The September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation focused on accelerating the capabilities of the ready force.
Defence industry in Australia is obviously a key player in the ability for the government to find ways to enhance the ready force.
A panel of six industrial representatives discussed this challenge lead by Katherine Ziesing of the Sir Richard Williams Foundation as the facilitator.
The six panelists in order of providing presentations were as follows: Andrew Doyle, Director, Business Area Lead, Aeronautics from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics; Nick Leake, Head of Satellite and Space Systems, Optus; Derek Reinhardt, Director of Engineering and Operational Excellence, Northrop Grumman Australia; Dr. Brad Ferguson, Joint Battlespace Systems Technical Director, Raytheon Australia; Daniel Reinger, Engineering Manager MQ-28A Ghost Bat Combat Collaborative Aircraft (CCA), The Boeing Company; and Dr. Gary Eves, Principal Technology Officer of CAE Defense and Security.
The first speaker, Andrew Doyle, underscored how he viewed industry and its role in Australian defence resilience.
The critical enablers to growth in industry capacity–your experienced workforce, your facilities, and your capital equipment– have lead times of years to establish the scale that Australia will potentially need.
We’re already operating in a contested environment in terms of competing with other national priorities. With defence, where government is typically the owner, the operator and the regulator of defence systems, there’s definitely a role for government to play in fostering that ecosystem for defence industry to be able to grow the scale and depth that Australia needs to be calling upon in the future.
To do this requires a well-considered investment strategy and in my view, a partnership with industry whereby industry can make investments that lead to capacity for them and capability for the ADF. Any disruption in investment ensures that capability will not be there for the ADF.
Doyle put his assessment this way:
I will now talk about industry’s role in building a resilient and scalable national defence ecosystem which starts with the basics of depth of industry presence and a close degree of integration between industry and defense. Industry needs to have the appropriate degree of insight into defence plans and capability and preparedness requirements for defence to leverage the additional mass and scale that industry can bring.
The key to success is communication and close partnerships to ensure that we’re getting alignment of resources and actions to best affect where industry can contribute to the operational viability of the integrated force…
The second panelist was Nick Leake. He underscored that the ADF cannot operate effectively without secure C2 and ISR, and that in today’s world this means secure access to space and to satellites. He noted that Optus currently operates three geo satellites, one of which carries defence payloads.
Leake then highlighted the coming of the Optus 11 satellite which he indicated would be the first software-defined satellite in the region. He underscored: With these new spacecrafts you will have fundamental intelligence on board, and you will be able to configure that satellite in terms of its capacity and where you’re actually pointing that capacity.
Putting a chip on board the spacecraft obviously then opens up further issues with cyber security, because you’re putting intelligence in space, and you have to protect that asset the best you can.
He then highlighted Optus working on in orbit servicing which will allow the satellite service life to be extended as fuel tanks are replaced on the satellite in orbit.
He next discussed the LEO revolution which is obviously a significant transformer of the space satellite eco system but indicated that Optus worked with partners to leverage LEO constellations and to shape an adaptive network.
Leake highlighted the importance of Dr. Davis’s presentation on the need for enhanced sovereign space capability and indicated that Optus was a key part of any such effort.
The third presenter was Derek Reinhardt from Northrop Grumman Australia. His focus was on their work in enhancing the efficacy of sustainment in support of the ready force. NG is involved in the sustainment of the KC-30, the C-27J, the VIP fleet and the Triton.
About two years ago, we were trying to bring all of our programs together and have them work in a more consistent way. To do so, we set about building a sustainment delivery model which was really intended initially to align our programs, but it’s providing us interesting insights into the information that moves within a sustainment environment: the speed that that information needs to move, the decisions that hang off that information and how the enterprise combines to be able to do so.
He then when on to describe their creation in effect of a digital twin of the sustainment system. He went to argue that through this effort they have enhanced their ability to focus on the critical enablers for managing the information flows for decision making in the sustainment enterprise.
He noted: What we’ve really learned to be successful, the architecture, the cyber-worthiness, and the whole concept of the data fabric is absolutely vital.
When applied to the challenge of sustainment in a contested environment or contested logistics, this led him to the conclusion: How the data fabric is architected is crucial for it to continue to operate.
The fourth speaker was Dr. Brad Ferguson from Raytheon Australia. He certainly underscored the importance of enhancing the sense of urgency and speed to turn innovations into combat capabilities.
This is how he put it: We need to adapt our architectures to support plugins for new capabilities, new technologies to support the rapid growth and leverage those technologies, everything from AI to quantum to hypersonics to directed energy to autonomy, these things will shape the future battlefield.
He argued that the challenge and opportunity is to combine international cooperation with Australian delivery of capability. He then provided an example of this approach.
We started with the NASAMS system fielded in nine other countries, and then we built it from the ground up, integrating it with Australian innovation.
Working with over 30 companies across Australia, we integrated CEA radars, novel electrooptic infrared systems, new tactical data links to integrate with the Australian internet and military teams, integrating new missiles to leverage in service munitions, and ended up with the most capable short range ground-based air defence system in the world.
Some of those Australian innovations are now making their way back into the global community, supporting our allies and allowing for export opportunities.
The fifth speaker was Daniel Reinger of The Boeing Company.
His presentation was short and succinct and focused on a key area of developing and incorporating autonomous systems into the ADF.
This is what he highlighted:
What we need to focus on is building something that’s built to adapt. That’s in the wheelhouse of the collaborative combat aircraft, because if we don’t build something that’s adaptable, it will be obsolete before we even get it fielded.
How do we evolve our thinking, so we actually build something that’s adaptable?
The answer that we’re coming to is embracing open mission system standards and embracing not just open architectures, but government defined open architectures.
What does that do?
It opens up a best of industry ecosystem where everyone can come to the party. It lowers the barrier of entry. When we talk about CCAs, we talk about machine autonomy, we talk about flight autonomy, we talk about crewed and uncrewed teaming.
It’s simply too much for any one company to build the platform and then pull all of that together in a coherent manner.
By expanding the ecosystem and lowering the barrier to entry, you can get smaller and more companies that have niche skills into the effort.
The final presentation was by Dr. Gary Eves from CAE Defense and Security who highlighted the growing importance in training and innovations in training to enhance the operational capability of the ready force.
He started by talking about the challenge for today’s force in terms of training.
One of the things we need to understand is that the one size fits all approach just does not work for training. That requires a fundamental change in how we do things. What we are trying to do is evolve the capability of our young people to work with incredibly complex systems.
Now it’s not just a question of pure technical proficiency. They are decision makers. They’re operating in a highly complex environment that requires dynamic decision making en masse, in real time, maybe without support.
He highlighted the importance of training for effective operation by teams in performing key tasks and missions which not only lead to mission success but to more rewarding experiences which are important in being to retain the personnel which you want and need for the organization.
He also underscored the importance of shaping effective ways for training in a coalition environment. This especially challenging because of different historical, linguistic and cultural experiences.
CAE has worked and is working on a variety of approaches to succeed in the demanding training environments for the ready force operating in the new strategic environment.
There was a Q and A session after the panel presentations but the key focus was on the crucial need to reshape the partnership with government both for defence and commercial firms.
As one participant put it:
Don’t try to design something in five years, because by the time you get it in five years, it’s obsolete. We need an agile approach whereby we can build a capability, and then, over the years, we can add to that capability. Governments have to take some of the risk, and stop chucking the risk onto industry, because a lot of industries, particularly small business, will just walk away. If we have a shared risk and investment approach, we can have an agile model of delivering capability.
And the concept of “relational contracting” was introduced in a discussion of sustainment and support for the ready force, but perhaps has a wider application.
As one participant put it:
Relational contracting is an environment of defining how we work together, rather than defining specific technical requirements.
Our best performing sustainment programs are those where you create the right relationship, you create the right dialog.
A shared situational awareness is created and shared understanding of who makes the right decision at the right time and with the right information which builds the trust that’s needed for the desired outcome.