D+I 2007: DSTO's century

1 August 2007

By Gregor Ferguson

DSTO has been patrolling the leading edge of defence technology for a century. From time to time it extends that edge, but its role lies more in navigation than exploration.

For an organisation that spends such a small amount of money compared with its US and British equivalents, the Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO) has accumulated remarkable credibility.

While there has been (and undoubtedly will continue to be) debate about DSTO’s role and the value it delivers, the highlights of the organisation’s contribution to Australia’s defence represent the fruits of world-class Science & Technology (S&T) work.

Over the next few years DSTO will be a global leader in Hypersonics: building jet engines and aircraft that can fly at nearly 10 times the speed of sound, previously only possible using heavy, uneconomical rockets.

For many years it has been the global leader in over-the-horizon radar technology: the massive kilometre-long antennas for the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) radars at Alice Springs, Laverton, WA, and Longreach, Qld, have become iconic representations of DSTO’s research quality.

JORN illustrates the difference DSTO makes, says Dr “Nanda” Nandagopal, DSTO’s Deputy Chief Defence Scientist, Policy and Programs.
“Australia is almost the same size as the mainland US but our coastline is much longer and our threat environment is exactly the same.
"The US has got over 340 ships to patrol their coastline and they have many thousands of aircraft. We have less than 30 ships and less than 100 aircraft. How can we maintain the sovereignty of the nation and deliver security?”

JORN does for Australia what thousands of aircraft and hundreds of ships do for the US, he says: “They give the ability to conduct surveillance of the sea-air gap without sending an aircraft or a ship. It’s the nation’s burglar alarm. I’m very proud of that.”

In the game
The extraordinary (and still classified) capabilities of JORN, and the recent announcement that 100 US, Australian and Canadian warships are now equipped with the DSTO-developed Nulka anti-missile decoy, underscore DSTO’s focus on supporting the warfighting needs of the ADF.

That hasn’t always been the case. DSTO’s current status as an intimate partner of the ADF, Capability Development Executive (CDE) and Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) is the result of major changes in the organisation’s structure and philosophy since the late-1980s, according to Chief Defence Scientist Dr Roger Lough.

Before this, the principal focus of the scientists and engineers working for the organisations that became DSTO was good science; the research drivers tended to be academic as much as practical.

“Back in the early day a client, stakeholder, customer, military user, was an alien concept,” according to Chief Defence Scientist Dr Roger Lough. “It was a university without students, effectively. That’s not to say it didn’t do relevant defence work – of course it did.”

Today, DSTO really has a partnership with the ADF, says Dr Lough. “We’re much more integrated into the way the ADF does business, our knowledge of the ADF domain is one of our competitive advantages, if you like.”

DSTO has spent the past 20 years positioning itself alongside the ADF, both to provide the immediate support it need in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and helping it anticipate long-term technology trends and the threats and opportunities these will throw up.

The road to now
The change process began under former CDS Henry D’Assumpcao in the late-1980s, but it was Dr Richard Brabin-Smith, CDS from 1993 to 2000, who re-fashioned the organisation into the body we know today.

One of the important bits of language associated with DSTO is ‘Science & Technology’, or S&T. DSTO uses this term quite deliberately to distinguish what it does from other organisations that carry out Research & Development (R&D).

DSTO does carry out a certain amount of R&D, but most of its work is S&T activity designed to underpin technical and risk advice it furnishes to CDE and DMO, or respond to short and medium-term challenges and threats facing its principal ‘client’, the ADF.

Outsiders believe that DSTO spends its time dreaming up new and inventive defence technologies. If that was ever the case, that certainly isn’t its core function today – this was set out by Dr Brabin-Smith: “Australia does one per cent of global defence R&D. Our job is to get as much leverage from that one per cent as we can.”

However, he counsels, ‘R&D’ is a much-abused term. “When I was CDS, I tried to avoid using it unless it were clear that a line of scientific investigation was likely to lead to a product that would demonstrate a new and relevant application of science or technology to Australia’s defence priorities, or, preferably, a product that sooner or later would enter service.

"In part, I did this because the most important ‘scientific’ need in Defence was (and still is) to know how best to use the technologies developed by others. This is not so self-evident for it not to need to be stated explicitly.

"And once you have made this conceptual jump, a lot of others matters fall into place. We should avoid the trap of thinking that we are a mini-version of the US, UK, or France. Quite simply, we are not.”

Picking the right field
‘Brab’ went on to say: “To my mind, the priorities for Australian Defence R&D (ie, where there’s a clear need for a product to be developed) will continue to be in relatively limited niche areas. When I was CDS, I set up four broad policy guidelines, and I imagine that they are still relevant: where Australia’s defence needs are sufficiently different from those of other nations for it to be necessary in effect for us to develop our own solutions; where the security sensitivities are so high that not even our closest allies will share their secrets with us; where our own security concerns are so great that we would prefer not to share with even our closest allies; and where, from time to time, we come up with an idea that is just so good that it would be silly not to take it further.
"I stress that these were guidelines, not tramlines, and their application still needed judgement. I found them very useful for sorting out what would get worked on and what wouldn’t.
“The need for ‘services and expertise’ is much broader than this, and is best summed up in the expression that I used along the lines of ‘DSTO’s job within Defence was to give impartial and professional advice on how best to apply science and technology to Australia’s defence and security needs’. Again, the conceptual framework embodied in these words helped sort out what was a priority and what wasn’t, and had the added benefit of focussing DSTO on the people being advised, ie ‘the customers’.”

That customer focus has seen DSTO scientists and operational analysts embedded alongside ADF commanders in East Timor, Solomon islands, Iraq and Afghanistan. They understand the problems facing the diggers on the ground and their job is to provide a channel back into DSTO to find quick solutions.

Current projects
Faced with a rapidly evolving IED threat, DSTO is working on the physical protection of troops, vehicles and buildings as well as counter-measures to detect explosives and disrupt the bomb-makers themselves.

“Countering IEDs is a short term priority for us, and so also is intelligence analysis,” says Dr ‘Nanda’ Nandagopal. “Again that’s key to countering terrorism: getting that intelligence information, doing analysis, data mining and so on: they’re all short-term high priority tasks.”

“DSTO fulfils a role that’s particularly important in keeping our people safe,” according to Parliamentary Secretary Mr Peter Lindsay, who has ministerial responsibility for DSTO. “It fulfils a lot of other scientific roles as well, but we’ve seen that Australia hasn’t sustained the battle casualties that have been sustained by other defence forces; that’s due to a range of reasons, but one of them is the work of DSTO.
“That’s not widely recognised by the troops on the ground but they do need to know that there’s an organisation that’s working very hard behind the scenes, looking after their interests.”

The National Security role is one that sits relatively easily alongside DSTO’s historic focus on asymmetric warfare; it now has formal responsibility for supporting non-Defence agencies such as Border Protection Command and resources it devotes to this work amount to the rough equivalent of an entire research Division.

While 9/11 was a shock to all, DSTO already had a capability in this area, developed to support Defence’s counter-terrorist operation at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. When the dust cleared after the 9/11 attacks, it was already poised for action.

Part of the capability loop
Further back from the front line, in the wake of the 2004 Kinnaird Report, DSTO now has a formal role in capability development and acquisition and the CDS is responsible for certifying risk assessments related to particular capability acquisitions.

DSTO scientists and engineers help identify gaps and weaknesses in the ADF’s capabilities, analyse their causes (and these might be organisational rather than equipment deficiencies), study how new equipment fits into the ADF and how to get the best out of it, identify the technology risks associated with it – and provide sanity checks on the sales pitches of the equipment manufacturers.

That approach is guiding the work of DSTO analysts and scientists on several major equipment programs at present, says Dr Roger Lough: the biggest is the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program where it has 50 staff embedded in the DMO’s project office; also the Navy’s Air Warfare Destroyer and amphibious landing ship, or LHD, programs; the upgrade of the RAN’s Anzac ships; and the RAAF’s Project Air 7000 which will see the replacement of its Orion patrol aircraft with a mix of manned and unmanned aircraft over the next eight years or so.

All of these projects are close to or have just passed critical decision milestones, even if they’re several years from entering service.
DSTO’s roles range from straightforward technology assessment to complex modelling of force structures, likely operational scenarios and even logistic support once the new equipment is in service.

DSTO is too small to lead in every area of science and technology. As part of the Department of Defence it receives just over two per cent of the defence budget, or $440 million a year.
The Pentagon, by contrast, spends about 15 per cent of its defence budget, or more than $80 billion, on defence R&D every year, while the UK spends about 10 per cent of its defence budget, or about $7 billion a year, on defence R&D.

But its value is undeniable, not least in maintaining Australia’s ability to operate independently and make its own judgements on how to handle military problems that other nations struggle with.
Says Parliamentary Secretary Mr Peter Lindsay, “I think that Australians will understand that DSTO needs to be very good at what it does, and they’re clearly doing their job.”