DSTO: The future is now

1 October 2007

By Dr Roger Lough

DSTO celebrates 100 years of defence science and technology in Australia this year. But science has advanced, just as threats have changed - the Chief Defence Scientist looks at how technology will affect the ADF of the future, and how DSTO and Australia’s defence industry can harness it.

Rather than dwell on our successful past, I’d like to describe what DSTO is doing today and, importantly, why we are doing what we do and where defence industry fits in.

Defence is facing many challenges today. But I would argue that none is more important than the technological challenges that face Defence at the present time.

I’d like first to make some generic points: the first is that starting about 20 years ago Defence became a follower, not a leader, in some key technologies - the classic one of course is ICT.

The challenge for Defence in general and DSTO in particular is not to put lots of money into developing these key technologies, but to adapting them for Defence use.

The second point is the unsurprising fact that the US outspends the rest of the world combined, not only in defence per se, but in defence technology.

It’s widely known that the US Air Force is the most powerful in the world. What’s not widely known is that the second most powerful air force in the world is the US Navy.

That will give you a picture of how much leverage the US has.
So the challenge in a technology sense for us is to determine how much of a gap we should allow between their technology and ours.

The third point is that defence technology is adversary-driven, not price-driven. Now that’s not to say we’re not worried about costs: we are, but the point is that you don’t design weapons systems to a price point. Rather, you design them to deliver a capability.

So the challenge here is to get value for money out of defence technology as the cost of technology increases.

And the last point is about asymmetric warfare and counter-terrorism. The technology that we’re looking at here is converging rapidly with the technology required in civilian law and order agencies.

So the challenge for Defence is to get technological synergies when, in many cases, the cultures of the civilian law and order agencies and Defence are quite different.

The real DSTO
One of the public perceptions of DSTO is that we are generally a bunch of boffins madly running around inventing things that may or may not be useful. That really could not be further from the truth.

Our mission says that we provide expert, impartial Science and Technology (S&T) advice and innovative solutions for defence and National Security.

Most of what DSTO does is to provide S&T services to clients (mostly Defence, but not exclusively) in response to articulated needs - and we help articulate them - in areas such as acquisition advice, capability analysis, new technology insertion and operational evaluation.

The DSTO support can be requirements pull or innovation push - not just technology push: it’s more than just technology. Remember that neither the tank nor the aeroplane came from an articulated technology requirement.

Impartiality is the key here - that’s why we are part of the government and not privatised. We have a very broad definition of what constitutes S&T. It includes not just applied and basic research but also analysis - we do most of the department’s quantitative analysis.

The other end of the scale requires us to provide the higher level engineering support where industry has either no capability or shows no interest in doing that. The most obvious example is that we are part of the engineering support chain for the Collins-class submarines.

Increasingly these days DSTO is getting into systems engineering. Most of the defence technologies coming down the pike are really systems-based. When we do systems engineering, we often work with industry, often under the CDE or DMO banner, generally in latter stages of acquisition.

But we need to be careful about conflicts of interest here, because quite often DSTO plays several roles at the same time in the process - we can be, at one end of the scale, a supplier of technology and services to industry.

We are also an adviser to the DMO and often we are often an adviser to the end user. And also these days we are an adviser to Government.

Numerous hats to wear
In addition to serving the direct needs of clients we have three roles that sit effectively alongside those requirements.
The first one is that we are basically the futurists for the department - with an emphasis on technology anticipation.

What we try to do is make sure the department has no surprises. Our long-range research program not only looks at technology push solutions, but is also the main hedge for us in Defence to understand what is coming down the pike.

It is also the reason why we put so much emphasis on our US relationships, because that is where most of the future technology is coming from.

An example is the hypersonics program, which has the potential to be a ground-breaking disruptive technology. Just think about it for a minute. If you’re on a ship, and there is an anti-ship missile coming towards you about 50 feet above the sea and it’s traveling at Mach 10, and it switches on its seeker 10 kilometres away, how much time do you think you’ve got to react? Two seconds. I wouldn’t want to be on that ship.

Besides being futurists, the second role we have is to be, to some extent, the technology policeman - so we are Defence’s checkpoint for new technology being acquired for the ADF.

I have to provide a formal Technical Risk Assessment (TRA) for every project that goes to the Minister and to Cabinet for either 1st or 2nd Pass approval.

This requirement came out of Malcolm Kinnaird’s Defence Procurement Review of 2003 and we continue to refine this process, especially for 2nd Pass, where DSTO expertise is also usually heavily involved in evaluation as well as technical risk assessment.

This could be another potential internal conflict of interest so it’s important, as I said, that the TRA I sign off on is not a parallel evaluation. I sign off on two issues, and two issues only:
• Is the technology offered feasible? Is it mature? What are the issues and hurdles that need to be overcome to get to the required level of maturity for that technology?
• Is it fit for purpose? And if it’s not quite fit for purpose, how hard is it to make it fit for purpose?

Sharing the risk with industry
One of the things I would like to emphasise is that DSTO does not have all the necessary technical expertise in-house to do all these technical risk assessments.

So we are increasingly asking for industry to advise us when DSTO expertise is limited. Again, we have to be very careful about above and below the line issues.

The third role is maintaining continuity in key technologies, even if they’re not required for high priority tasks all the time.
For example, down in Melbourne and in Adelaide, we’ve got technology activities in energetic materials, diesel fuels and lubricants, and metallic structural forensics.

They’re not always at the forefront for investment and they’re not always required as part of the capability development process, but you’d better believe that when a helicopter goes down or a submarine hose breaks, or ammunition starts to weep in the Middle East area of operations, they suddenly become the most important capability you could have.

What is coming up in technology terms? I won’t dwell on the platform and major acquisitions and the specific technology challenges they hold. Instead, let me highlight four threads that are important in how the ‘Force in Being’ fights today and in the immediate future, and throw out the challenge of what industry can do here.

The first one is Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) defence. We’ve grown from 40 to 112 staff in the division responsible in less than three years.

But we still don’t have a strong defence industry capability. There is a lot of intrinsic capability out there, but it’s all in the biological and medical area - not Defence-focused.

And of course it sits alongside the homeland security area of the biosecurity initiatives. So I think there is a challenge there.

The second technology challenge is in the area of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). We are continually under the gun to provide support along the whole kill chain from intelligence to detection, disruption, protection and recovery.

That includes research into explosives, electromagnetics, intelligence and human sciences. We’ve got activities going in terms of robotic systems, land mine detection, and breaching and obstacle reduction systems to enhance combat engineer capability.

The third challenge is in the area of Operations Analysis (OA). Some examples of the wide-ranging work undertaken by OA teams include an examination of equipment incompatibility between land and air forces, a heat stress study, a command and control study and an extension of an in-theatre demographics study.

Mixing soldiers and science
Good systems and operational analysis can only come from the close mixing of military and science skills. We have been very successful in developing a synergy with our ADF peers - so much so, in fact, that we now have the challenge of meeting the demand for S&T support to operations.

While operational analysis has been shown to be very important at the operational and tactical level, limited tools are available. We need more industry input in this area.

The last area I’d like to highlight is signature management for both humans and platforms, and across the whole electromagnetic spectrum.

The main focus of the Near IR Signature Management research has been the development of a disruptive pattern combat uniform, or DPCU, that blends into the surrounding environment when viewed through night vision equipment.

So those are today’s challenges. What about tomorrow’s? Let me mention just four.

The first is reducing the cost of ownership. Defence needs to reduce the cost of ownership of its multi-billion dollar asset base and is looking at implementing a number of strategies to do this.

They include reductions in the manpower required to operate platforms and systems, automation of command, control and communication systems, and the introduction of universal systems across platforms and common platforms.

While we are working on this, we need more diagnostic and analytic tools to aid better decision-making for maintenance, whole-of-life costing, performance improvements, cost reduction and increased platform availability.

The second area I’d like to look at is Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) and experimentation. As the nature of warfare evolves, the concept of traditional land, sea and air domains recedes in importance.

Concepts such as network-centric warfare, systems of systems, effects-based operations and automation of the battlespace are now at the forefront - as is the emergence of new domains.

For instance, we need to think as much about how we fight on the ground, over or under the sea and in the air and space, as in paradigms of the physical or kinetic space, the electromagnetic space, cyberspace and the psychological space.

NCW is a classic case of a complex adaptive system. Understanding the human sciences aspect of how NCW works is something we really need to do.

Because we don’t understand how a complex adaptive system works, it is very hard to model and so we need to use experimentation to get at the emergent properties. But this is also immature in a scientific sense.

Experimentation on many levels
Like NCW, experimentation means many things to many people. Our experimentation initiative aims to develop an integrated and coordinated approach to experimentation programs across Defence in Australia.

This initiative focuses on scientific experimental design, adoption of common standards, lexicon, codes of practice and endorsed foundations in experimentation across the world.

Experimentation provides a unique environment to investigate and evaluate the concepts and technologies, including networking of sensors, weapons and the cognitive and social aspects of command and control across all domains.

A recent development is establishment of the prototype of a Joint Decision Support and Simulation Centre (JDSSC) at Fairbairn, Canberra, which will open later this year.

The JDSSC will be a node in a network with access to other simulation and experimentation centres operated by DSTO, the Services, Australian industry and our overseas partners. Connectivity with our allies is a hell of a lot more straightforward these days.

The third area is the Uninhabited Battlespace, which is a logical extension of the NCW construct. DSTO has a strong program in developing and adapting technologies to position the ADF to operate and succeed in the future battlespace under our Automation of the Battlespace Initiative.

As part of this program we have demonstrated connectivities and artificial intelligence applications in the air, ground and underwater environments and across the globe. This includes UAVs, UUVs, UGVs and any other type of UV you’d care to describe.

The fourth area that continues to pose a challenge for us is Information Operations, which remains a big problem. As you know, communications requirements are increasing exponentially. How do we assure the information, how do we protect it? How do we exploit it? The scope for new technology products here is huge.

Disruptive influences
Let me now canvass some potential disruptive technologies for the ‘ADF after next’.

The two fastest moving technologies in the world today are ICT and materials technology. The former takes its lead from the ability to get more and more from smaller and smaller packages whilst, increasingly these days, materials are taking their lead from nature.

In the ICT space DSTO, CSIRO and National ICT Australia (NICTA) recently joined forces to lead a new internationally significant research initiative in the area of human machine interface.

In the materials space, smart materials incorporate energy and biotechnology developments and can be used to build ‘smart structures’.

A notionally ‘smart’ structure is an ordinary structure equipped with a sensory network - analogous to a nervous system in a biological organism - and is smart to the extent that it has the means to autonomously gather, and thereby potentially exploit, information relevant to the preservation of its health.

We’re looking at nanomaterials as a potentially disruptive technology that could lead to breakthroughs in energy management and storage. Not just saving AA batteries in soldiers’ pockets but the whole concept of directed energy handheld weapons with multi-kilometre range.

So, what about the relationship between DSTO and industry in all this? I have mentioned some of the issues in the procurement space before, but the relationship goes a great deal beyond this.

One important element of my role - and it is in my performance agreement I might add - is for DSTO to help industry help Defence.

Engaging SMEs
This takes several tacks. First is to identify and engage new technology SMEs and help them come into the Defence fold - a nurturing role if you like. One mechanism we use is the CTD program but there are many others.

Secondly, we need to engage with those industries that have a substantive if not substantial internal R&D program to get synergy and harmonisation between what we do in DSTO and what the company is doing.

One aspect here is for industry to have early access to our program planning, for example through the Defence Science Access Network and a program of technology days, but I think we can do better.

Thirdly we have a relaxed IP policy compared to other generators of IP in both Defence and the research and development area to let other people exploit Defence IP, as long as I have access to it and can use it.

And I don’t want to particularly make money out of it - or lose any, I might add. But certainly I would want industry to make some money out of it. What I want to see is products coming back into Defence.

Fourthly, we have extensive links at DSTO with universities around Australia and extensive international links - especially the US. These can be used more positively by industry and DSTO to access some of the overseas technology a lot more productively than we are now.

We like to engage in the above four areas at the pre competitive stage - pre 1st Pass in Defence terms - because once we are into procurement stage we have the same rules as DMO, with the same restrictions. If we are much more flexible then we can do a lot more - the point here is to get in early.

Innovation initiatives
Another thing that’s coming out of the Defence Industry Policy Statement are initiatives on innovation in general, and we’re going to trial a Defence CRC, if you like. We’re calling it the Defence Future Capability Technology Centre.

While modeled on the broader Cooperative Research Centres that are currently run by the Department of Education, Science and Training, the DFCTC will be targeted at developing future defence capability, in a Defence-identified and specific capability development area.

As part of our commitment to nurturing small-to-medium enterprises, we want to ensure SMEs have the opportunity to participate in the DFCTC and are working to build this into the requirements for participation.

I’d like to leave you with some challenges.
The first is one I mentioned right at the beginning: the conflation of technology needs for Defence and other elements of national security.

Let me reiterate that there are many opportunities for industry in the CBRN space and the IED space, for example.

Defence industry can relate to other industries and other players in the national security space, which is wide open.

Secondly, the challenges of the Defence procurement system. How do you cope when the procurement cycle is sometimes more than twice the technology refresh cycle? How can industry help establish a spiral development and procurement process that meets our requirements?

The third challenge I want to leave you with is called the ‘valley of death’ problem. DSTO takes technology to at best Technology Readiness Level 4. In Australia, at least, industry tends to be loth to pick up technology before it reaches a technology readiness level of about seven.

So what needs to be done - other than Government handouts - to encourage industry to take the risk? There are lots of issues buried here. There’s the issue of overseas companies, level of risk taking among SMEs, the role of the broader industry policy of government - not just Defence industry - there are all sorts of problems impinging on that space.