Australian universities lead $250 million defence R&D commercialisation push

The Australian government expects to get $250 millions-worth of defence R&D value from a new university-led commercialisation program, but without spending a dollar of Defence money. 

Instead, the Defence Trailblazer: Concept to Sovereign Capability (CSC), led by the Universities of Adelaide and New South Wales in Canberra, will receive $50 million over four years from the federal Department of Education Skills and Employment (DESE). This will leverage $25 million each from the two universities, a further $10 million from the CSIRO and $140 million from more than 50 industry partners, 38 of them Small to Medium Enterprises (SME).

The aim of the CSC is to effect culture change in the universities and to challenge the myth that universities don’t do commercialisation well, says Dr Stephen Rodda, the University of Adelaide’s Chief Innovation & Commercialisation Officer. It also aims to deliver useable operational high-tech capability far quicker than has been the case so far.

In a statement Major General Susan Coyle, the ADF’s Head of Information Warfare, said, “The Defence Trailblazer: Concept to Sovereign Capability program signals the start of a closer relationship between Defence, research organisations and defence industry that will see Australia’s sovereign defence capability significantly strengthened.”

The CSC will have two investment funds, according to Dr Rodda: a $34 million Seed Innovation Fund to fund investment-ready research opportunities; and a $126 million Advanced Innovation Fund which will finance successful Seed projects across the money-hungry ‘Valley of Death’ and into operational service. 

The CSC is one of the winners in DESE’s $242.7 million Trailblazer Universities Program, announced in November last year to enhance the commercialisation of universities’ research through closer interaction with industry. 

Although it’s DESE money, Defence is very supportive and ‘baked into our governance as we move forward,’ says retired Canadian Vice Admiral Paul Maddison, Director of the UNSW Defence Research Institute. 

The Universities of Adelaide and NSW in Canberra pulled together a strong academic, industry and Defence team focussed on five defence technology priorities which map closely onto the Defence Science & Technology Group’s STaR Shots and Next Generation Technology Fund (NGTF) investment priorities: 

• Quantum Materials, Technologies & Computing
• Defensive Hypersonics & Countermeasures
• Information Warfare & Advanced Cyber Technologies
• Robotics, Autonomous Systems & AI (RAS-AI)
• Defence Space Technologies

The CSC will have research theme leads from the two universities and from DST Group’s STaR Shot leaders, says Dr Rodda, and will become operational on 1 July.

The founding Chair of CSC will be an Australian industry veteran, Northrop Grumman’s General Manager Asia Pacific Christine Zeitz. She told The Australian that academia has traditionally worked well with DST Group while the DST-Industry relationship has matured significantly since the First Principles Review of 2015 and the establishment of the Strategic Industry Capability Priorities (SICP) program. 

The missing part is the relationship between the universities and industry: Australia has lacked the ability to translate its high quality R&D efficiently into defence products, something which the CSC will help to rectify, she says. 

One of the CSC members is Thales Australia which will be heavily engaged in high-speed weapons and hypersonic R&D, according to Duncan Watt, the company’s General Manager Guided Weapons. He said the CSC is ‘excellent news’ and that Thales Australia has more than 600 Australian suppliers as does another member, BAE Systems Australia, so the potential economic benefits could be significant.

The CSC’s research priorities map onto BAE Systems Australia’s own technology priorities says Adam Watson, director of the company’s R&D arm, Red Ochre Laboratories. The company is focussed on RAS-AI – Robotic and Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence; information warfare and cyber security; quantum materials; and hypersonic and directed energy weapons. 

In RAS-AI the company leads Team Sabre’s Trusted Autonomous Ground Vehicles for Electronic Warfare, or TAGVIEW, program alongside Nova Systems and SAFRAN, says Watson. This aims to create networks of unmanned vehicles autonomously repositioning themselves to disrupt an adversary’s communications, sensors and weapons using their on-board electronic warfare systems. The CSC could provide an opportunity to develop a new mission management system for TAGVIEW, he believes. 

The company also has a long history in hypersonic flight as well as in autonomous air vehicles: its success on the Nulka anti-ship missile decoy program and then swarming UAV research with the University of Sydney 25 years ago has seen BAE Systems Australia become the UK parent company’s go-to expert when looking for autonomous control systems for its own advanced Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) programs such as Herti and Taranis. It also provides autonomous and robotic control systems for programs like Boeing Australia’s MQ-28A Ghost Bat.

The CSC really is about acceleration of the translation of R&D into useable products, says Paul Maddison.  And if the CSC is successful it could deliver benefits in perpetuity, he says.

“Defence R&D is an instrument of national power – a Fundamental Input to Capability if you like,” he told The Australian. “Through this program we’re operationalising that intent. It’s extremely exciting.”

By: Dr Gregor Ferguson BA (Hons) PhD (Adel) 

From: Weekend Australian 28-29 May 2022, p.5