Over November, the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) hosted state and territory-based forums targeting industry, universities and other research providers interested in working with Defence to provide innovative capabilities.
At the forums, Professor Emily Hilder, Interim Head of ASCA, provided a run-down of what ASCA has been up to in its five months of operation, together with an overview of the three programs that the organisation runs - Missions, Innovation incubation and Emerging and disruptive technologies (EDT).
ASCA commenced operations in July and is the new defence innovation organisation, replacing the Defence Innovation Hub and Next Generation Technologies Fund.
Professor Hilder told ADM that this move was driven by the gap in translating innovation to capability, asking, “what do we need to do in our current strategic circumstances to get the capability that our soldiers, sailors and aviators need to them as quickly as possible?”
“We previously had this situation where we had a ten-year warning time for any major conflict,” she said.
“That’s gone. How we connect innovation to that delivery of capability to our defence force requires a different approach.”
Professor Hilder said that the mission process was the core of ASCA, basing the development of problem statements on Defence’s highest priority problems.
“Rather than focusing on just developing a prototype from an innovation activity, we’re going to start with what is one of the biggest problems Defence is facing, bring together partners to design a solution to that problem, work out how we could deliver that solution as a minimum viable capability within that 3-5 year period, and map out a plan to do that,” she said.
“Whilst in previous programs we had endorsements from capability managers about the relevance of a technology or solution, this is insisting that we connect it to our acquisition program from the start and identify what that pathway could look like so that we can seamlessly move from the innovation phase to the acquisition phase.”
“It also commits us to identifying all the other bits you need to take something from a technology through to a capability,” she added.
“Where’s your workforce coming from? How are you going to sustain it, how are you going to operate it?”
The ASCA Mission Co-design and Delivery ATM was released on 30 November, detailing the two problem statements approved by the Vice Chief of the Defence Force.
Professor Hilder said that a lot of thought was given to the format of these problem statements, saying that this forced them to have the discipline to articulate a problem and not try and give a solution.
“A problem statement doesn’t mean that we’ve made any assumption about what the solution could be,” she said.
The ATM states that ASCA will undertake a two-phased approach, with an eight-week mission co-design process, followed by the mission delivery over the next three years.
In terms of timelines, Professor Hilder said that “they’re going to be as strict as we can make them.”
“You'll see in everything we’ve done we try to run pretty aggressive timelines and that's important just in terms of being able to keep things moving,” she said.
Looking towards the future for ASCA, Professor Hilder stressed the importance of learning how to systematise the mission process, saying that “one of the really important things with innovation activities is to demonstrate how you can do it over and over again and to create a system that makes it easier to do it.”
She also looked forward to starting to leverage some of the opportunities for international engagement over the next year, saying she believes that “there are opportunities to learn - particularly from some of the work being done in the US - in leveraging commercial opportunities and thinking about dual use technology.”
From collaborating with DARPA in the US and DASA in the UK during the development of ASCA, Professor Hilder told ADM that their main takeaway was that it is critical to get the right people in the team.
“We are absolutely committed, for example for our mission leads, to bringing people from outside the system that can help us challenge and grow and develop the way that we do things,” she said.
“The other thing that we’ve learnt from them is the importance of open and constant communication, sharing and working very closely with all of our partners.
“Try something and if it doesn’t work try something different. Principles are more important than process in the way we do these things so that we can have the necessary agility.”
Outside the three ASCA programs, the organisation also plans to host a pitch day twice a year to allow for open communication with industry.
The first of these is currently planned for March, with information to be released pending schedules.
“We will have opportunities for pitch days not just because it allows us to capture things we might have completely missed, but also I think it’s good in terms of us getting to know better what industry can do, industry can better understand Defence as part of a healthy ecosystem,” said Professor Hilder.
“We still have legacy programs to support, and they’re no less important. Startup is hard, and the constant change is really challenging,” she said in response to ADM’s question about the main challenges facing ASCA.
“We’re trying to be disruptive in a system that doesn’t always respond well to disruption. We have to be constructive in the way that we do that, and work together to try and do things differently.”