrated Investment Program (IIP) identified six technology priorities where it was judged IS&T could make the most significant impact by delivering what the Strategy terms Accelerated Asymmetric Capabilities:

• Hypersonics
• Directed Energy
• Trusted Autonomy
• Quantum Technology
• Information Warfare
• Long-Range Fires

The new Strategy aims to develop both the IS&T and partnerships that will deliver these as quickly as possible. But it also states, “we must also stay at the scientific and technological edge to ensure we future-proof Defence for the next generation of advanced capabilities.”

To take a concrete example, the Ghost Shark Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (XL-AUV) that is being co-developed by Anduril Australia, the RAN and ASCA (which took over Defence funding responsibility for this program from the Next Generation Technologies Fund) is making very rapid progress. Much of that progress is due to DSTG’s deep knowledge of undersea technology and materials: the Ghost Shark project team had access to DSTG scientists with decades of experience on Oberon-class and Collins-class submarines who could say immediately, ‘That won’t (or will) work – we’ve tried it and these were the results.’

So DSTG needs to walk the fine line between continually refreshing and building on its deep technical knowledge (some of which goes back a working lifetime) and developing new capabilities that can deliver genuine impact and an asymmetric advantage less than three years from now.

Some of Ghost Shark’s rapid progress, of course, is also due to Anduril Australia contributing some 50% of the development cost, building a fourth (and uncontracted) prototype for testing in the USA with its own funds, and circumventing unnecessary red tape in delivering an MVC. Anduril Australia also has some non-defence applications in mind for the XL-AUV so has a commercial reason for wanting to get it on to the market quickly.

And this is a key difference with what’s gone before: DSTG and the ADF are far more open now to collaborative external relationships and to the development on a case by case basis of dual-use technologies.

To meet Defence’s strategic objectives and deliver on its priorities, DSTG has identified four principal Lines of Effort:

• Anticipating the Future
• Experimentation
• An Integrated Ecosystem
• Mission-Driven

The Integrated Ecosystem states three types of response to emerging threats and technologies: things that are Done by Defence (especially classified things); things Led by Defence, based on focussed IS&T partnerships, both domestic and international; and things Shaped by Defence, with the focus on the IS&T Ecosystem – universities, industry and the like, with DSTG merely steering the activity.

The Mission Driven Line of Effort foreshadows new STaR Shots to focus minds and research effort and new Defence Research Centres, headquartered at single university campuses though with strong links to wherever additional required capabilities exist.

One of the keys to getting capability into service quickly is ASCA. Established on 1 July 2023, ASCA is not an S&T organisation. It draws on the deep expertise within DSTG where necessary, but its principal role is to accelerate innovative technologies up to MVC standard. It works closely with the Vice Chief of the Defence Force (VCDF) and with the three services and CASG to identify specific needs and a pathway into operational service.

That pathway was the thing which had been missing from previous attempts to innovate within Defence.

In its first year of operations, ASCA has commenced all three of its programs – Missions, Innovation Incubation and Emerging & Disruptive Technologies.

Under its Sovereign Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) Challenge to build Australia’s sovereign drone manufacturing capability, 15 contracts totalling $7.8 million have been announced. In the AUKUS Electronic Warfare Innovation Challenge, ASCA sought innovative solutions to shared electronic warfare challenges from industry and research institutions in Australia, the United Kingdom and United States. ASCA has awarded $720,000 to three Australian companies: Advanced Design Technology Pty Ltd, Inovor Technologies Pty Ltd and Penten Pty Ltd.

It has also completed the co-design on the next Mission program, with nine companies awarded a contract to participate. Defence is unable to disclose further information on these projects for security reasons.

At the inaugural ASCA Pitch Day, ASCA down-selected 24 participants who have now proceed to the next stage of evaluation. ASCA is also currently negotiating contracts following the Emerging & Disruptive Technologies Quantum and Information Warfare call-out.

“Our success will be measured by what we’re able to transition to capability for the ADF,” ASCA’s head, Professor Emily Hilder, told DSTG OUTLOOK in September 2024. “Part of that success is putting up the systems and processes that allow us to do it again, and again, and again.”

Using the Ghost Shark program as an example once more, the original contract was signed in 2022 by Anduril Australia, the new Maritime Integrated Capabilities Branch (MICB – formerly the Warfighting Innovation Navy Branch) of the RAN and the Next Generation Technologies Fund (NGTF). When ASCA was formed it subsumed the funding responsibilities of NGTF and later in 2023 added that transition pathway which had been missing before: until ASCA looked closely at Ghost Shark there was no guarantee of a pathway too acquisition and service entry.

To date, Defence has invested $90.1 million in the Ghost Shark program which is ASCA’s Mission 0. This includes recently co-investing $20.1 million alongside Anduril Australia for an early work contract to build infrastructure to transition the Ghost Shark program from prototype development to production. As many as 42 Australian companies are part of the Ghost shark supply chain.

Once it reaches its steady state, ASCA aims to put out a single call for an Emerging Disruptive Technology each year, and at least two Innovation Challenges each year. Ideally, it will be handing eight or nine Missions in parallel, according to Professor Hilder.

The fact that the Defence IS&T Strategy is called what it is and that there is no mention of DSTG on the front cover tells you a lot about it. This is a whole of Defence strategy and the only way to make it work is to completely re-build Defence’s capability development and acquisition processes.

As recently as 2014, Defence’s head of Capability Systems told an audience of SMEs at Land Forces in Brisbane that the then-current capability development and acquisition process meant Defence’s money was tied up years in advance. There was no discretionary funding and it took five years just to get something into the Defence Capability Plan (DCP) which was Defence’s acquisition bible.

Now, just ten years on, DSTG, ASCA, the three services and the VCDF all talk the same very different language: they talk about Asymmetry; about Speed to Capability; about Minimum Viable Capabilities. They’re not talking about a balanced force, about a small but perfectly formed portfolio of conventional capabilities. They’re talking about the potential for a genuine conflict – possibly in the next few years, possibly a generation hence – and the need to have the capabilities in service to either deter or win that conflict. They’re also talking about building rapidly the research and industry base necessary to deliver those capabilities at scale and to identify and meet the unexpected challenges that modern conflict throws up.

At present it’s hard to see these strategic conditions changing. To use a cliché, the only certainty in our strategic circumstances is uncertainty. The ADF needs to be able to react quickly to the unexpected but, more importantly, it needs to impose that uncertainty – that deterrent effect – on its potential adversaries, hence Asymmetry and Speed to Capability. And hence the need to completely remake Defence’s traditionally slow and risk-averse capability development and acquisition processes – because these, as well as the capacity and capability of Australia’s S&T and industry base, are part of the nation’s deterrent effect.

The only way to achieve that is to create a strategy that is attuned to uncertainty and the need for constant innovation. So this IS&T Strategy, seen alongside the DSR, NDS and IIP, marks Defence’s acceptance of that lingering uncertainty. It may last only a few short years or it might last decades, or even generations – one thing is for sure: Defence’s IS&T Strategy marks the start of a permanent change process. We can never go back to how things were.