What the future battlefield will look like has been heavily debated by international defence experts for years as militaries desperately search for a “unified field theory” of conflict.
Current US Secretary of Defense General James Mattis has famously written about “hybrid wars” in which war fighters operating in the traditional Three Block construct might move from humanitarian assistance to peacekeeping to fighting a lethal battle, all within a single day in the space of three city blocks— to now include a “fourth block”, being the non-physical psychological or information domain.
The process behind much of this thinking has been driven by current conflicts all around the world, where conventional forces rarely face each other in a classic battle scenario.
For Australia’s defence forces the key is to continue researching what the battlefield of the future could be so our war fighters can adapt to meet the threats of new technologies and more.
Victoria’s Defence Industry Advocate and former Federal Minister for Defence Materiel and Science, Greg Combet says in order for Australia’s defence forces to maintain a capability edge, “we always have to be at the cutting edge so we need to invest heavily in research and development (R&D)”.
“It’s important Australia is not just a consumer of overseas technologies – we also need to be developing our own capabilities which could be in partnership with our allies,” Combet says.
Currently Victoria provides innovation leadership, for example, through the interaction between research and industry, such as the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC), CSIRO’s Data61 and the Oceania Cyber Security Centre.
In recent years, the DMTC has been the catalyst for bringing Thales Australia, university researchers, CSIRO and the Defence Science Technology Group (DSTG) together to explore alternative electrical power generation and capture technologies for military vehicles.
Back in 2010, the Victorian Government—in partnership with the DSTG and the University of Melbourne—established the Defence Science Institute (DSI) which was designed to help researchers and developers in the early stages of projects decide where they could realistically apply their ideas to the defence sector.
According to DSI Engagement Manager, Craig Butler, many of those ideas come from local universities as well as the CSIRO, and the DSI works closely with the DSTG to get an understanding of what the defence sector is looking for.
The DSTG indicates what ideas are being examined and “what the war fighter will need in the future,” Butler says. “We also go outside their ideas if there are good ones out there.”
As for why the DSI functions so well in Victoria, he says it is a combination of the DSTG’s presence and the group of local universities which all play heavily in the defence research space.
“Victoria has also probably had a broader engagement with the defence sector over time than many of the other states, although we’re not precious about it. Across the country there is a lot of good research happening.”
Victoria has a lot of tax funded laboratories and scientific equipment in educational institutions that are ready to be utilised, Butler says. Moreover, defence R&D in Victoria covers a wide range: “Sure, it covers the obvious such as better armour, communications and cyber security but we’re also getting a better understanding around the whole future sustainment of defence theme.”
In many ways, sustainment is probably the most critical research area and sometimes there is “too much emphasis on bombs and bullets,” he says. “The key to war of the future is to keep the war fighter out of harm’s way.”
The potential for Australia’s R&D efforts in the defence sector are limitless, according to Butler, and there is plenty of potential to go global beyond our own borders.
“Already we’re seeing a lot of people coming here from overseas and they recognise the quality of research here and the quality of our education.”
A case in point is the AOS Group, which grew out of the Victorian Government and Stanford Research Institute (SRI) sponsored Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, back in 1997, and has since continued to go from strength to strength.
Founder and managing director Andrew Lucas says the company has now funded 10 PhDs and in doing so “we now have a critical mass of intelligent software agent knowledge in Melbourne.”
According to Lucas, you would not find this depth of knowledge anywhere else in the world outside of Silicon Valley and the market is “about to take-off”.
AOS Group’s work in creating a network of autonomous surveillance resources named intelligent Watch Dog has been supported by DSI and DSTG and has involved working with universities as well as RAAF, Navy and Army.
Lucas says developing autonomous vehicles is one area where Victoria and Australia could potentially lead globally: “Not by competing with the big boys, such as Google and Amazon, but by finding a niche. For example, the Department of Defence is very interested in self-drive fuel tankers to transport fuel to remote bases in the north and west of Australia. We tend to forget the future of autonomous technology in defence is not robots fighting each other, the big beneficiary will be logistics and support.”
Lucas says Federal Minister for the Defence Industry Christopher Pyne is doing a good job because he is overseeing a real culture shift in defence which can only be good for Australia’s R&D future and building national industrial capacity.
He says by strengthening Victoria as an R&D hub, we will be in a better position economically in 20 years’ time.
“We should look to defence as a stimulant to commercial activity and not just defence activity. We will see spinoffs in skills and experience which are very hard to get unless you build something, and defence usually goes for technology that hasn’t been developed before which is then available for rapid take-up in commercial applications. Our work in autonomous systems and robotics for defence has immediate relevance to agriculture, which is a key priority for the Victorian Government.”
Butler agrees the opportunities are enormous, especially as smaller companies that may have once been solely reliant on the automotive industry will be able to work closely with research institutions.
For Combet, there have always been breakthroughs made in defence often transformed commercially in one way or another, which augurs well for the future.
What’s more, he says a huge amount of the defence budget is in materiel acquisition, sustainment and R&D, so building Victoria’s defence capability further “is kind of a guaranteed market share of Commonwealth funding”.
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