Rear Admiral Matt Tripovich AM, CSC, RAN, Head, Capability Systems
Rear Admiral Tripovich joined the Royal Australian Naval College in January 1974. In July 2005 he was promoted to Rear Admiral and assumed his present appointment as Head of Capability Systems in Australian Defence Headquarters. He spoke to ADM's Canberra Editor, Daniel Cotterill, in early October.
PROFILE: RADM Matt Tripovich
1984 - PWO Course, HMS Dryad (UK)
1987 - Ops Officer, HMAS Brisbane
1990 - XO, HMS Brisbane (Op Damask)
1992 - Project Manager, Nulka, DMO
1994 - CO HMAS Canberra
1997 - Director, maritime Combat development
1999 - CO, HMAS Anzac (East Timor)
2001 - DG Naval Capability, Performance and Plans
2002 - CDRE Flotillas
2005 - Head Capability Systems
ADM: Are you satisfied with the progress of the Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation (RPD&E) initiative?
Tripovich: Yes I am. I have been in this job since July and it was one of the first things that I saw when I got here. A few things struck me. I think what the RPD&E Initiative has really demonstrated is the next step in the way we engage with industry - a much closer engagement right at the start of the problem. In 1998 we were starting to form Integrated Project Teams in order to get industry involved in examining what might be solutions to Defence's requirements. RPD&E is giving the problem to a big coalition of industry players for them to have a look at very early in the process, with the aim of trying to get a solution to the warfighter quickly.
ADM: How would you rate industry's participation in RPD&E?
Tripovich: I think it has been very successful. We already have a large number of companies who have applied to be either members or associates in the RPD&E program, and we are just going through the second round of some 40 applications from companies who want to become involved. So I think in that sense industry's interest is up. I've spoken to the CEOs of some of the large participants and they are very enthusiastic about our engagement with them, and their opportunity to engage very early on in the process. They see that as being a great opportunity. They can understand right at the start what the problem is that we need to solve quickly.
ADM: Various milestones have been set for the roll out of NCW across the ADF, at 2010, 2015 and 2020, are you happy with progress against those milestones?
Tripovich: Pretty early days yet. What I am happy about is that we have a good idea of what we want to achieve at each of those milestones. As we follow the roadmap we will be able to measure our progress, and when we get to each milestone we will be able to demonstrate what we have achieved. We'll be able to say whether we have arrived or not, before we move on. The roadmap is an important part of our strategy towards being able to conduct Network Centric Warfare. Our objectives will be well defined, with a clear explanation on how we might get there in measured, affordable steps. Without it, we might just keep chasing Nirvana.
ADM: What are the greatest technological risks facing the successful adoption of NCW, both in terms of meeting the milestones and also ending up with a robust operational system?
Tripovich: Well I think the risk is that technology will keep moving at a fast pace, which is a good thing, but that we will fail to grasp it at the right times - in affordable and sensible bites. It's a bit like buying your own personal computer - there is a danger that you just keep waiting until the next version of the technology is released, and in a year's time you still don't have a computer. I think it's important for us to keep a very good eye on where technology is going, to predict when it might have achieved a degree of maturity that we can grasp. I think the concept of milestones and building up our NCW capability in sensible, affordable chunks is a very good one.
ADM: NCW seems to be largely directed towards having various forces achieve a "shared awareness" in an operational environment, how realistic do you think the goal of shared awareness is bearing in mind the inevitable fog of war and various human frailties?
Tripovich: The human dimension is really important. The fog of war is sometimes there because there is so much information dumped on the warfighters that they just cannot see their way through it. I think one of the aims of NCW should be to present information to them in a form that they can absorb. The human mind is more powerful than any computer, but it is easy to overwhelm it if the information is not arranged in some logical, sensible way. In NCW it will be very important that we don't just dump information on the warfighters, but present it to them in a way that they can understand what is available to them. In that way I think the fog of war can lift a bit. The other side of the human dimension is to prepare people to be able to deal with the NCW world. That is, a combination of training and gradually developing people so that they are ready for NCW when it arrives with each milestone, rather than keeping people in the dark and then all of a sudden in 2020 say "Here you go - here is NCW," and the warfighters are just not prepared for it.
ADM: What will be the main difference between the ADF of 2020 and today's force?
Tripovich: On a larger scale the Defence Capability Plan will be delivering some fantastic capabilities to the ADF - new Air Warfare Destroyers, the New Air Combat Capability, the AEW&C aircraft, the new main battle tank, and the like. The sensors and the combat systems that come with those platforms mean that there will be a lot of information available to the warfighter and we will certainly have very potent capability. NCW will be the difference between what we have now and then. The capabilities in our individual platforms will have grown, but if we don't put in an NCW underpinning, then we will just have a lot more really powerful things that are not as well connected as they should be, and full the potential of those platforms won't be realised.
ADM: Where will the most capital investment be required to make NCW work?
Tripovich: In the
ADM: How does Capability Systems ensure that the ADF's requirements keep pace with technology and emerging threats?
Tripovich: There is a hierarchy of processes that we use to develop our advice to Government, the options we offer Government through the Defence Capability Plan. It starts off at the strategic level by assessing the strategic circumstances, to see what the world looks like and what we forecast it might be. Then there is a raft of war-gaming, experimentation and options testing to see how our current capabilities compare with where we forecast the future to be, to identify where there may be shortcomings or where action needs to be taken to change our capabilities, so that we are ready to meet emerging threats as they come along.
ADM: Are you satisfied that the Defence Organisation is managing to take the best possible coordinated approach to the development of NCW concepts and their implementation?
Tripovich: I think we're taking a sensible approach by having bite-size chunks that are based on identifiable milestones, that are realisable and affordable in the ADF's context.
ADM: What sort of people will the ADF need to bring its NCW concepts to reality?
Tripovich: I don't think they are going to be too different from the people that we are recruiting today. They are very smart people and computer literate. The concept of operating in a web-based environment, processing a lot of data and using the powerful tools in computers to plan and execute tasks is not alien to them. We will continue to recruit those sorts of people. But underpinning all that has to be the right training, so that once they know how to get the best out of the capabilities that we hope to acquire. The Head of Defence Personnel Executive has the lead for addressing the human dimension of NCW, and there is a lot of research going into how we will educate and train our people in the future. We'll have to await the outcome of that, but I don't think future warfighters will be that different from the people that we are recruiting today.
ADM: How much change will be needed in the way the ADF's people are trained to operate in an NCW force?
Tripovich: I was Director General Naval Personnel and Training in my last job and we are evolving towards smarter ways of training people. People are already very comfortable in terms of networked computer information management. A lot of NCW will be computer-based, and people come to the ADF nowadays with a good deal of computer skills because they have been using them at school or in their previous jobs. I think the way we train people will move in the same direction that general education is going - e-learning, greater use of simulation, and the like.
ADM: What effect will NCW have on the ADF in an organisational sense?
Tripovich: It may have some effect but it is not entirely clear to me at this stage. The Chief of Army's plan for a networked and hardened army is positioning the Army in its concepts and its shape to be ready for when the Defence Capability Plan delivers the equipment to him. Navy and the Air Force have been involved in basic NCW through Link 11 and combat data systems for quite a long time, so it will be an enhancement to the way they currently operate, rather than a revolutionary change. The real strength in NCW is going to be in planning and execution at the strategic level, and the command and control of operations. We also will be able to provide better, more relevant information to the warfighter on the ground, who will be able to fight smarter as a result.